CDC Defends Action on TB Patient

An Atlanta lawyer and fellow passengers on board two transatlantic passenger flights are breathing sighs of relief now that doctors have ruled that he does not have the most dangerous form of tuberculosis. But federal health officials stand by their failed attempt to bar the TB patient from commercial transports in May, saying the public health response needed to have been the same. Doctors now say Andrew Speaker, a 31-year-old personal injury lawyer, has multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, or MDR-TB, and not extensively drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB). Although MDR-TB, a less severe form of the disease, is easier to treat, doctors said the public health response should be the same to both forms of drug-resistant TB. “The public health action taken in his case was sound and appropriate,” said Dr. Mitchell Cohen of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Charles Daley who is treating Speaker said the Atlanta attorney has a serious condition and fellow passengers he may have infected need to be tracked down.
Speaker said in a statement that “I can only hope that this news helps calm the fears of those people that were on the flights with me.” Related story