Let’s hope the Andrew Speaker TB case will at last prompt a major news organization to take a serious look at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).  Excerpt from Charles Peters’ regular Washington Monthly column, Tilting at Windmills

Something is rotten in the state of Georgia

Speaking of competence and accountability, I continue to worry about the Centers for Disease Control.  When the test came in on May 22 making it clear that Andrew Speaker had the most dangerous kind of tuberculosis, and he did not immediately agree to go to an Italian hospital, why didn’ t the CDC make public his identity and the threat he posed?  Waiting to do so until he returned to this country, and after all those Czech Air passengers had been exposed, struck me as a demented choice.

    And why did Dr. Julie Gerberding defend the actions of Andrew’s father-in-law, the CDC tuberculosis expert who, incredibly enough, not only failed to object to his son-in-law’s travels, but participated in them by attending the wedding in Santorini?  Either he was incompetent and reckless, or the CDC was wrong to label Andrew a public health threat.  In any event, I will continue to keep harping, as I did most recently in our January/February issue, on the need for a major news organization to make a thorough examination of the CDC, identifying its strengths and weaknesses and explaining how the remedied.  For me, the need is already crystal clear.  We have a problem in Atlanta.

– from The Washington Monthly (July/August 2007), see http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/

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