Andrew Speaker, who had TB, sues CDC over privacy

An Atlanta lawyer whose tuberculosis case caused an international health scare has sued the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for invasion of privacy.

Andrew Speaker, 33, filed suit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Atlanta. He seeks unspecified damages and attorneys’ fees.

“They had no right to stand up and talk about my private medical information,” Speaker said Wednesday. “It gave them an opportunity to create a big story they could use to get funding.”

CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said the agency does not discuss pending litigation.

At a May 29, 2007, news conference, the CDC announced that a patient with XDR-TB, an extensively drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis, had traveled on international flights.

Earlier that month, Speaker had flown to Greece for his wedding.

At no time, the suit said, did the CDC disclose that Speaker had been told he was not contagious and the XDR diagnosis was preliminary and contradicted by all other findings that showed he had a less drug-resistant strain.

Instead, the CDC unlawfully released details of Speaker’s medical history, his alleged condition, details of his wedding and his identity, “none of which needed to be released to the general public in order to accomplish any legitimate public health purpose.”

The strain of the unwanted public attention due to the CDC’s inaccurate information caused Speaker and his newlywed wife to part ways before their marriage license was filed, the suit said.

Upon his return to the U.S., Speaker was the first person placed under a federal isolation order by the CDC in more than 40 years.

Even though he flew to Europe knowing he had TB, Speaker had been repeatedly told by doctors he was not a threat to anyone, his lawsuit said.

It added that CDC and Fulton County health officials knew about his travel plans.

When Speaker was in Europe, the CDC changed his initial diagnosis from having a multi-drug-resistant strain of TB to having the highly resistant XDR-TB strain, the suit said.

When Speaker learned this, the suit said, he immediately called the CDC, which told him he could not return on a commercial flight.

Speaker could not afford a chartered flight, which could have cost $140,000, so he flew a commercial flight to Canada because there was no “no fly” restriction there, the suit said.

Hundreds of passengers on his flights to and from Europe were tested for TB. No one was found to be infected.

It also later was determined that Speaker had the more treatable form of drug-resistant TB.

After returning to the United States, Speaker was moved to Denver and hospitalized for two months for lung surgery. He made a full recovery.