Bear with me as I succumb to a cut-n-paste frenzy.
November 6, 2001: Jeffrey Paris' body was found sprawled next to a
three-story parking structure near his office. Mr. Wall, 41, had
studied at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was a
biomedical expert who held a medical degree, and he also specialized
in patent and intellectual property.
November 16, 2001: Dr. Don Wiley, 57, disappears during a business
trip to Memphis, Tennessee. He had just bought tickets to take his son
to Graceland the following day. Police found his rental car on a
bridge outside Memphis. His body was later found in the Mississippi
River. Wiley was one of the world's leading researchers of deadly
viruses, including HIV and the Ebola virus. He was an expert on the
immune system's response to viral attacks
November 21, 2001: World-class microbiologist and high-profile Russian
defector Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik, 64, dies of a stroke. Pasechnik, who
defected to Britain in 1989, succeeded in producing an aerosolized
plague microbe that could survive outside the laboratory. He was
connected to Britain's spy agency and recently had started his own
company. "In the last few weeks of his life he had put his research on
anthrax at the disposal of the [British] Government, in the light of
the threat from bioterrorism.
December 10, 2001: Dead microbiologist: "Dr. Robert Schwartz, 57, was
stabbed and slashed with what police believe was a sword in his
farmhouse in Leesberg, Va. His daughter, who identifies herself as a
pagan high priestess, and three of her fellow pagans have been
charged." [Globe and Mail, 5/4/02] All were part of what they called a
coven, and interested in magic, fantasy and self-mutilation. The
police have no motive as to why they would have wanted to kill
Schwartz, who was a single parent and said to be very close to his
children. Schwartz worked at Virginia's Center for Innovative
Technology on DNA sequencing and pathogenic microorganisms.
December 14, 2001: Dead microbiologist: Nguyen Van Set, 44, dies in an
airlock filled with nitrogen in his lab in Geelong, Australia. The lab
had just been written up in the journal Nature for its work in genetic
manipulation and DNA sequencing. Scientists there had created a
virulent form of mousepox. "They realized that if similar genetic
manipulation was carried out on smallpox, an unstoppable killer could
be unleashed,"
January 2002: Two dead microbiologists: Ivan Glebov and Alexi
Brushlinski. Glebov died as the result of a bandit attack and
Brushlinski was killed in Moscow. Both were well known around the
world and members of the Russian Academy of Science.
February 9, 2002: Dead microbiologist: Victor Korshunov, 56, is bashed
over the head and killed at the entrance of his home in Moscow,
Russia. He was the head of the microbiology sub-faculty at the Russian
State Medical University and an expert in intestinal bacteria.
February 11, 2002: Dead microbiologist: Dr. Ian Langford, 40, is found
dead, partially naked and wedged under a chair in his home in Norwich,
England. When found, his house was described as "blood-spattered and
apparently ransacked." He was one of Europe's leading experts on
environmental risk.
February 28, 2002: Two dead microbiologists in San Francisco: While
taking delivery of a pizza, Tanya Holzmayer, 46, is shot and killed by
a colleague, Guyang Huang, 38, who then apparently shot himself.
Holzmayer moved to the US from Russia in 1989. Her research focused on
the part of the human molecular structure that could be affected best
by medicine. Holzmayer was focusing on helping create new drugs that
interfere with replication of the virus that causes AIDS. One year
earlier, Holzmayer obeyed senior management orders to fire Huang.
March 24, 2002: Dead microbiologist: David Wynn-Williams, 55, is hit
by a car while jogging near his home in Cambridge, England. He was an
astrobiologist with the Antarctic Astrobiology Project and the NASA
Ames Research Center. He was studying the capability of microbes to
adapt to environmental extremes, including the bombardment of
ultraviolet rays and global warming.
March 25, 2002: Dead microbiologist: Steven Mostow, 63, dies when the
airplane he was piloting crashes near Denver, Colorado. He worked at
the Colorado Health Sciences Centre and was known as "Dr. Flu" for his
expertise in treating influenza, and expertise on bioterrorism. Mostow
was one of the country's leading infectious disease experts.
November 12 2002: Dr. Benito Que, 52, was "an expert in infectious
diseases and cellular biology at the Miami Medical School. Police
originally suspected that he had been beaten on in a carjacking in the
medical school's parking lot. Strangely enough, though, his body
showed no signs of a beating.
June 24, 2003: Dr. Leland Rickman, a UC San Diego expert on infectious
diseases and, since Sept. 11, 2001 a consultant on bioterrorism. He
was 47. Rickman died while on a teaching assignment in Lesotho, a
small country bordered on all sides by South Africa. He had complained
of a headache, but the cause of death was not immediately known.
July 18, 2003: David Kelly, a British biological weapons expert, was
said to have slashed his own wrists while walking near his home. Kelly
was the Ministry of Defence's chief scientific officer and senior
adviser to the proliferation and arms control secretariat, and to the
Foreign Office's non-proliferation department. The senior adviser on
biological weapons to the UN biological weapons inspections teams
(Unscom) from 1994 to 1999, he was also, in the opinion of his peers,
pre-eminent in his field, not only in this country, but in the world.
