The tuberculosis email trail has been exposed. The Speaker family, along with Dr. Cooksey, can no longer claim they were unaware of the issues, and that officials had not warned them.
Andrew Speaker knew his tuberculosis was resistant to some drugs before he left Atlanta. His father was reluctant to help, and combative when contacted by health officials. His father-in-law, a so-called TB expert was asked to help put a stop to the wedding plans, but decided to attended it instead.
I think their days of claiming to be innocent victims caught up in a whirlwind of bad press are over. This entire family knew what they were doing and completely disregarded the health and well-being of thousands of people.
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 went to the ceremony himself, according to e-mails obtained by The Associated Press.
Some of the 181 pages of e-mails, obtained through a public records request, suggest that the 31-year-old groom's father, Ted Speaker, was clipped and combative in phone conversations with health officials.
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He knew he had TB and that is was resistant to some drugs when he left Atlanta, but he didn't find out until he was in Europe that it was the highly dangerous form.
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Dr. Andrew Vernon, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention TB researcher who sees patients at the Fulton County Department of Health and Wellness, had earlier appealed to Cooksey to help them stop the planned wedding in Greece, according to a May 30 e-mail from a Fulton County physician. Cooksey did not put a halt to the plans; instead, he went to the wedding.
Chip Flowers
[...] TB Andy left more than deadly germs laying [...]
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