Following up, part 3

To ring out 2004, The Scientist revisited 2004's best-read stories. For more updates, click here and here.Biolab fights continueIn May, The Scientistreported that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had committed $500 million to build 20 times as much of the Biosafety Level Four (BSL-4) space as it already had, without bothering to conduct a needs assessment first. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the US Army, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) were all hoping to build to build their own high-containment labs too, at an additional price up to $1.2 billion. Since then, Congress has appropriated $140 million of that billion plus toward a new DHS BSL-4 lab. As our May article was going to press, DHS announced it would build a new biocontainment facility at Fort Detrick, Md., detailed plans for which were then discovered in a PowerPoint presentation published on the Internet. The lab, which is slated to cost a total of $200 million, will serve the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center, a biothreat analysis agency DHS created last year.Critics immediately condemned the plans, charging they would violate international bioweapons treaties and may set off a global biological arms race. For example, the new lab will genetically alter bioweapon diseases and package them so they can be dispersed as weapons. While a DHS spokeswoman later characterized this research as necessary to learn how to counter such weapons, three veteran US biological arms control experts strongly disagreed. The DHS plans "may constitute [prohibited weapon] development in the guise of threat assessment, and they certainly will be interpreted that way" by other countries, wrote James Leonard, Milton Leitenberg, and Richard Spertzel in the journal Politics and the Life Sciences in May.And Rutgers professor Richard Ebright said that the new lab's BSL-4 space—160% of the nation's 2001 total—would not be necessary if the NIH builds all the labs it has announced. By John Dudley MillerButler appeal ongoingThomas Butler, the former Texas Tech professor who was convicted in December of illegally shipping plague samples and of defrauding the university, remains incarcerated in a federal hospital prison in Texas. He has now served about 8 1/2 months of his 2-year sentence. "He hates it, but he's doing constructive things," said his long-time friend and colleague, William Greenough, a professor at Johns Hopkins University. "He's teaching people at a high-school level science to help them get their GEDs." Butler's wife Elisabeth said she is not doing well, just trying to survive.Meanwhile, Butler is appealing his conviction. According to his wife and lawyers, his former dean at Texas Tech gave him permission to conduct the pharmaceutical company research that Butler's jury decided was fraud because Tech required Butler to earn most of his own salary.The Justice Department has cross-appealed in return, "claiming that the sentence was imposed in violation of the sentencing guidelines," according to Robert Webster, one of the assistant US attorneys who prosecuted Butler. The trial court's probation office had recommended a sentence of 8 to 9 years, but federal district court Judge Samuel Cummings "downwardly departed" markedly from that advice, saying Butler's research in the 1970s on oral rehydration for children with diarrhea had "led to the salvage of millions of lives." "All of the [defense] attorneys believe that he's got extremely strong appellate issues," said Jonathan Turley, one of Butler's appeal lawyers. "Some of these issues could well create important new precedent in the federal system." But if very conservative federal judges hear his appeal, Turley said, "this man could be given as much as 10 years."Butler's defense team must file a response to the government's appeal brief by January 24, Webster said. Oral arguments by both sides, should the appeals court order them, will probably take place early next summer. By John Dudley Miller

Following up, part 3

Updating 2004's biggest stories: Biolab fights continue; Butler appeal ongoing

Dec 21, 2004

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