The man who took commercial flights to and from Europe last month while infected with untreated extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis was identified yesterday as an Atlanta lawyer whose father-in-law is a tuberculosis researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Those are the latest revelations in a story that has grown more bizarre by the day as details of the man's ability to elude health authorities -- especially the CDC -- on two continents slowly trickled out.
The man, who flew to Europe on May 12 for his wedding and honeymoon and returned 12 days later, is Andrew Speaker, 31, a lawyer in a firm specializing in personal injury cases. Hours after his name was first reported by a news service, Robert C. Cooksey, whose daughter married Speaker, released a statement identifying himself as a CDC employee and saying he "wasn't involved in any decisions my son-in-law made regarding his travel."
He added that he did not "ever act as a CDC official or in an official CDC capacity with respect to any of the events of the past weeks."
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