aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

TB patient’s family unhelpful at first

I made something of a big deal out of the fact that Andrew Speaker’s father recored his conversation with health officials before the family went off to his wedding in Greece. It appears that health officials have some ammo of their own:

Health officials trying to stop a globetrotting honeymooner with a dangerous form of tuberculosis got little assistance from his lawyer father and his future father-in-law, a TB expert who not only balked at stopping the Greek wedding but attended the ceremony himself, according to e-mail obtained by the Associated Press.

Some of the 181 pages of e-mail, obtained through a public records request, suggest that Andrew Speaker’s father was clipped and combative in phone conversations with health officials.

E-mail from Fulton County officials portray his father-in-law, CDC microbiologist Robert C. Cooksey, as initially unhelpful, at least before May 22, when tests showed that Speaker had a more dangerous form of TB than previously understood.