“Hi, I’m Andrew Speaker and I’m an a-hole”

Why am I not surprised that the man with infected with untreated extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis and who tooled around Europe for 12 days and then flew a series of commercial flights back to the United States is an attorney with a law firm specializing in personal injury cases? It makes sense that his legal training at the law firm would suit him to put his personal interests ahead of those around them not to mention society in general.

Speaker is infected with such a dangerous form of TB that he is going to be quarantined in a room with specially designed ventilation to prevent germs from escaping. Yet days ago he was dodging U.S. health officials and jumping on crowded commercial planes.

Independent Sources is not alone in being shocked at his callousness, even for a personal injury attorney. From CBS News:

The disclosure that the patient is a lawyer — and specifically a personal injury lawyer — outraged many people on the Internet and elsewhere.

In a fitting bit of irony, one would think that the passengers who were sitting next to Speaker on his various flights would have cause to sue him for mental anguish. You can add “purposeful” to the claims against him:

Despite later warnings from federal health officials not to board another long flight, he decided to fly to Canada and sneak back from there to the U.S.

By now you know the other weird twist which is that his new father-in-law is an expert in TB. This same father-in-law was aware of Speaker’s condition and yet allowed his daughter to travel and, since it was Speaker’s honeymoon, presumably fornicate (presumably) repeatedly with Speaker. If it was my daughter, I don’t think I’d her have sex with a man who has untreatable tuberculosis, it just doesn’t seem like something a loving father should do.

If you think of the odds of a person having TB (very rare) marrying the daughter of a TB expert, they are so staggering as to be unfathomable. There is also the question of where Speaker got TB in the first place. Since he is a personal injury attorney, don’t expect him to be forthcoming with the truth (not to mention that the truth might be embarrassing to a now married man). Watch for developments on this one.

Tuberculosis Facts:

While Speaker has maintained that he is not especially contagious, 17 percent of cases of tuberculosis have been transmitted by people not identified as highly contagious.

Tuberculosis kills 1.6 million a year.

Any person with active TB can spread the bacteria to others.

Updates: This blog thinks Speaker’s wife is a hottie. She’s not. This blog likens Speaker to Typhoid Mary. He is.

Update: The Onion’s take.

tags: andrew speaker tuberculosis tb personal injury attorney

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 31st, 2007 at 9:40 pm by Insider and is filed under Brilliant, but uncategorizable. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.