Bob Barr

TB Diagnosis Does Not Repeal a Person's Rights
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
June 6, 2007

When I was a young boy, growing up in the early 1950s before the Salk vaccine became widely available against polio, pictures of boys and girls lying in "iron lung" machines struck fear into our hearts.

Having to spend one's life captive to a body-sized metal cylinder in order to breathe was terrifying, and the risk of contracting polio was real. Thanks to the miracles of post-WWII medicines, however, the risk of diseases like polio has been largely, if not quite entirely, eradicated from life in these United States.

In the post-9/11 world, however, every incident involving a remotely serious possible problem becomes a headline story to be red-flagged and repeated endlessly, until it becomes all-consuming and takes on an aura of importance it may very well not deserve.

Thus it has been with the case of one Andrew Speaker, an immodest 31-year old lawyer who describes himself as "a very well-educated, successful, intelligent person." He is currently quarantined at the National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver, undergoing treatment for tuberculosis, or TB.

While TB claimed 1.6 million lives worldwide in 2005, according to the World Health Organization, it is well-known that not every person who contracts TB is contagious or actively suffering from the disease, and serious cases in the United States are rare.

It appears that Speaker contracted TB on a trip to Vietnam a year ago. He was diagnosed with TB early this year. He saw specialists, and was told that, while serious, his case did not appear contagious, at least at the point at, in mid-May, when he was scheduled to travel from Atlanta to Greece for a long-planned marriage ceremony.

So, knowing he had TB but also armed with knowledge that his sickness did not appear contagious, Speaker flew to Greece last month and got married. While he was overseas, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta became concerned when it discovered that his strain of TB was particularly drug-resistant. The authorities contacted Speaker and reportedly told him to turn himself in to health officials in Italy, where he was visiting, to be treated and quarantined.

Not surprisingly, Speaker elected not to turn himself in to authorities in a foreign land, instead traveling to Canada, from whence he crossed by land into the U.S. Once in his homeland, Speaker checked into a hospital, notified authorities, and is now properly isolated and being treated.

Seems like everything's OK, right? Persons known to have been in close proximity to Speaker have been tested, and none has tested positive for TB—not surprising insofar as he was told early on that he was not contagious.

But, judging by the front-page news Speaker's case continues to generate, and by the congressional hearing it has spawned, you'd think our young barrister was traveling the globe deliberately infecting people with the bubonic plague. Some readers of stories on Speaker call for him to be prosecuted. Prosecuted for what? Endangering people? He didn't. For not voluntarily subjecting himself to detention and medical treatment in a land far away from his own? Would his critics have done so? I doubt it. I know I wouldn't. He elected, as a law-abiding citizen of the United States to come home and seek what he and the rest of us know is the best medical care he could receive anywhere in the world.

Other critics are lambasting federal agencies for not having done enough to stop Speaker. Stop him from what? Getting on a plane when he had broken no law? Do we really want the government to be able to detain someone simply because he may have a disease that is serious but is not a threat to others? Should a citizen's own government be allowed to turn him away at the border as he seeks to re-enter his country, just because someone decided to place him on an advisory "watch list"? I think not.

Actually, maybe we'd best keep this quiet, at least from the president and the attorney general; else they might declare Speaker an "enemy combatant" and imprison him indefinitely with no access to anyone. Or, maybe they already have done this—in secret.

Bob Barr occupies the 21st Century Liberties Chair for Freedom and Privacy at the American Conservative Union Foundation.