TB lawyer called pillar of community
Sat, 02 Jun 2007 15:57:16 GMTBy GREG BLUESTEIN, Associated Press
ATLANTA - The story of how Andrew Speaker met his future bride still draws laughs from his friends.
The young attorney met Sarah Spence Cooksey, an aspiring lawyer, at an Atlanta pub and handed her his fancy business card. When she called, she asked for "Mr. Speaker." But the man she ended up flirting with was not Andrew, but his father, Ted, who practices law with his son.
The young couple's relationship blossomed. They stayed up late debating ethics, the law and politics. He called her and her young daughter "his girls." They got married in May in Greece, honeymooned in Europe, and friends say they were eager to get married life started.
Instead, the couple described by friends as loving, energetic and athletic is now at the center of an international health scare.
Andrew Speaker is quarantined in a Denver hospital with an extremely drug-resistant form of tuberculosis. Critics are blasting him as a modern-day Typhoid Mary after he boarded two trans-Atlantic flights despite warnings from health officials.
His friends say that's not the "Drew" Speaker they know.
"I know if he had any thought whatsoever that he would put others in harm's way, he absolutely would not have gone," said David Rich, a Nashville attorney who was Speaker's law school roommate.
"If you subtract this TB thing from Drew Speaker, he's really a pillar of the community," Rich said.
Andrew Speaker seemed to idolize his father Ted, a Vietnam veteran turned lawyer who built a successful practice in a ritzy section of north Atlanta. A zealot for public service, Ted ran unsuccessfully for a Fulton County judgeship in 2004.
Andrew seemed set to follow a similar path. He enrolled in the U.S. Naval Academy with hopes of joining the elite Navy SEALs, but friends say he left after two years when he decided the military wasn't his calling.
Speaker then graduated from the University of Georgia with a finance degree, and was admitted to the university's law school. He earned friends with his cheerful personality. He earned a reputation as a tenacious litigator on the school's award-winning mock trial squad.
"He never let go. When he was trying to make a point, he was very clear and concise," said Charmel Gaulden, who was a law student with Andrew and a member of his mock trial team. "He was kind of always searching for that clear yes or no."
After school, he moved back to Atlanta, joined his father's law firm, and met his bride-to-be, a beautiful blonde with a young daughter.
"It was random chance," chuckled Greg Fansler, a sales manager who lived with Speaker until he moved out around December. "He bumped into her, gave her his business card. And she called the next day and got his dad — she didn't know she was talking to the right lawyer."
Sarah Speaker took a more obscure path to law school.
Friends say she dropped out of high school when she became pregnant and moved to south Georgia to care for her daughter, Ariel, who is now 8. She earned her GED, enrolled in community college and later graduated from Georgia Tech in Atlanta.
She's now a third-year law student at Emory University's law school.
"She's very gracious, she's very accommodating. And she backs that up with smart," said Fansler. "Normally people TiVo things like 'Lost.' She TiVos things like '60 Minutes.'"
The young couple stayed up debating late into the night. Friends described the two as "conservative liberals" but said Andrew is more of a fiscal conservative while Sarah leans the other way.
As the relationship blossomed, Andrew Speaker began to care for her young daughter as his own, calling Sarah and her daughter "his girls."
"That's not his biological child, but if you'd look at them at Piedmont Park, you'd think it was," said Fansler, referring to the popular Atlanta park where families are often seen walking dogs, flying kites and playing games.
After he asked her to marry him, the two set a May wedding in Greece, inviting only close family and friends.
"Greece was picked sort of location-wise for where they wanted to be for their honeymoon," said Ryan Prescott, Speaker's law school classmate and one of his closest friends. "They wanted to go to Europe."
But tests showed that Speaker had an especially dangerous and extensively drug-resistant strain of TB.
While in Europe, federal health officials contacted him and told him to turn himself in immediately at a clinic there. But he caught a flight to Montreal and then drove across the U.S. border on May 24 at Champlain, N.Y.
He told ABC's "Good Morning America" he felt as if health officials had suddenly "abandoned him." At that point, he said, he believed if he didn't get to the specialized clinic in Denver, he would die.
Fansler visited Speaker on Tuesday before he was flown from Atlanta to Denver for treatment. He said he walked away shaking his head.
"He still has the same smile," Fansler said. "And his first question was 'How are you doing?' That's Drew."
FDA Throw away toothpaste made in China
Sat, 02 Jun 2007 09:59:48 GMTBy KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The government warned consumers on Friday to avoid using toothpaste made in China because it may contain a poisonous chemical used in antifreeze. Out of caution, the http://www.fda.gov/ora/fiars/ora_import_ia6674.html
TB patient faces 2 months in hospital
Sat, 02 Jun 2007 08:30:27 GMTBy COLLEEN SLEVIN, Associated Press Writer
DENVER - The man quarantined with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis will likely spend up to two months in a hospital while he receives a battery of antibiotics and is evaluated for possible surgery, his doctors said.
Andrew Speaker is the first infected person quarantined by the U.S. government since 1963. In a TV interview Friday, Speaker repeatedly apologized to the dozens of airline passengers and crew members he may have exposed to the extremely drug-resistant infection while on a trans-Atlantic flight.
"I don't expect for people to ever forgive me. I just hope that they understand that I truly never meant to put them in harm," he said, his voice cracking.
Some South Carolina college students on the flight said they accepted Speaker's apology, though others said they remained worried about their future.
Jason Vik, a 21-year-old business student at University of South Carolina Aiken, said he felt like an outcast when he showed up for a television interview Thursday.
"The makeup ladies were so scared of us after we told them we weren't contagious," he said. "And they wore masks when they put on our makeup. There are lot of people that are just afraid of us. It's ridiculous and ignorant."
Speaker apologized on ABC's "Good Morning America" and said he didn't want any of his fellow passengers to be in the "state of constant fear and anxiety and exhaustion" he has been through the past week.
Twenty-six students and two faculty members from University of South Carolina Aiken were aboard the May 12 flight from Atlanta to Paris. Many on the flight are now anxiously awaiting the results of their TB tests, though two people have tested negative, South Carolina health officials said.
Their identities weren't released, but University of South Carolina Aiken senior Laney Wiggins confirmed Friday she received good news.
"I'm very relieved to be done," Wiggins, 21, wrote in a text message to The Associated Press. Neither she nor Vik were sitting near Speaker. Vik did not return a phone message asking whether his test was returned.
Health officials have contacted 74 of the 310 U.S. citizens who were on the flight, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That count includes all 26 who sat in the five-row area around Speaker — the ones considered at greatest risk.
None is exhibiting symptoms, CDC officials said.
Speaker, 31, said he, his doctors and the CDC all knew he had TB that was resistant to some drugs before he flew to Europe for his wedding and honeymoon last month. But he said he was advised at the time by Fulton County, Ga., health authorities that he was not contagious or a danger to anyone.
Officials told him they would prefer he didn't fly, but no one ordered him not to, he said.
Speaker was in Europe when he learned tests showed he had not just TB, but an especially dangerous, extensively drug-resistant strain.
"He was told in no uncertain terms not to take a flight back," said Dr. Martin Cetron, director of the CDC's division of global migration and quarantine. But there were no legal orders preventing his travel, Cetron said.
Speaker said he felt as if the CDC had suddenly "abandoned him." He said he believed if he didn't get to the specialized clinic in Denver, he would die.
"In hindsight, maybe it wasn't the best decision, but I did ask if it was voluntary. And in my mind, I thought that if I went there, if I waited until they showed up, that meant I was going to die," Speaker said.
Dr. Gwen Huitt said Speaker's infection was about the size of a tennis ball. If antibiotics fail to knock it out, he may have to undergo surgery to remove infected lung tissue.
Surgery to remove pieces of the lung was more common before the advent of sophisticated drugs in the 1960s. But it is coming back as a treatment because of the development of strains resistant to those drugs.
Doctors hope to determine where Speaker contracted the disease, which has been found around the world and exists in pockets in Russia and Asia. The tuberculosis was discovered when Speaker had a chest X-ray in January for a rib injury, doctors said.
___
Associated Press writers Jim Davenport in Columbia, S.C., and Mike Stobbe in Atlanta contributed to this report.
Kidney transplant TV show is a hoax
Sat, 02 Jun 2007 06:41:34 GMTBy TOBY STERLING, Associated Press Writer
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - A television show in which a woman would donate a kidney to a contestants was revealed as a hoax Friday, with presenters saying they were trying to pressure the government into reforming organ donation laws.
Shortly before the controversial program was to air, Patrick Lodiers of the "Big Donor Show" said the woman was not actually dying of a brain tumor and the entire exercise was intended to put pressure on the government and raise awareness of the need for organs.
The three prospective recipients were real patients in need of transplants and had been in on the hoax, the show said.
The program concept had received widespread criticism for being tasteless and unethical.
But Lodiers said that it was "reality that was shocking" because around 200 people die annually in the Netherlands while waiting for a kidney, and the average waiting time is more than four years. Under Dutch rules, donors must be friends, or preferably, family of the recipient. Meeting on a TV show wouldn't qualify.
"I thought it was brilliant, really," said Caroline Klingers, a kidney patient who was watching the show at a kidney treatment center in Bussum, Netherlands.
"I know these transplant doctors, and I thought they'll never go and actually do it. But it's good for the publicity and there are no losers."
During the show, 25 kidney patients were vetted by "Lisa," and most were quickly dismissed for being too old, too young, smokers, ex-smokers or unemployed. Contestants gave moving pleas for why they should receive the organ.
"It really hurt watching that," said Tim Duyst, whose wife is awaiting a transplant and cannot work. "You're dismissed in a wave of the hand."
Viewers were called on to express an opinion or vote for their favorite candidate by SMS text message for 47 cents.
The show was produced by Endemol, which created "Big Brother" in 1999.
The Royal Netherlands Medical Association, known by its Dutch acronym KNM, had urged its members not to participate and questioned whether the program might just be a publicity stunt.
"Given the large medical, psychological, and legal uncertainties around this case, the KNMG considers the chance extremely small that it will ever come to an organ transplant," it said.
All seven of the country's transplant centers had said they not cooperating with the program, KNMG spokeswoman Saskia van der Ree.
Earlier in the week, the Cabinet declined suggestions from lawmakers to ban the program, saying that would amount to censorship.
Entertaining TV programs make you eat study finds
Sat, 02 Jun 2007 20:01:13 GMTBy Jennifer Kwan
TORONTO - People eat more when they are glued to the television, and the more entertaining the program, the more they eat, according to research presented on Saturday.
It seems that distracted brains do not notice what the mouth is doing, said Dr. Alan Hirsch, neurological director of the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago.
Hirsch explored the impact of smell, taste and eating behaviors while watching TV by measuring potato chip consumption.
Forty-five volunteers ate as many chips as they wanted during five-minute intervals over three-week periods while they watched monologues by late-night talk show hosts David Letterman and Jay Leno.
They also were given chips to eat when the television was off.
Hirsch found people ate an average of 44 percent more chips while watching Letterman and 42 percent more while viewing Leno, than when they did not watch TV.
&;If you can concentrate on how the food tastes you'll eat less because you'll feel full faster,&; Hirsch said in an interview at the Endocrine Society's annual meeting in Toronto.
&;So if that's the case, let's look at the opposite. What if you're distracted? If you're distracted, in theory, then you'd eat more.&;
Through his research at the foundation, Hirsch has helped people overcome the loss of sense and taste sensation, which typically results in weight gain because the brain does not know when it should stop eating.
The ventromedial nucleus in the hypothalamus, where the so-called satiety center is located, tells the body whether it is hungry or full. If it is inhibited or tricked, the result can be changes in eating patterns, he said.
&;People who cook spaghetti all day don't fell like eating spaghetti at the end of the day,&; said Hirsch. &;By being exposed to a smell all day long it's tricking the hypothalamus.&;
At each session, volunteers were asked to concentrate on the sensory characteristics of the food such as taste and smell. Researchers say these sensory clues, in addition to internal body changes, signal satiety.
But when distracted, a person does not pay attention to either the body's sensations of feeling full, or to the sensory characteristics of the food.
Many studies have linked obesity to watching television and that link is likely due to inactivity, Hirsch said. But perhaps entertaining shows are also contributing.
&;If you want to lose weight, turn off the television or watch something boring,&; he said.
