The father-in-law of Andrew Speaker, the lawyer infected with a drug-resistant form of tuberculosis, was headed to Denver on Sunday to visit him, an Atlanta television station reported.
Robert Cooksey, 56, a microbiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who specializes in TB, was shown on video standing outside a home in Atlanta with a suitcase nearby.
Cooksey told a reporter for WGLC-TV that he did not have time to do an on-camera interview because he was on his way to Denver to visit Speaker, 31, who recently married Cooksey’s daughter.
William Allstetter, spokesman for National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver where Speaker is being treated, said he did not know if Cooksey was on his way or where he might be staying.
“Even if I did, I wouldn’t say because it would be an invasion of his privacy,” Allstetter said Sunday evening.
A message left on Cooksey’s home phone in Atlanta late Sunday was not returned.
Also on Sunday, the CDC told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Cooksey was not being singled out for an investigation into his involvement in Speaker’s case, contrary to prior media reports.
Cooksey issued a statement last week that said he had given Speaker “fatherly advice” about traveling with the illness.
“I wouldn’t call it necessarily an investigation from the standpoint that one would assume that anybody has done anything wrong,” CDC spokesman Tom Skinner told the newspaper.
Rather, the CDC is reviewing the entire incident, including the agency’s response to the situation and Cooksey’s involvement, Skinner said.
Calls to the CDC on Sunday evening were not returned.
The decisions made by Speaker and the actions of the CDC have come under intense scrutiny since it was revealed Speaker had traveled with the disease to Europe for his wedding and honeymoon last month.
Speaker has said he knew he had TB before he traveled but that Georgia health authorities did not tell him he was a danger to anyone, just that they preferred he did not fly.
While in Rome, Speaker was contacted by authorities and told he had a drug-resistant form called XDR TB.
Speaker has said the government did not offer to come and get him so he could receive medical care, so he flew to Canada and then drove across the border into the U.S.
Speaker suspects he might have been infected with TB while on a Rotary International-sponsored trip to Vietnam last year.
Late Saturday, the CDC withdrew Speaker’s federal isolation order – the first quarantine of its kind since 1963 – because an order to detain him at National Jewish was issued by health authorities in Denver.
Speaker is expected to continue treatment at National Jewish for the next two months.
9News contributed to this report.
Staff writer Felisa Cardona can be reached at 303-954-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com.
