TB Patient: Quarantine Conditions "Insane"

(CBS/AP)  A man with a form of tuberculosis so dangerous he is under the first U.S. government-ordered quarantine since 1963 had health officials around the world scrambling Wednesday to find passengers who sat near him on two trans-Atlantic flights.

The man told a newspaper he took the first flight from Atlanta to Europe for his wedding, then the second flight home because he feared he might die without treatment in the U.S.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Julie Gerberding said Wednesday that the CDC is working closely with airlines to find passengers who may have been exposed to the rare, dangerous strain. Health officials in France said they have asked Air France-KLM for passenger lists, and the Italian Health Ministry said it is tracing the man's movements.

The quarantine order was the first since the U.S. government quarantined a patient with smallpox in 1963, according to the CDC.

Only two of the nearly 14,000 tuberculosis patients in the U.S. last year had the virtually drug-resistant strain the Georgia man has, CBS News correspondent Nancy Cordes reports.

"Is the patient himself highly infectious? Fortunately, in this case, he's probably not," Gerberding said. "But the other piece is this (that) bacteria is a very deadly bacteria. We just have to err on the side of caution."

Researchers are working on developing a new vaccine for tuberculosis. The current vaccine is considered ineffective and rarely used in the United States, reports Cordes.

Dr. Martin Cetron, director of the CDC's division of global migration and quarantine, said Wednesday that the agency was trying to contact 27 crew members from the two flights for testing and about 80 passengers who sat in the five rows surrounding the man. About 40 or 50 of those people sat in or near Row 51 on the Air France flight from Atlanta to Paris, and about 30 passengers were in or near seat 12C on the second flight, from Prague to Montreal.

Health officials said the man had been advised not to fly and knew he could expose others when he boarded the jets from Atlanta to Paris, and later from Prague to Montreal.

The man, however, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that prior to his departure, doctors did not order him to avoid flying and only suggested he put off his long-planned wedding in Greece.

He knew he had a form of tuberculosis and that it was resistant to first-line drugs, but he did not realize it could be so dangerous, he said.

"We headed off to Greece thinking everything's fine," said the man, who declined to be identified because of the stigma attached to his diagnosis.

He flew to Paris on May 12 aboard Air France Flight 385. While in honeymooning in Italy, health authorities reached him with the news that further tests had revealed his TB was a rare, "extensively drug-resistant" form, far more dangerous than he knew. They ordered him into isolation, saying he should turn himself over to Italian officials and not take commercial flights.

"I thought to myself: 'You're nuts.' I wasn't going to do that. They told me I had been put on the no-fly list and my passport was flagged," the man said.

CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said the agency was considering sending its jet to pick the couple up in Italy, the newspaper reported.

Instead, the man flew from Prague to Montreal on May 24 aboard Czech Air Flight 0104, then drove across the border to New York where he voluntarily checked into a hospital and was then flown by the CDC to Atlanta. He told the newspaper he was afraid that if he did not get back to the U.S., he would not get the treatment he needed to survive.

The U.S. government is now looking into how the man was able to sneak back into the country after his name and passport were flagged, reports CBS News correspondent Kelly Cobiella.

He is now at Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital in respiratory isolation, but will be transferred to National Jewish Hospital in Denver, which specializes in respiratory disorders, the hospital's spokesman said Wednesday. It was not clear when he would arrive.

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[coloradosno1]

Here's a piece of information that they're not telling us: This idiot's new father-in-law actually works for the CDC in Atlanta! Puts a whole new twist on things now.

[duchess722]

One thing that has to be considered is the legality of the CDC "telling him" he could or could not fly. I remember assisting a doctor on a proctoscope (long before HIIPA rules!!) when he motioned for me to look through the scope. I mouthed "cancer??" and he nodded. After the lady dressed and began to ask questions about the biopsy, he absolutely convinced me he wasn't sure what was there, but he would rather err on the side of caution. When she left, I asked "but I though you said" and he told me exactly what type of cancer, what grade, how progressed and what her treatment would be and added "but legally I can't say anything until the tests come back positive". Later that week, the tests came back exactly the way he said.

I believe since this "very well-educated, successful, intelligent person" is a personal injury lawyer should know better than most what is safe behavior and what is not. And to say he's cooperated with everything except "the whole solitary-confinement-in-Italy thing" just makes me ill... yeah, that and the going on the run to sneak back into our country because he was scared to die, so let's see how many other people he could infect on the way to save his sorry self.

He may be well educated but intelligent? Not in his life time....

[ralan40]

it mentions him getting married. Can you imagine his phone conversation with his new wife????

TB guy: Hi honey, I'm going to be a little late for supper, They won't let me out of isolation....well, I put a whole bunch of people, including you, at risk for an incurable highly dangerous form of TB and something about my behavior makes them think I'm a danger to society.......Yes, I knew about it during the honeymoon and yes, that unplanned side trip was to allow me to sneak back into the country and not to just to be by ourselves snoogums.....Yes, I was advised to postpone the wedding because of the condition.....Yes, I know you would have understood if I had told you but.....I know honesty is important in a marriage but I AM an attorney so what did you expect??????

[toldyouso21]

WHY ARE THERE SO MANY STUPID PEOPLE IN THIS WORLD????
Posted by erasmus6 at 11:34 PM : May 30, 2007

Because political correctness dictates we let them breed, never tell them they are stupid (we would be racists--human racists) and allow them the "freedom and latitude" of believing they can do what ever they want when they want, to whomever they want--as long as they are rich enough for the lawsuits that may follow.

This is one of the problems with unconditional acceptance/love for all people--it means that even when a human is genetically suboptimal, we do everything we can to celebrate that life and promote it and help it to self perpetuate. Of course this is not natural. In nature, suboptimal animals become food and thus are systematically eliminated from the gene pool. Human beings are the only species that are determined not to improve itself but to celebrate itself. That leaves nature to use its biological WMD to get rid of some of us.

The real scary question is, why are there so few people who actually can think instead of just process information anymore--look who/what is being bred out of humans--we are being distilled back down to the base human condition--reverse evolution, when instinct will trump intelligence not by acts, but by sheer numbers of what exists.

[toldyouso21]

Well the Lying games have begun. The TB man now claims health officials didn't warn him not to fly or wear masks or anything. Of course, they say they did. Still, since he is supposed to be an attorney, he may want to explain the dozens of masks he had in his luggage. The pesky things about lies--any little thing will shoot holes in the story. What the man should have done was kept his mouth shut--but the lure of fame--even notariety is too much for some people.

So...if he was not warned he was a health risk--then why did he have the masks?

Also, once he found out what a health risk he was, why did he not obey directions to remain in Rome for treatment, why all the stealth to Prague, then Canada then the sneak back in--was he planning to write a book?


Finally, just what does this say about all the no fly lists and homeland security? Does it mean it is all bs and basically used to hobble political enemies instead of potential threats? And does it mean that a terrorist could get in if he went by way of Prague to Canada then to the US by car?

Inquiring minds want to know.

[nwihoosier]

emorylaw08 Please don't tell me that you'll be a member of the bar. You appear to be as big an IDIOT as your fellow Georgian

[samthetvcat]

"Why is nobody talking about the facts here. Isn't anyone ashamed that our government would let a TB patient fly overseas and then refuse to bring him home. From my impression, they were going to leave him in a foreign hospital to die"
Posted by emorylaw08

Keep studying there skippy - first off, it says right in the article that "the [CDC] was considering sending its jet to pick the couple up in Italy." So I don't know what 'facts' you're discussing.

Second off, even if this selfish jerk didn't know that the private plane was in the works before he bolted off, he didn't take precautions to mitigate the risk of harm to others by at least wearing a mask. If somebody catches TB from him after being exposed on one of the two flights he took after fleeing Italy and the person who caught it from him actually dies, his belief that his life was at risk would only serve to mitigate a charge of depraved indifference down to manslaughter. It's out of his hands now . . .

[honest_news]

The more I read of this guy's flippant comments and uncaring attitude about this extremely serious matter, the angrier I get.

The man boasts that he's "a very well-educated, successful, intelligent person". Well then -- he was intelligent enough to understand the warnings issued to him, well-educated enough to know that he was placing the health and lives of hundreds of people in jeopardy for his own selfish goals, and successful enough to renumerate the CDC, the federal government, the international law enforcement agencies, the airlines, the health care providers and the insurance companies that have been and still may be impacted by his callous behavior.

In our intricate and intimate global society, we need to start holding people accountable for their decisions, since the shameless actions of a single individual can have such far-reaching and devastating consequences.

[erasmus6]

What is wrong with our world? On the subject of antibiotics, what is it about people, that they just don't get it about not having to take them for a virus. People read it in magazines, there are commercials and they still don't get it. The same for making sure that they take ALL their medication. People just don't hear it.
I find that it doesn't matter what it is, cough syrup, vitamins etc. People don't even read the directions. I know of several people who let their children eat the Flinstone vitamins like they were candy, eating several a day. I just about flipped my lid when I found that out. Taking more than one a day means they are getting way too much Vitamin D and A, which is extremely toxic. WHY ARE THERE SO MANY STUPID PEOPLE IN THIS WORLD????

[toldyouso21]

"The man told a newspaper he took the first flight from Atlanta to Europe for his wedding, then the second flight home because he feared he might die without treatment in the U.S. "

Talk about screeewing up a story. He flew from Atlanta to Paris, then he went to Rome, then to Greece then back to Rome where the CDC told him to turn himself in. Scared of substandard medicine, and knowing his passport was flagged--he made his way to Praque, then to Canada, then took a car rental into the US--so besides all the places he slept, drooled, ate at and ****** and pissed at--and where ever he shopped at , sightsaw, posed and coughed---there are still 6 plane flights with at least 2 that he knew better than to take. Then there are the passengers and the weird idea that the TB would somehow stay within the vicinity of the first 2 rows of seats and that the circulating air would not carry any bug throughout the entire plane...then of course it is all the places the 80 passengers went to, where they slept, coughed, ate, drooled...etc--and if they can be found....He really should get jail time. At this time, several states have incarcerated people who were at risk for spreading diseases...he wilfully put others at risk, for his own sake--but he traveled also...it was always about HIM to HIM.