Aren't you making some unwarranted assumptions there, Lat? You don't need to have had a prior marriage to have a daughter, and given that she's currently a senior in college, it seems unlikely that she's been married and divorced already.

C'mon, has anything ever looked more like a class project than that? Look at the evidence you missed: 1. Website says she's a senior; announcement says she's a 3L. 2. No real content. 3. Last line is "I did this lab myself". 4. Address is a GA Tech page and contains "CS 1315": an obvious course number.

Also, Lat, have you never heard of an unmarried mother? It's hardly an uncommon thing these days.

5:40: What is objectionable about the post? That it quotes a former classmate who describes Andrew Speaker as "well-liked," "gregarious," and a good student?

The comment highlighted above (second block quote) does not put Andy Speaker in a very flattering light:

"I'm a very well-educated, successful, intelligent person. This is insane to me that I have an armed guard outside my door when I've cooperated with everything other than the whole solitary-confinement-in-Italy thing."

Oh my God, is it possible she might have had sex outside of a church-sanctioned union? Heaven forfend!

People, obviously Lat was being tongue in cheek in not pointing out the obvious unwed mother angle.

I do think it's really tasteless not to mention a child in the announcement. Seems very flowers in the attic to me...

I have a relative who attended GaTech - this looks remarkably similar to one of his class projects.

Gregarious (based on google "define" results):
Adj. (Latin, grex = flock). 1. Non-social insects which live in societies or communities. 2. Several parasitic insects of one species which develop simultaneously on or in one host. Cf. Solitary.

Gregarious, indeed.

I was growing sympathetic to Speaker. But that quote -- "I'm a very well-educated, successful, intelligent person" -- makes him sound like a d****e.

does d****e = douche?

5:59: I dunno, sounds more like a "turd sandwich" to me.

The guy is an ass - he endangered a plane full of people for his own selfish reasons.

Don't see ANY reason that whether his wife was married when she had a kid matters to all of this. That's lame, and I kinda though that even ATL wouldn't sink that low.

Sounds like an invitation to a lawsuit to me. You'd think a plaintiff's attorney would know better.

What a moron, who is he to say that the security was excessive? I didn't know his law school also taught medicine. What bugs me about this guy is the arrogance of endangering others because he didnt trust the medical facilities...its not the third world. It also doesnt make sense to me that he claims he had to fly back because his life was in danger but now he is unable to understand what all the commotion is about. Idiot.

i think Lat pointed out the married-with-kid thing because the wedding announcement went to the pains of aggrandizing everything, including "buckhead" instead of just "atlanta." but the kid? let's just keep that hush hush, shall we? it's Lat's responsibility to make sure that doesn't stay hush hush.

I still think he is a somewhat sympathetic character. When heading to Italy, he was heading for his wedding, not some random vacation. And regarding returning home, he was stuck in a foreign country with a potentially serious disease. I am not sure how many of us, if given the choice, would choose to "turn himself in" to some random "authorities" in a foreign country, where at best, he would receive sub-par (compared to US) care and then be stuck with a bill not covered by insurance that could run into the tens or even hundreds of thousands. At worst, he could have ended up in some sort of foreign "detention facility".

5:43's college senior/already has a kid "discrepency" appears to be explained by another webpage of hers in which she describes herself as having taken some "time off," living in Savannah.

her name in the announcement is different than her parents' - suggests prior marriage

6:37 more on this other webpage please?

I'm all for the ATL bashing some idiot for getting on a plane with a highly communicable disease. However, someone getting pregnant, making the hard decision to have the kid, and then going on to succeed at law school seems like something we should applaud and not gawk at.

ABC News is airing an interview with Speaker tomorrow morning:

http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/story?id=3231184&page=1

Sorry -- GMA, not ABC News . . . .

Go here: http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/cs1315/uploads/1671/

It looks like the website was created as part of a class. I couldn't find the picture that is missing from her webpage. However, if you download "emoryaccept.pdf" you will get an eight page PDF that has pictures on it. My guess is the picture on page 3 is the one that is missing.

For those who would defend him coming back here and endangering the others on the plane, I ask...

Did he wear any kind of mask or otherwise use any mechanism whatsoever to try to protect the other people on the plane from being infected?

I'm betting he didn't, and if not, he should be prosecuted for reckless endangerment and disbarred.

Damn-- Mrs. Speaker is gonna be a hot widow.

A daughter? What's up with that! I'm guessing that ol' Andrew wasn't the first feller' to park his steed in her stable, if you know what I mean.

Check out Drudge right now. That is one shapely woman!

Every Georgia Tech student has to take a computer science class to graduate, part of which is making a lame website like this one. One of the requirements is that it has a picture of you. Just in case anyone cares.

"TB Andy: Please Forgive Me."

Drudge rules.

Lat, you suck big, chunky turds. Who gives a flying fuck about the guy's wife's prior marriage and kid?

You all need to get a life. Like any of you would turn yourselves into fucking Italian authorities, having no idea what the hell they were going to do to you. The guy got his ass back to the USA.

You would all do the same thing.

Wow! Nice photo of Drudge. Those are some torpedoes Sarah's packin'

9:29 - I call bullshit. I would not do the same thing. I might, if panicked, fly with a mask, but I wouldn't flee through Canada pulling the respiratory equivalent of barebacking.

oh for chrissake, this is getting ridiculous. disbarred?? criminally prosecuted for reckless endangerment? according to the news stories i've read, he's completely asymptomatic - no coughing, no fever, no chest pain, nothing. it's not clear to me how they identified the tb, unless he just happened to have had a skin test that was positive and they did further probing. four people in my immediate family have had the same thing in the last 5 or 10 years, as well as several friends. most of them have some connection to the health care industry, which, presumably is where they acquired it; my guess is this guy got it from one of his pi clients or from spending time around clinics related to that.

given the prevalence of it and the fact that the initial call from the docs didn't include a travel ban, i don't blame him for going through with the wedding. and once he was there, tucked away in a distant corner of the world, i don't really blame him for wanting to make it back home. i seriously doubt anyone here would feel differently.

maybe he should have sucked it up, or maybe he could have come up with a better plan than just hopping on the first commercial flight he found, but i can't imagine he was thinking all that clearly when they told him he might die, even though he looked and felt fine.

the likelihood that anyone would have been infected by him is incredibly low. why should the default assumption be that he should sacrifice his own life and access to healthcare (even if italy has great docs, you try getting treatment w/ no family for support, no insurance, and a language barrier to overcome) just on the outside chance that by substantially improving his own situation, he might put someone else in the same boat he's already in.

give me a break

10:07--I call bullshit back. You'd likely crap your pants and cry like a baby. Then, you'd think about dying in some Italian hospital with no ability to get yourself back to the USA. Locked up by Italian authorities. And then? You'd get your ass on a flight to North America....getting back to the USA asap.

We also have no idea of the specific facts of this case. The media, in its usual glory, has made this into a big deal. For all we know, the guy is completely asymptomatic, and papa-in-law told him to get himself back .... at no risk to anyone who happened to be on a plane with him.

Does anyone else think the wife had self-serving motives of her own and wanted her "fairytale princess" wedding so badly that NOTHING was going to get in her way? Certainly nothing stupid like a potentially fatal case of TB in her soon to be husband? If any of his friends or family knew that he was infected with such a disease, they should have stopped him from flying not only for his benefit, but for the benefit of those he may have affected with his selfish actions. This is completely reckless behavior.

Are you kidding me? It's clear this woman is a widowmaker, using her Dad's super-TB to kill unsuspecting husbands so that the Dad can do experiments on their putrid corpses. That's what's basically going on here.

Link to the missing picture:
http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/cs1315/uploads/christmassarah.jpg

Who paid for her boob job? She obvious got the implants in law school.

TB Andy could have commandeered a private plane back to the states, or could have worn a stupid mask from a hardware store, I'm sure they have them in Europe. He's a freaking criminal. Even if the risk is 1/100 to transmission, that 1 poor sucker will have a strain of TB with a 50 percent mortality rate. Absoultely should be disbarred permanently for moral turpitude. And his new father-in-law should be fired and lose his credentials if he knew, which he surely must have given that he was diagnosed in January, that his dumbass son in law was boarding these planes. Oh, and I hope nobody hugged and kissed hin at the wedding, including his wife. What a moron. I'm sure he will be sued successfully for causing mass hysteria, if not for reckless endangerment. Or maybe they'll be suing his estate, which is would not make me feel bad at all.

Even assuming arguendo that I would have crapped my pants and cried like a baby - and you can add whatever else you like - I still would have had the common decency to at least wear a mask. It's not that difficult, and is effective at preventing transmission. Somewhere in all the "Oops, I crapped my pants" nonsense I would have done some research.

And I know for a fact that I wouldn't have decided to go to Europe in the first place. I like your completely baseless spin on the facts though.

He's not as hot as I originally thought. What's with the pasty-whiteness and slicked-back hair?

Wife isn't a butter face. Not bad. Nice cans. Daughter is very cute. It looks like she's about 4 or 5 in that picture, though... prom baby?

(Just so I'm clear, this is a comment on the mother and father, I don't mean to slight the kid, who, as I said, is very cute and clearly the victim of her parents' (natural and/or step) decisions)

Medicine is socialized in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. It probably would have cost him nothing, or next to nothing, to get medical treatment abroad.

10:36 PM:

Nice work on that. Obviously pre-implants.

Jesus H. Christ people.

Italy is hardly a third-world country. And a lawyer with a *CDC* doctor father-in-law could most CERTAINLY have pulled some strings to get a quality personal doc, even if he had to fly one in from the US.

Seriously, this was the height of stupid selfishness. He could have killed MULTIPLE people. A grown-up would have acted much more responsibly.

Medicine is socialized in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. It probably would have cost him nothing, or next to nothing, to get medical treatment abroad.

Posted by: Anonymous | June 1, 2007 01:09 PM

Not true. Foreign visitors are not covered. He would have to pay and his US insurance most likely would not cover it. He should have travel medical insurance, especially traveling with TB.

care to buy a wedding gift for the happy couple?

http://www.crateandbarrel.com/gr/guest/viewRegistry.aspx?grid=1974599

He spends his life trying to prove american doctors are incompetant and the first time he gets sick, it's "ONLY IN AMERICAN DOCTORS WILL I TRUST MY LIFE." Friggin hippocrite.

Sarah Cooksey and Andrew Speaker are both a couple of losers.

And most americans wonder why people hate them. Take a look at Andrew Speaker and you'll see why.

Selfish, arrogant and stupid people like him we don't need overseas. He might infect the gene pool.

Speaker tried his case before the American public except it was only one-sided and at the end of the day we effectively only heard from him and his family. Yes, it is quite compelling from his side only. However, keep in mind that his and his father’s craft as a personal injury lawyers clearly tried to use their own facts and his father’s edited taping to make us think that he did not potentially endanged others. Bottom line, he exercised really bad judgment to carry out his personal agenda. So, who pays for all his medical expenses and the flights from the CDC? Is it the same US taxpayers who also financed his first 2 years of college at the Naval Academy before he dropped out? Who will pay for the medical attention required by those exposed to him?

The poster by the name of “Ralbylove” is in no way associated with the individual named Ian M. Ralby, but is instead an alias created without the consent of Mr. Ralby.

"And most americans wonder why people hate them. Take a look at Andrew Speaker and you'll see why."

"Selfish, arrogant and stupid people like him we don't need overseas. He might infect the gene pool"

I hardly think one man(Speaker) represents americans and there are PLENTY of selfish,arrogant and stupid people in europe and elsewhere throughout the world.