- Why were the smuggling charges dropped? Here is the reason...
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- The first reports were:
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- Dr. Butler is also charged with shipping plague samples
without the proper permits and illegally bringing the samples back from
Tanzania. He had driven samples in his car to two federal laboratories:
an office of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Fort Collins,
Colo., and the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in
Maryland.
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- They got Butler to say he detroyed the samples because
they didn't want to talk about where they really went in open court. Now
why would our biowarfare guys at CDC and Fort Detrick want an African strain
of the plague?
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- JR
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- Butler Verdict Perplexes
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- By Dudley Miller
- BiomedCentral.com
- 12-9-3
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- While several prominent scientists who have publicly
supported Thomas Butler - the Texas Tech professor found guilty last week
of fraud and improper shipping of plague - believe his acquittal on charges
of smuggling and lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is
a vindication the renowned researcher's essential innocence, at least a
few researchers think his convictions prove his partial guilt. Several
refuse to comment.
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- But what nearly all who spoke to The Scientist agree
on is that so little detailed information about the case has been communicated
to the public that it's impossible to know exactly what Butler did. "The
thing that many of us are at this time suffering from is we just do not
understand what in heavens name went on," said D.A. Henderson, a professor
in the University of Pittsburgh's new Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies.
"This is what we find very frustrating," he said.
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- On December 2, a jury in Lubbock, Texas, found the Texas
Tech professor not guilty of smuggling plague specimens into the United
States and then lying to the FBI that 30 vials of them were missing when
he knew he had destroyed them. Of the original 15 counts, he was convicted
only of improperly shipping a plague sample back to Tanzania, where he
has conducting research.
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- However, the same jury also convicted Butler on 44 of
54 counts of defrauding Texas Tech in a totally unrelated matter. The jury
agreed that the "shadow" contracts he signed with two drug companies
illegally gave him part of the payments the school would otherwise have
received for his services. The jury found him not guilty of evading taxes
on those payments.
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- Butler reportedly reacted positively to the split verdict.
"He's happy that the main charges of lying and spreading plague [resulted
in acquittals]," said William Greenough, a university professor and
former colleague of Butler's who spoke to him the morning after the jury
returned the verdicts.
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- "I'd say he's much more upbeat," Greenough
said. Butler plans to appeal the fraud convictions, Greenough said, on
the grounds "that the charges between him and the university on the
finances are really an internal matter based on what his university's regulations
are for consultancy fees and overhead."
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- When a reported 60 FBI agents descended on Butler's Texas
Tech lab on January 14, they interrogated him over 2 continuous days, letting
him go home for only 2 hours in between. Butler eventually signed a statement
saying he had destroyed the 30 vials before he reported them missing. He
later recanted that confession, claiming the FBI had promised him that
if he would sign it, they would close the case and let him go free.
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- As a result, several scientists and scientific organizations
have come out in support of Butler, protesting the government's tactics.
Such organizations have claimed that his prosecution will have a "chilling
effect" on bioterrorism research, leading new researchers not to get
into the field.
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- But last week, Ronald Atlas, former president of the
American Society for Microbiology, disagreed. "At this point, I have
not seen evidence that would support the notion that the [Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention's Select Agent Security] regulations are having
a chilling impact," the University of Louisville professor wrote The
Scientist in an E-mail interview. "My experience is that rooms at
meetings concerning biodefense research funding are filled (overfilled)."
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- Furthermore, Atlas suggested that scientists' support
for and mere interest in Butler's situation may be much weaker than news
stories about his supporters might otherwise indicate. "I have not
experienced any great outpouring of concern nor necessarily awareness of
the issues," he said.
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- Stanley Falkow, professor of microbiology and immunology
and of medicine at Stanford University, said the government's tactic of
adding on the unrelated fraud charges 8 months later upsets him. "I'm
not sure that this will calm anyone's fears," he wrote in an E-mail
interview, "certainly not mine."
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- Atlas and Henderson agreed that what academics' research
contracts allow varies from one institution to another in the United States,
which implies that Butler's "shadow" deals with drug companies
might be legal in some universities or in some professor's contracts, but
illegal in others. How this is manifested in the law is unclear.
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- The two should know: Atlas is the dean of the graduate
school at the University of Louisville, and Henderson was dean of the Johns
Hopkins School of Public Health from 1977 through 1990. Deans customarily
negotiate faculty contracts. According to Atlas, "Many universities
claim ownership of intellectual property of faculty and regulate the extent
of faculty consulting activities."
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- Concerning financial arrangements for conducting drug
company research, Henderson said, "These, I know, are handled very
different ways in different universities, in how the money flows though."
He said disputes over contracts are almost always settled in campus negotiation,
and "it's uncommon" for them to wind up in civil court. "I
find this very surprising that it's the FBI or the Department of Justice
that's prosecuting this" in criminal court, he said.
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- http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20031208/06
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