A 31-year-old lawyer who carried a rare form of tuberculosis across two continents landed in Denver on Thursday to begin treatment in the middle of a maelstrom that doctors say weighs heavily on his mind.
Andrew Speaker spent much of the day meeting with his new medical team, who described him as exhausted and overwhelmed but in “extremely good” shape and ready to begin what could be a long, uncomfortable and costly treatment.
“All this is weighing heavily on him,” said Dr. Charles Daley of National Jewish Medical and Research Center, where Speaker is being treated. “He’s seeing the same news, where people are asking for him to be arrested.”
Speaker took time out Thursday afternoon to tell ABC-TV’s Diane Sawyer that he was “asking forgiveness” from the hundreds of airline passengers he may have exposed to the deadly disease.
In Speaker’s hometown of Atlanta, his new father-in-law – a TB researcher at the federal agency that tracked Speaker across Europe – announced he did not infect his son-in-law.
“As part of my job, I am regularly tested for TB. I do not have TB, nor have I ever had TB,” Dr. Robert Cooksey said in a statement released by his employer, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Speaker has a rare and difficult-to-treat form of TB called extensively drug-resistent, or XDR TB.
When CDC health officials learned Speaker had XDR TB, they reached him in Rome, where he was honeymooning, and asked him not to get on a commercial airline.
After he defied that request, CDC officials took the extraordinary step of issuing a federal isolation order.
His father, Ted Speaker, told CNN on Thursday that his son did not intend to put others at risk.
“The way he’s being shown and spoken about on TV, it’s like he’s a terrorist,” Ted Speaker said.
Not highly contagious
The younger Speaker apparently didn’t look like a terrorist – or even a very sick man – to agents who examined his passport as he and his bride drove into the United States from Canada on May 24.
Along the border crossing at Champlain, N.Y., an inspector ran Speaker’s passport through a computer, and a warning – including instructions to hold the traveler, wear a protective mask in dealing with him and call health authorities – popped up,officials said.
About a minute later, Speaker was cleared to continue on.
The unidentified inspector, who has been relieved from border duty, explained that the infected man seemed healthy and that he thought the warning was merely “discretionary,” The Associated Press reported.
Thursday morning, Speaker and his wife made what may be their last trip for many weeks, traveling in a private air ambulance, in the custody of federal marshals.
The plane landed at Centennial Airport around 7:45 a.m. An ambulance took Speaker, who was wearing a medical mask, to National Jewish.
Speaker is no longer in custody but is under the federal isolation order. He will not be allowed to leave his special negative-pressure hospital room until he is no longer contagious, said Dr. Gwen Huitt of National Jewish.
Speaker’s wife, a third-year law student at Emory University in Atlanta, is allowed to be with him, Huitt said. Tests indicate she does not have TB.
Huitt told reporters Thursday that Speaker showed none of the usual TB symptoms, such as coughing, and initial tests indicate he is not highly contagious.
“He’s not coughing out any germs as far as we can tell,” she said.
Passengers’ “life change”
Nevertheless, officials at the CDC are working with airline and health officials in this country and across Europe to contact about 80 airline passengers they believe are at greatest risk because they sat near Speaker on long transatlantic flights.
One of those passengers, Ja son Vik of Atlanta, told CNN he wasn’t too worried about contracting TB but could not condone what Speaker did.
So far, Vik said, he has tested negative for TB. But incubation for the disease can take weeks, so Vik said he will have to be retested often.
“This guy literally has caused us to have to make a life change for the next several years,” Vik said.
Speaker’s doctors said they are “very optimistic” he can recover from the XDR TB.
Doctors don’t know where he contracted the infection, but he could have been exposed in his extensive world travels. Speaker has said he may have acquired it in Vietnam, where his website says he spent five weeks raising money for a hospital.
It’s likely that he acquired the resistant form of TB from another person, Huitt said. In most cases, a TB infection becomes drug-resistant when patients don’t complete their treatment.
The disease could have lain dormant for years, Huitt said.
It was diagnosed by chance after Speaker injured a rib and was X-rayed. Had the infection gone undetected much longer, he likely would have become sicker and more contagious, Huitt said.
As they worked with the CDC to trace the source of his infection Thursday, doctors also performed a CT scan, cultures, blood work and other tests on Speaker to determine which drugs might work best against his disease.
Daley said his medical team is looking at five antibiotics that are not typically used to treat TB.
Huitt estimated that Speaker’s treatment, covered by his private insurance, could cost up to $350,000 and that he could be at the hospital as long as six months.
During that time, she said, his daily routine will be “very boring.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Staff writer Karen Augé can be reached at 303-954-1733 or kauge@denverpost.com.
Andrew Speake’s doctors at National Jewish Medical and Research Center:
CHARLES L. DALEY, M.D.
Specialties: Mycobacterial (TB/nontuberculous) and respiratory infections, infectious diseases and drug-resistant tuberculosis, among others.
Medical school: University of Mississippi Medical Center.
Research: Studying the origin and transmission of these diseases and new diagnostic tests and drug and treatment regimens.
GWEN A. HUITT, M.D.
Specialties: Mycobacterial (TB/nontuberculous) and respiratory infections, infectious diseases and tuberculosis, among others.
Medical School: University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center.
Research: Huitt has written about the treatment of multidrug-resistant TB.
Source: National Jewish Medical Center
