Fugitive TB patient asks passengers to forgive him

WASHINGTON, June 1 (Reuters) A tuberculosis patient who turned fugitive in order to continue with wedding and honeymoon plans despite warnings not to travel has apologized to the fellow airline passengers he may have endangered, he said in an interview aired today.

''I'm very sorry for any grief or pain that I have caused anyone,'' Andrew Speaker, a 31-year-old Atlanta lawyer, said on ABC's ''Good Morning America.'' ''I just hope they can forgive me and understand that I really believed that I wasn't putting people at risk.'' Speaker says he has tape recordings to prove his assertions that he was only advised not to travel, not clearly forbidden to do so.

''At every turn it was conveyed to me that my family, my wife, my daughter, that no one was at risk and that I was not contagious,'' he said in a taped interview.

Speaker touched off an international health alert, a rare federal isolation order and a congressional investigation when he and his new bride fled across Europe, sneaked onto a flight to Canada and then drove across the border to the United States to avoid health officials.

Speaker is now being held in near-isolation at a specialist hospital in Denver for treatment for his infection, known as extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis or XDR TB.

He accused the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of abandoning him by asking him to check into a health facility in Rome instead of returning to the United States for treatment via commercial airline.

''Why are you abandoning me like this and asking me to turn myself over for an indefinite time?'' he said. ''It's very real that I could have died there ... I felt very abandoned.'' Health experts are tracking down 100 or so people who spent eight hours or longer close to Speaker on two trans-Atlantic flights to encourage them to be tested for possible TB exposure.

CDC officials say a federal isolation order -- the first issued in 44 years -- will likely be transferred to local Colorado authorities.

NOT ESPECIALLY INFECTIOUS CDC officials and an infectious disease expert at National Jewish Medical Center, where Speaker is being treated, said he was not especially infectious. The Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacilli were difficult to find in his sputum, he is not coughing and he appears to be in good health.

In an ironic twist, a veteran TB researcher at the CDC, Robert Cooksey, confirmed that he is Speaker's new father-in-law. Cooksey denied being the source of the TB that infected Speaker and Speaker's doctor said it is not known where the personal injury lawyer, an avid traveler, became infected.

Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke said it is also not clear how Speaker evaded US border controls. The CDC had notified Homeland Security about Speaker and asked that he be detained if he turned up.

Knocke said all officers at all ports of entry into the United States had Speaker's name. ''The information was in our system, so that the second a passport would have been swiped it would have popped (up),'' Knocke said in a telephone interview.

He said an internal investigation was under way.

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