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TB Patient Says Officials Are Trying to Blame Him to Cover Mistakes
nyslimes ^ | 06/09/07 | DENISE GRADY

Posted on 06/08/2007 9:44:27 PM PDT by TornadoAlley3

By the time Andrew Speaker and his wife returned from Europe late last month, government officials and news reports had already branded him as a runaway tuberculosis patient who had deliberately evaded health officials and knowingly put other people at risk by traveling on crowded airplanes.

“This is what we’re hearing on the news when we land,” Mr. Speaker said on Thursday from his hospital room in Denver. He called The New York Times in response to repeated requests for an interview. “My wife and I look at each other, and I said, ‘They’re going for our throats here.’ ”

Mr. Speaker and his family have been fighting back ever since, disputing the accounts of local and federal health officials who say he had been warned not to fly because he posed an infection risk to others.

“I think when they started all this, they forgot that I spend my whole life defending people who are seriously hurt and need help,” said Mr. Speaker, 31, a personal injury lawyer. “I don’t think they took that into account when they started coming after me and my family. We’re not the kind of people who back down.”

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: blameshifter; officials; potmeetkettle; speaker; tb
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1 posted on 06/08/2007 9:44:29 PM PDT by TornadoAlley3
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To: TornadoAlley3
"I think when they started all this, they forgot that I spend my whole life defending people who are seriously hurt and need help"

And then you expose Innocent people to a dangerous disease. Buzz off.

2 posted on 06/08/2007 9:50:56 PM PDT by blackbart.223 (I live in Northern Nevada. Reid doesn't represent me.)
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To: TornadoAlley3

Not a bad job of pounding the table by a personal injury lawyer.


3 posted on 06/08/2007 9:51:08 PM PDT by Wally_Kalbacken (Seldom right but never in doubt)
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To: TornadoAlley3

This guy is an absolutely disgusting human being. Man, hearing this tort lawyer snivel about being victimized! Geez! He belongs in jail and away from that bimbo of a “wife” he bought for himself.


4 posted on 06/08/2007 9:51:10 PM PDT by The Worthless Miracle (I think Jamie Dupree is annoying.)
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To: Wally_Kalbacken
"Not a bad job of pounding the table by a personal injury lawyer."

Read that whore.

5 posted on 06/08/2007 9:55:01 PM PDT by blackbart.223 (I live in Northern Nevada. Reid doesn't represent me.)
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To: blackbart.223

No kidding. Now he’s trying to blame the CDC. Oy!


6 posted on 06/08/2007 9:59:26 PM PDT by Wally_Kalbacken (Seldom right but never in doubt)
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To: The Worthless Miracle
"This guy is an absolutely disgusting human being."

I have a rare genetic disorder that makes me prone to infection. What would happen to me if I was sitting next to that selfish turd?

7 posted on 06/08/2007 10:00:55 PM PDT by blackbart.223 (I live in Northern Nevada. Reid doesn't represent me.)
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To: TornadoAlley3

yeah cause they forced you onto two different flights exposing countless innocent people.....no wait, you did that on your own. Shut up idiot.


8 posted on 06/08/2007 10:01:10 PM PDT by mockingbyrd (peace begins in the womb)
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To: TornadoAlley3

He must be a lawyer.


9 posted on 06/08/2007 10:03:47 PM PDT by dfwgator (The University of Florida - Still Championship U)
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To: mockingbyrd

*Shrugs*

I don’t think that the odds of passing it on are terribly high. Now that I read this, I rather undestand it and sympathize.

I mean, I sure as hell wouldn’t want, if I was infected with a rare and potentially fatal disease, to be stuck in Italy.


10 posted on 06/08/2007 10:06:42 PM PDT by furquhart (Gingrich for President)
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To: dfwgator
"He must be a lawyer."

He is.

11 posted on 06/08/2007 10:06:44 PM PDT by blackbart.223 (I live in Northern Nevada. Reid doesn't represent me.)
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To: dfwgator

Better than an MD.


12 posted on 06/08/2007 10:07:47 PM PDT by Sir Clean Plate Club (Gore feels things are getting warmer because he is on his way to Hell)
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To: furquhart
"I mean, I sure as hell wouldn’t want, if I was infected with a rare and potentially fatal disease, to be stuck in Italy.

So you would jump on a plane and expose other people to this disease?

13 posted on 06/08/2007 10:09:50 PM PDT by blackbart.223 (I live in Northern Nevada. Reid doesn't represent me.)
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To: blackbart.223

It would depend upon the odds. I’d have to at least talk to a Doctor - and, indeed, apparently this guy knew someone who could explain those odds (his Father-in-law).

Let’s put it this way - if he felt it was safe enough for his wife to travel with him, then I doubt if he thought it was going to pose any serious risk to people on the plane.

To put it more bluntly - faced with something like a one in one thousand chance of infecting someone else and a nearly one hundred percent chance of dying if trapped where I was, I’d opt for the latter every time, and I think that most people who claim otherwise and feign outrage are lying or not being serious.


14 posted on 06/08/2007 10:17:27 PM PDT by furquhart (Gingrich for President)
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To: TornadoAlley3
He insisted that officials had never told him that he was infectious. They themselves never wore masks around him, he said, and never told him that he posed any risk to his wife or daughter.

He is a liar or his doctors are incompetent. I think he is a liar. When I tested positive for TB the first question I asked my doctor am I a danger to my family and individuals I work with. He explained that since I did not culture out positive I was not and that as a precaution (prophylaxis) I would be put on antibiotics for a year.

15 posted on 06/08/2007 10:25:57 PM PDT by cpdiii (Pharmacist, Pilot, Geologist, Oil Field Trash and proud of it.)
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To: furquhart
"To put it more bluntly - faced with something like a one in one thousand chance of infecting someone else and a nearly one hundred percent chance of dying if trapped where I was, I’d opt for the latter every time, and I think that most people who claim otherwise and feign outrage are lying or not being serious."

See post #7. This guy posed a threat and didn't give a shit who he could hurt. It seems you take the same position.

16 posted on 06/08/2007 10:27:10 PM PDT by blackbart.223 (I live in Northern Nevada. Reid doesn't represent me.)
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To: blackbart.223
Read that whore.

We did. Although the comparison is a bit harsh to prostitutes, don't you think?

17 posted on 06/08/2007 10:28:25 PM PDT by null and void ("Wherever liberty has sprouted around the world, we find American blood at its roots.")
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To: blackbart.223

this disease was imported by Mexico and South America. Illegal immigration has brought about this resistant strain. It has also brought us CHAGAS, and a return of bubonic plague, and small pox. Not to mention bed bugs as well.

Everyting jiust about we have rid our nation of, is coming back with a vengance.

Welcome the return of the third world, and everything it brings with it.

This guy is being used by the press because he is not the usual suspect of who carries these diseases.


18 posted on 06/08/2007 10:30:46 PM PDT by television is just wrong (Amnesty is when you allow them to return to their country of origin without prosecution.)
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To: null and void
"We did. Although the comparison is a bit harsh to prostitutes, don't you think?"

I'll grant you that.

19 posted on 06/08/2007 10:32:55 PM PDT by blackbart.223 (I live in Northern Nevada. Reid doesn't represent me.)
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To: television is just wrong
Ummmm, Plague has been here since the 1850’s.

The town fathers of San Fransisco refused to do anything about an outbreak until after it spread from the rats in Chinatown to the native ground squirrel population.

Feel free to draw any parallels to more recent plagues, and failures to shut down bath houses...

20 posted on 06/08/2007 10:34:24 PM PDT by null and void ("Wherever liberty has sprouted around the world, we find American blood at its roots.")
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