TODAY'S TALKER: TB patient says he was never told not to travel.

I think they are both at fault here. Each is trying to cover their own butt. This is not a cut and dry answer.

I must say that the photograph of Mr. Speaker that appears in this article is the best one I've seen of him.

I think that ultimately the responsibility lay with Mr. Andrew Speaker. I do not doubt there were some miscommunications, and the only one who seems to have suffered the most is the border guard in New York, who decided Mr. Speaker did not look sick and allowed him back into the U.S. Health officials did give him the information. Perhaps they did not dumb it down enough for him, but he had it. In various other statements he has made, it seems he was afraid of dying of this disease if he was forced to seek treatment in Europe. If he was afraid of dying from TB, then he should have taken into consideration what this disease might do to other people. Since he attended liar school, it is very difficult to distinguish whether any of the things he has said are true. Health officials at the CDC have the best interest of the public in mind. Mr. Speaker is only concerned with Mr. Speaker.

Perhaps in the future, based on this incident, any one who is diagnosed with a drug-resistant form of TB or any other harmful communicable illness should be quarantined until they are cured.

As far as being more concerned about my health while I'm on an airplane, I am not. Drug-resistant TB is not a new illness. The flight would have to be a very long one it seems to put me at a significant risk of contracting it, and this disease has only stricken a very small percentage of the population. There are people who fly with the dreaded common cold and have the audacity to spread those germs without a care for any one else. I think I'd be troubled about my health if I were one of Mr. Andrew Speaker's wedding guests.

I find it incredulous that he would say that no one told him that he was any danger to anyone. It was reported that he was told not to go out of the country. That would tell anyone that hey, there is something serious happening here.

Then, once he was contacted and told not to move, he tip toed around rules to get back in the US. He has put several hundred people at risk, and he should pay the consequence of his actions. There are thousands of people who could have become fatally ill if they would of been in contact with the virus.

Another case of Americans not doing what is best for everyone, but just for their own selfish desires.

His father-in-law works for the CDC and deals with this disease on a daily basis. Let's be real here. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, lets say he didn't realize it was that serious, after he did know he still chose to get on another flight and then drive into the country. He states that he was worried about his life that he knew he had to get to Denver. How could he have possibly known that if his father in law didn't tell him they had the best treatment center. Did anyone else know that Denver had a state of the art treatment center?

If I were him, I would just drop off the face of the earth and tell these reporters to get lost. We all know that if there isn't anything to report then the story will just disappear and everyone will forget it ever happened.

As a former Nurse, I must say, I find his statements of not knowing to travel absurd. With the strain of TB in his system, I can't think of a single doctor that would NOT tell him he should not travel, anywhere. He should not have been outside his house for that matter.

Does he think that he was quarantined for no reason?

With his father-in-law in research at the CDC for TB, I have to almost laugh at how ridiculous this all sounds.

Once it was found that he was traveling, he should NEVER have been on a public plane, at all.

I am always amazed at the spin people put on things that can be so potentially dangerous to all those around them.

Mr. Speaker, should have known better, I do not care what he says!

I posted an article about Andrew Speaker on Tuesday called "Andrew Speaker: Reckless Endangerment to the World." at this link:

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977021036

There are more unsettling things coming out of this every day. Speaker's father( also an attorney) said he used a hidden tape recorder to record the conversation with CDC officials. If the Speaker family thought they were doing the right thing, why the subterfuge?

Then when told they were not to fly back to the States on a commercial jet, but would have to hire a private jet at $140,000, they said they didn't have that kind of money. Excuse me? They just jetted off with family and friends to get married on a little Greeek Island. Then on to Italy for a month- long honeymoon. They didn't have the money? I don't think so. That's pretty lame. Instead, they sneak away from authorities, using more subterfuge to get back to the States.

I'm sorry, but I'm not buying their story or their apologies.

I agree with Ann. That's like your teenager saying, "Well, you never actually said I couldn't drink twelve beers and go driving."

I agree with everyone's comments. Mr. Speaker knew better, but chose to ignore what he was told and put himself first. And now that he was caught he's trying to deflect the blame.

What it boiled down to is that technically, if you split hairs (and he's a lawyer after all) Mr. Speaker was not told he was forbidden to travel. What he was told is that it was inadvisable for him to travel and they would prefer he didn't. Speaker knew that they could not actually forbid him from traveling without a court order. So he left the meeting, bought a new ticket, and ran the next day. He knew if he waited he would be ordered by a court not to move, and as an officer of the court, he would have to obey.

It's purely a matter of semantics. He is a spoiled brat who had already decided what he was going to do, and went and did it and the world be damned.

Also, he was not told he wasn't contagious. He was told that he was not HIGHLY contagious. Big difference.

I know many attorneys that do a great job and get slimed just because of people like Speaker--and I know many people who are not attorneys who would use the same arguments. Speaker's issues have nothing to do with his choice of careers.

Even if he was as stupid as he tries to portray himself and his doctors were so stupid, they didn't tell him not to fly before he left America, he knew he shouldn't be flying by the time he reached Italy. And to make comments that he was fearful of Europe's medical programs is downright racist or xenophobic--its not like he was travelling to Darfur!

I think the only reason this has gotten so much attention, specially from Faux News and the Neo-cons is because this guy is white and middle to upper middle class and has TB!!!! OH MY ALMIGHTY DOLLAR GOD--if it happened to him, it could happen to me!

If someone is told it is inadvisable to travel, knowing you have TB, an educated man, wouldn't you think, or at least I hope, he would be intelligent enough to say, that means I SHOULD NOT GO. That is like a patient leaving a hopital, AMA....Against Medical Advice.

He needs to own up to the fact he is wrong, the whole family is, on so many levels!

Andrew Speaker is a selfish prick. There is no way possession of a law degree drains enough brain cells that he didn't understand "you have TB." Even Forrest Gump knows that tuberculosis is contagious. What about "drug-resistant" didn't Golden Boy understand?

I agree - he knew all too well. He split before a court could order him to stay -- hey, he could have lost the deposit on his honeymoon! And everybody returning too the US from Europe lands in Canada so they can drive in! I mean, after all, daddy-in-law works at the CDC, it's not like he didn't have knowledge of EXACTLY what the powers-that-be would do once it was determined to officially quarantine him. What a bummer - they'd have to honeymoon in the States! Who cares if Typhoid Larry exposes a bunch of other people to a potentially deadly disease - it's not like they matter!

Speaker must be a Republican.

Did he never learn about TB in any of the classes he told in all his years in school. I mean I learned about it in either middle or high school and I still remember about how contagious it can be.
I think he was just plain selfish.
The boarder guard I say he was lazy.

This is yet another example of the " functional ignorance " our society seems to have embraced with open arms. There is no longer anywhere you can go where you can get a fact-based answer to a situation or problem. In conjunction with that, there are no longer any individuals who are considered authority figures when seeking information on a situation or problem.
You can no longer ask anyone a question and rely on the information given you to be accurate and correct. You can no longer identify the people who are supposed to be authority figures.
We seem to have fooled ourselves into thinking that if no one can be held responsible for facts that can be relied on, we have somehow eliminated the problem.
I believe the old fable, " The Emperor's New Clothes " pretty much speaks to this issue.

While Speakers actions were not exactly laudatory they were not all that evil either. From an article by Marc Siegel in the Boston Globe:

The risk of Speaker infecting another passenger when he reportedly wasn't coughing, had no fever, and was receiving some treatment is probably less than 1 percent. The chance of an actual case of serious TB resulting from this exposure is even less than that, as there has not yet been a single case of active tuberculosis found to be the result of exposure on a plane. ..........I have worked on the Chest Service of Bellevue Hospital where Speaker was briefly interned. It is routine practice for doctors there to remove masks and allow patients to roam the ward and even go home once their mucous tests negative. Speaker was no different. ........More than 2 billion passengers fly on planes every year, but there has yet to be a documented case of someone getting sick with TB from an airplane exposure. Though TB kills close to 2 million people per year worldwide and cannot be trivialized, the more important lesson from Speaker is about public and media overreaction to remote risks.

A little less panic and outrage might be in order here.

As for keeping it from happening again.....Sue mr. Speaker for damages if and when it is found that there were any.

You say that Andrew Speaker's drug-resistant TB was not very contagious, so Speaker did nothing wrong. Knowing that his TB is not very contagious, would YOU want to sit next to him on a transatlantic flight?

When Speaker tried to cross the border from Canada into the United States, the border agent got the warning message not to allow Speaker to cross; but the border agent allowed him to cross anyway.

What did Speaker say to the border agent that made the agent violate the rules? Did Speaker say, "I'm a lawyer, and if you don't let me pass, I'll sue!"