Thomas Butler Trial

GuanYin

This could equally go on politics or humanities but seeing as it has far reaching implications on the science field (and I'm a scientist) I'll put it here!

Dr. Thomas C. Butler, a preeminent authority on infectious diseases at Texas Tech University, USA is currently on trial for allegedly smuggling samples of plague bacteria into the USA, improperly transporting them within the country, and lying about them to authorities. Additional charges of theft, embezzlement and fraud were added in a second indictment.

Worst case sceanario he faces 69 federal counts and a possible penalty totaling $17 million in fines and more than 200 years in prison.

Many sources say that Butler is being made an example, a warning to researchers not to break the federal laws or the Government will come down heavy handed.

According to the Sunshine Project (An Internet Bioweapons Forum) What has apparently gone unreported in the Butler case is that Texas Tech's work with bioweapons is far from a little program at an ordinary state school in a flat and dusty corner of middle America. In fact, Butler worked in the midst of a large and secretive biodefense program supported by the US Army, a program that even many life scientists may not be aware of.

"The Butler case has never been simply about an absent-minded professor at an average state university. The story broke as the FBI increasingly focused on the US biodefense program in its investigation of the anthrax letters of 2001. For the government, the lost plague raised more embarrassing questions about the security of Pentagon biodefense research. The case is also about the government enforcing the quid pro quo that it and life sciences institutions have developed: various federal agencies provide enormous money for a tightly-proscribed research agenda on bioweapons. Research institutions get this support if they kowtow to the government's priorities, including secrecy, and if they don't have embarrassing screw ups."

Many scientists are now apprently opting out of the bioweapons and infectious disease research programs in the US, for fear a simple mistake could cost them their careers, or worse their freedom.

As one scientist put it "If I am required to inventory every vial, even if it is in a locked freezer behind five layers of security, then be held criminally accountable for any mysterious disappearance when it is almost certainly only sloppy record keeping, then I'll work on Paramecium [a pond protist] and leave the select agents to someone else."

Is Butler a scapegoat or does he deserve to go down for negligence. Will this have major implications on US Bioweapons defence?

GuanYin

It seems now that things are getting farcical.

Apparently Butler initially reported the 30 vials of pleague as missing to the FBI only for the FBI to tell him not to say he lost them and to just say he destroyed them.

When he did that, they arrested him for lying to them?

He's now had tax evasion and mis-appropriation of grant funds added to his charges (the latter is a crime that every single academic in the world is guilty of to some degree).

The trial goes on....