US:The American lawyer who sparked an international health scare when he crossed the Atlantic while infected with tuberculosis has a less severe form of the illness than US authorities claimed, according to the Denver hospital that is treating him.
Andrew Speaker (31), Atlanta, Georgia, became an international pariah last May when he travelled to Greece for his honeymoon after the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta diagnosed him with extensively drug-resistant TB, which is exceptionally difficult to treat.
US health officials said Mr Speaker ignored their warnings to seek help in Europe and instead flew on a commercial flight to Canada and then crossed the border into the US.
As the story dominated US news, Mr Speaker was quarantined in Denver and health authorities hunted for passengers who travelled on Mr Speaker's flight to tell them to get tested for TB.
Mr Speaker's father-in-law, Bob Cooksey, a microbiologist at the CDC, was accused of colluding with the TB patient in his alleged defiance of the health authority's instructions.
Doctors at Denver's National Jewish Medical and Research Center say now, however, that Mr Speaker was in fact infected with multi-drug-resistant TB, a considerably less dangerous form of the illness.
Mr Speaker, who endured fierce criticism and widespread ridicule in the US media, welcomed the new diagnosis, which has been confirmed by the CDC, but criticised the way health authorities handled his case.
"In the future, I hope they realise the terribly chilling effect they can have when they come after someone and their family on a personal level," he said. "They can, in a few days, destroy an entire family's reputation, ability to make a living and good name."
The CDC said it would not know until at least the end of the month whether anyone was infected by Mr Speaker, while Mitchell Cohen, director of the Co-ordinating Center for Infectious Diseases, defended the CDC's handling of the case.
"The public health actions CDC took in this case and is continuing to take are sound and appropriate," he said.
US newspapers, which reported the original claims about Mr Speaker's illness on their front pages for a number of days in succession, have reported the new diagnosis briefly on inside pages.