[IP] more on butler case
Begin forwarded message:
From: Jonathan Krim <KrimJ@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: June 1, 2005 11:05:31 AM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx, declan@xxxxxxxx
Subject: butler case
more complex than proMed suggests. here's one of our stories on it.
cheers.
The Washington Post
November 9, 2003 Sunday
Final Edition
SECTION: A Section; A03
LENGTH: 1674 words
HEADLINE: A Career Ends and a Trial Begins Over Plague Vials;
Texas Researcher Accused of Lying About Bacteria Samples
BYLINE: Lee Hockstader, Washington Post Staff Writer
DATELINE: LUBBOCK, Tex.
BODY:
It was Thomas C. Butler's unruffled, matter-of-fact calm that
struck his
bosses at Texas Tech University's medical school as out of place and a
little weird.
Here was Butler -- tall and snowy-haired, an eminent doctor and
renowned
contagious disease researcher -- reporting that 30 specimen vials
of the
bacteria that cause bubonic plague, the medieval "Black Death" still
common in parts of Asia and Africa, were missing from his cramped
laboratory. What is more, he said he believed they had been stolen.
Thunderstruck, and spooked by the threat of bioterrorism, Butler's
department head and the dean of the medical school said they would
have to
alert the authorities. But Butler, preternaturally serene, said he
really
did not see why that was necessary. Couldn't the university handle
it as
an internal matter?
"I was flabbergasted," Donald Wesson, chairman of the medical school's
Department of Internal Medicine, testified in court this week. "All
kinds
of things went through my head."
So began a drama last Jan. 14 in the cotton-growing Texas Panhandle
town
of Lubbock, the drab, pancake-flat home of Texas Tech University
and its
medical school, the Health Sciences Center. Within hours, 60 federal
agents arrived in Lubbock. President Bush was briefed at the White
House.
And Butler -- who eventually admitted to a "misjudgment" in
asserting the
samples had been stolen and said he had accidentally destroyed them
-- was
shackled in handcuffs and leg irons on his way to jail, his passport
confiscated, his illustrious career destroyed and his reputation in
ruins.
Last week Butler went on trial for lying to the FBI, illegally
importing
and transporting plague bacteria samples, defrauding Texas Tech and
filing
false tax returns. According to federal prosecutors, Butler, locked
in an
escalating dispute with the medical school over his research grants
and
under orders suspending his clinical research, "lashed out" by
inventing
the story about stolen plague samples.
In all, he faces 69 federal felony counts, carrying a maximum
sentence of
469 years in prison and $17.1 million in fines. Even if he is
convicted on
just two or three counts of the thick indictment, he could spend a
decade
behind bars.
"An incident that could have sparked widespread panic of a
bioterrorism
threat in West Texas was stopped clean in its tracks," U.S.
Attorney Jane
J. Boyle said in a statement in April.
And yet the incongruities of the case -- why someone of Butler's
stature
would lie in the first place, and why the federal government would so
aggressively pursue a case in which no physical harm was meant or
alleged
-- have unsettled preeminent American scientists and biodefense
researchers.
Some, including a quartet of Nobel laureates, insist that whatever
Butler's missteps, he does not deserve to be in the dock at federal
court.
They suspect that Butler is mainly a victim of the post-Sept. 11,
2001,
hysteria of a nation traumatized by terrorism and anthrax, and of
prosecutors run amok. And they warn that whatever the outcome at
Butler's
trial, the effect of his prosecution will be to intimidate biowarfare
disease researchers and impede their work at a critical moment.
"I mean, what's the motivation -- why are we prosecuting this guy?"
said
Donald A. Henderson, the 75-year-old founder of the Center for
Civilian
Biodefense Strategies at Johns Hopkins University, and a key figure
in the
effort to eradicate smallpox in the 1960s and '70s. "I think the
idea is
to make an example of him [so] scientists will be more likely to
follow
the guidelines . . . I don't think that is consonant with the way our
justice system is supposed to work."
Butler's prosecution has shaken Lubbock, a college town of 200,000
best
known for its sandstorms and as rocker Buddy Holly's home town.
Perhaps
half the town is affiliated one way or another with Texas Tech
University
-- the judge in Butler's case is a graduate, and one of the
prosecutors
teaches there -- and many were unnerved by the plague scare last
January.
At the center of the storm, Butler -- barred from his lab at the
medical
school and facing the likelihood of dismissal by the university --
sits in
silence these days through hours of courtroom testimony, working
his jaw
muscles as federal prosecutors present the government's case. His
wife, a
son and a small coterie of friends sit in the benches behind him.
At the
prosecution table, agents from the FBI, Department of Commerce,
Department
of Transportation and Internal Revenue Service flank three
assistant U.S.
attorneys.
He now says he does not know what happened to the samples of plague
bacteria in his laboratory, where he was working on a new antidote
to the
disease. In an interview with the CBS News program "60 Minutes"
that aired
last month, Butler insists that FBI interrogators "tricked" him into
saying he had "accidentally destroyed" them with the promise that
it would
set the matter to rest and reassure a panicky public. If he did
destroy
the samples, which is routine procedure in labs, he does not remember
doing so, he says.
"I feel I was naïve to have trusted [the FBI agents] and the
assurances
they gave me," Butler told "60 Minutes." "They wanted to conclude the
investigation and, they told me, reassure the public that there was no
danger."
Butler, as well as the lawyers and agents involved in the trial, is
now
subject to a gag order imposed this fall by Judge Sam R. Cummings,
forbidding them from discussing the case. However, under close
monitoring
by one of his lawyers, George Washington University law professor
Jonathan
Turley, Butler did speak to a reporter last week -- with the condition
that he would not discuss the case or the allegations against him.
He spoke generally about what drew him to plague research as a
young Navy
doctor in Vietnam, and the idealism, sense of adventure and
altruism that
he says kept him at it through years of living and traveling in the
Third
World and treating desperately poor people.
"Going out to do field research, where you travel with medicines and
supplies with you that are less available to Third World countries --
there's a sense of service to people and a hope that your research
findings will benefit society in general," he said.
Butler admitted to a certain degree of what he called "egoism" and
"stick-to-itiveness" in pursuing his research. And it is those
qualities,
which some of Butler's own allies interpret as his stubbornness,
that may
have played a part in his current troubles.
According to the indictment and prosecutors, Butler well understood
the
regulations for importing and transporting plague bacteria and other
potentially deadly pathogens in the United States. And yet he
apparently
disregarded the rules -- when he returned from a trip to Tanzania
in 2002
with samples of the plague bacteria in his luggage; when he brought
samples to Fort Detrick, Md., home of the U.S. Army Medical Research
Institute of Infectious Diseases, and to the Centers for Disease
Control
and Prevention lab in Fort Collins, Colo.; and when he shipped samples
back to Tanzania in a FedEx package that he marked "laboratory
materials."
Some of Butler's methods were once common among contagious disease
researchers, including carrying potentially hazardous materials on
airplanes, a practice known as "VIP," or vials in pocket. But those
methods have been forbidden since 1996. And Butler's cavalier attitude
toward the rules, say prosecutors, characterized his work and
eventually
landed him in trouble.
From 1998, the government says, documents show that drug companies for
which Butler was conducting clinical trials at Texas Tech were
paying both
the university as well as Butler -- an arrangement hidden from
university
officials. Prosecutors have termed these "shadow contracts" a form of
fraud that deprived the university of overhead expenses on the
money paid
directly to Butler.
Butler's lawyers contend that the contracts were consultancies
permitted
under vaguely written university regulations; his allies note that
in any
event, arcane disputes between researchers and administrators are
routine
in the world of academia.
Nonetheless, auditors from an internal review board at Texas Tech were
pressing Butler for details of his research work and contracts.
When he
repeatedly ignored their requests, prosecutors said, the university
notified him in November 2002 that his clinical work with patients was
suspended. A top university official confirmed the suspension in a
letter
to Butler on Jan. 9.
Four days later, on Jan. 13, Butler reported that 30 of his 180
vials of
plague bacteria were missing. Federal agents were summoned on Jan. 14.
After a full night of questioning, Butler, who waived his right to a
lawyer, signed a handwritten affidavit at about 3 a.m. on Jan. 15
acknowledging his "misjudgment."
Butler was "in trouble," Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Webster
said in
his opening argument at the trial. "He knew the wagons were
circled . . .
and he had a plan to lash out."
Butler's intent, said Webster, was to "throw a monkey wrench in the
internal affairs" of the university. But instead of "lighting a
fire, he
lit a bonfire," the prosecutor said.
The trial, which is expected to last into December, has also ignited a
controversy in the world of science, with some scientists
dismissing the
idea that Butler is being unfairly prosecuted.
"If this occurred, it's simply not defensible," said Richard
Ebright, a
molecular biologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey. "It's not an
issue of sloppy practice. It's an issue of criminal offense coupled
with
practices incompatible with science."
But Butler's supporters include some of the United States' top
scientists,
and many of them are incensed.
Prosecutors "are acting like they think they're Eliot Ness," said
Peter
Agre, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine who won the
Nobel Prize in chemistry this year. "But I think scientists in this
country are convinced they're more like Sen. Joe McCarthy."
LOAD-DATE: November 9, 2003
----------------------------------------
Jonathan Krim
Technology Policy Writer
The Washington Post
krimj@xxxxxxxxxxxx
202.334.6758 (w)
202.841.3671 (cell)
202.496.3816 (fx)
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