7. DR. V Korshunov... Russian..head bashed in...

8. Dr A Bushlinski Russian.. murdered..

9. Dr. I Glebov.. Russian.. Bandit attack....

Also reported that in plane from Isreal to Russia 4 or 5 microbiologists were aboard.. The plane that crashed in the sea near Russia.. that was brought down by missle.. Their names not published.. (that I know of )....

What did these scientists know that was so important that they had to be silenced..??

(OR, what CURE could they have come up with to what's about to be DELIBERATELY RELEASED?)

Missing / Dead Scientists

Another Leading Scientist Found Dead

(The Times, UK)

Dr Ian Langford, Senior Research Associate in CSERGE, in the UK

British News

February 13, 2002

Mystery death of scientist

By Michael Horsnell

DETECTIVES were last night trying to unravel the circumstances in which a leading university research scientist was found dead at his blood-spattered and apparently ransacked home.

The body of Ian Langford, 40, a senior Fellow at the University of East Anglia’s Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment, was discovered on Monday night by police and ambulancemen. The body was naked from the waist down and partly wedged under a chair. It is understood that doors to the terraced house were locked.

A post-mortem examination failed to establish how Dr Langford, who lived alone in the house in Norwich, died.

Dr Langford began working at the university in 1993 after gaining his PhD in childhood leukaemia and infection following a first-class honours degree in environmental sciences. He worked most recently as a senior researcher assessing risk to the environment.

Professor Kerry Turner, director of the centre, said: “We are all very shocked by this appalling news. Ian was without doubt one of Europe’s leading experts on environmental risk, specialising in links between human health and environmental risk. He was known for his work on the effects on health of bathing water and air pollution, for example. He was one of the most brilliant colleagues I have ever had.”

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2-206921,00.html

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A Career In Microbiology Can Be Harmful To Your Health

Especially Since 9-11

by

Michael Davidson

© Copyright 2002, From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com, All rights reserved. May be recopied, distributed for non-profit purposes only; May not be posted on an Internet web site without express written authorization. Contact service@copvcia.com for permission.

[ -- As FTW has begun to investigate serious discussions by legitimate scientists and academics on the possible “necessity” of reducing the world¹s population by more than four billion people, no stranger set of circumstances since 9-11-01 adds credibility to this possibility than the suspicious deaths of what may be as many as 12 world-class microbiologists. Following on the heels of our two-part series on the coming world oil crisis, this story by Michael Davidson, FTW’s new staff writer, and a graduate of the Syracuse University School of Journalism, is one which takes on a unique significance. Special thanks to Jeff Rense, www.rense.com and researcher Ian Gurney for bringing five of these deaths to FTW¹s and the world¹s attention first. – Revised February 15, 2002 – In our original story we incorrectly reported the original date of disappearance of Dr. Don Wiley. That has been corrected in this version of the story. -- MCR]

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FTW - February 14, 2002 -- How many microbiologists does it take to change a light bulb?

Whatever you think the answer may be, change that light bulb soon.

Microbiologists are dropping like flies.

In the five-week period from November 16, 2001 through December 23, 2001, five world-class microbiologists in different parts of the world were reported dead. Four undoubtedly died of "unnatural" causes, while the fifth's death is quite questionable.

In the ten weeks prior to December 12, 2001, two additional microbiologists were killed, and possibly another five. The period also saw the deaths of three Israelis holding high-level positions in either medical research or public health.

On November 16, 2001, Dr. Don C. Wiley, 57, vanished, and his abandoned rental car was found on the Hernando de Soto Bridge outside Memphis, TN.

On December 10, 2001, Dr. David Schwartz, 57, was found murdered in his rural home in Loudon County, Virginia.

On December 12, 2001, Dr. Benito Que was found comatose in the street near the laboratory where he worked at the University of Miami Medical School.

On December 14, 2001, Set Van Nguyen was found dead in the airlock entrance to the walk-in refrigerator in the laboratory he worked at in Victoria State, Australia.

And on December 23, 2001, Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik, 64, was found dead in Wiltshire, England, a village near his home.

Before these deaths, on October 4, 2001, a commercial jetliner traveling from Israel to Novosibirsk, Siberia was shot down over the Black Sea by an "errant" Ukrainian surface-to-air missile, killing all on board. The missile was over 100 miles off-course. Despite early news stories reporting it as a charter, the flight (Air Sibir 1812) was a regularly scheduled flight.

According to several press reports, including a 12/05/01 article by Barry Chamish and one on 1/13/02 by Jim Rarey (both available at www.rense.com), the plane is believed by many in Israel to have had as many as four or five passengers who were microbiologists. Both Israel and Novosibirsk are homes for cutting-edge microbiological research. Novosibirsk is known as the scientific capital of Siberia. There are over 50 research facilities there, and 13 full universities for a population of only 2.5 million people.

At about the time of the Black Sea crash, Israeli journalists had been sounding the alarm that two Israeli microbiologists had been murdered, allegedly by terrorists. On November 24, 2001 a Swissair flight from Berlin to Zurich crashed on its landing approach. 24 of the 33 persons on board were killed, including the head of the Hematology department at Israel's Ichilov Hospital, as well as directors of the Tel Aviv Public Health Department and Hebrew University School of Medicine. They were the only Israelis on the flight. The names of those killed, as reported in a subsequent Israeli news story but not matched to their job titles, were Avishai Berkman, Amiramp Eldor and Yaacov Matzner.

Besides all being microbiologists, the five scientists who died within five weeks of each other pose severe problems with "official" explanations of their deaths. And four of the five were doing virtually identical research; research that has global political and financial significance.

A MEMPHIS MYSTERY

Dr. Don C. Wiley, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Harvard University, was one of the most prominent microbiologists in the world. He had won many of the field's most prestigious awards, including the 1995 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award for work that could make anti-viral vaccines a reality. He was heavily involved in research on DNA sequencing, and was last seen at around midnight on November 16, leaving the St. Jude's Children¹s Research Advisory Dinner at The Peabody Hotel in Memphis, TN. Associates attending the dinner said he showed no signs of intoxication, and no one has admitted to drinking with him.

His rented Mitsubishi Galant was found about four hours later, abandoned on a bridge across the Mississippi River, headed towards Arkansas. Keys were in the ignition, the gas tank full, but the hazard flashers had not been turned on. Wiley¹s body was found on December 20, snagged on a tree along the Mississippi River in Vidalia, LA, 300 miles south of Memphis. Until his body was found, Dr. Wiley's death was handled as a "missing person" case and police did no forensic examinations.

Early reports about Wiley's disappearance made no mention of paint marks on his car, or a missing hubcap which turned up in subsequent reports. The type of accident needed to knock off the hubcaps (actually a complete wheel

cover) used on recent model Galants would have caused marked damage to the sheet metal on either side of the wheel, and probably the wheel itself. No body or wheel damage to the car has been reported.

Wiley's car was found about a five minute drive from the hotel where he was last seen. There is a four-hour period in his evening that cannot be accounted for. There is also no explanation as to why he would have been headed into Arkansas late at night. Dr. Wiley was staying at his father¹s home in Memphis.

The Hernando de Soto Bridge carries Interstate 40 out of Memphis, across the Mississippi River into Arkansas. It was early Sunday morning (or late Saturday night depending on your point of view) in one of America's premier music and nightclub towns. The traffic on the bridge was reduced to a single lane in each direction. This would have caused all eastbound traffic out of Saturday-night Memphis to slow down and travel in one lane. Anything in the other two closed lanes would have been plainly obvious to every passing person. There are no known witnesses to Dr. Don Wiley stopping his car on the bridge.

On January 14, 2002 (almost two months later) Shelby County Medical Examiner O.C. Smith announced that his department had ruled Dr. Wiley's death to be "accidental"; the result of massive injuries suffered in a fall from the Hernando de Soto Bridge. Smith said there were paint marks on Wiley's rental car similar to the paint used on construction signs on the bridge, and that the car's right front hubcap was missing. There has been no report as to which construction signs Dr. Wiley hit. There is also no explanation as to why this evidence did not move the Memphis police to consider possibilities other than "missing person."

Mr. Smith theorizes that Wiley pulled over to the outermost lane of the bridge (that lane being closed at the time) to inspect the damage to his car. Smith's subsequent explanation for the fall requires several other things to have occurred simultaneously:

· Dr. Wiley had to have had one of the two or three seizures he has per year due to a rare seizure disorder known only to family and close friends, that seizure being brought on by use of alcohol earlier that evening;

· A passing truck creating a huge blast of wind, roadway bounce due to heavy traffic; and,

· Dr. Wiley had to be standing right at the edge of the guard rail which, because of Wiley's 6' 3" height, would have come only to his mid-thigh.

These conditions would have put Wiley¹s center of gravity above the rail, and the seizure would have caused him to lose balance as the truck created the bounce and blast, causing him to fall off the bridge.

Dr. Robert M. Schwartz was a founding member of the Virginia Biotechnology Association, and the Executive Director of Research and Development at Virginia's Center for Innovative Technology. He was extremely well respected in biophysics, and regarded as an authority on DNA sequencing. Co-workers became concerned when he didn't show up at his office, and he was later found dead at home. Loudon County Sheriff's officials said he was "apparently" stabbed. It has been theorized that Dr. Schwartz may have interrupted a burglary in progress. Nothing, however, has indicated that investigators found evidence of unauthorized entry, or anything missing. An adult and two teen-agers have been arrested in the case. The three are said to have a fascination with both swords and Satanism, and the murder may have been part of a ritual. The Loudon County Sheriff Criminal Investigation Division will not release any additional information on the case, which remains open.

Dr. Benito Que was found comatose on a street in Miami, FL. He had left his job at a research laboratory at the University of Miami Medical School, apparently heading for his Ford Explorer parked on NW 10th Ave. The Miami Herald, in its only story on Dr. Que, referred to the death as an "incident", and quoted Miami police as saying his death may have been the result of a mugging. Police made this statement despite saying there was a lack of visible trauma to Dr. Que's body. Among Dr. Que's friends and family there is firm belief that Dr. Que was attacked by four men, at least one of whom had a baseball bat. Dr. Que's death has now been officially ruled "natural", caused by cardiac arrest. Both the Dade County medical examiner and the Miami Police will not comment on the case, saying it is closed. The public relations office at the University of Miami Medical School says only that Dr. Que was a cell biologist, involved in oncology research in the hematology department.

Set Van Nguyen was found dead at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization's animal diseases facility in Geelong, Australia. He had worked there 15 years. In January, 2001, the magazine Nature published information that two scientists at this facility, using genetic manipulation and DNA sequencing, had created an incredibly virulent form of mousepox, a cousin of smallpox. The researchers were extremely concerned that if similar manipulation could be done to smallpox, a terrifying weapon could be unleashed.

According to Victoria Police, Nguyen died after entering a refrigerated storage facility. "He did not know the room was full of deadly gas which had leaked from a liquid nitrogen cooling system, Unable to breathe, Mr. Nguyen collapsed and died" says the official report.

Nitrogen is not a "deadly" gas, and is a part of the air. An extreme over-abundance of nitrogen in one's immediate atmosphere would gradually cause shortness of breath, lightheadedness, and fatigue; conditions a biologist would certainly recognize. Additionally, a nitrogen leak in a laboratory's refrigerator system sufficient to fill the room with nitrogen would set off gas system alarms, and would be so massive as to cause complete failure of the refrigeration system, causing the temperature to rise, also setting off alarms that every one of these systems is equipped with as a standard safety procedure.

A RUSSIAN, BRITISH INTELLIGENCE AND OLD CORPSES

In 1989, Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik defected from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) to Great Britain while on a trip to Paris. He had been the #1 scientist in the FSU's bioweapons program. On November 23, 2001, Pasechnik's death was reported in the New York Times as having occurred two days earlier.

The New York Times obituary indicated that the announcement of Pasechnik's death was made in the United States by Dr. Christopher Davis of Virginia, who stated that the cause of death was a stroke. Dr. Davis was the member of British intelligence who de-briefed Dr. Pasechnik at the time of his defection. Dr. Davis says he left the intelligence service in 1996. When asked why a former member of British intelligence would be the person announcing the death of Dr. Pasechnik to U.S. media, Dr. Davis replied that it had come about during a conversation with a reporter he had had a long relationship with. The reporter Davis named is not the author of the Times' obituary, and Dr. Davis declined to say which branch of British intelligence he served in. No reports of Pasechnik's death appeared in Britain for more than a month until December 29, 2001, when his obituary appeared in the London Telegraph. Doing a Google search on the Web for "Vladimir Pasechnik" brings up, among many, two links to that obituary in the London Telegraph.

Attempts to access either of those links resulted in "Page Not Found".

Vladimir Pasechnik spent the ten years after his defection working at the Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research at the UK Department of Health, Salisbury. On February 20, 2000, it was announced that, along with partner Caisey Harlingten, Dr. Pasechnik had formed a company called Regma Biotechnologies Ltd. Regma describes itself as "a new drug company working to provide powerful alternatives to antibiotics." Like three other microbiologists detailed in this article, Pasechnik was heavily involved in DNA sequencing research. During the anthrax panic of this past fall, Pasechnik offered his services to the British government to help in any way possible. Despite Regma having a public relations department that has released many items to the press over the past two years, the company has not announced the death of one of its two founders.

Early October saw reports that British scientists were planning to exhume the bodies of 10 London victims of the 1918 type-A flu epidemic. An October 8, 2001 report in The Independent said that the victims of ³the Spanish Flu² had been victims of ³the world¹s most deadly virus.² British scientists hope to uncover the genetic makeup of the virus, making it easier to combat. Professor John Oxford of London's Queen Mary's School of Medicine, the British government's flu adviser, acknowledges that the exhumations and subsequent studies will have to be done with extreme caution so the virus is not unleashed to cause another epidemic. The uncovering of a pathogen's genetic structure is the exact work Dr. Pasechnik was doing at Regma. Pasechnik died six weeks after the planned exhumations were announced. The need to exhume the bodies assumes no Type-A flu virus sample exists in any lab anywhere in the world.

ANTHRAX CURES AND THE RUSSIAN

Almost immediately at the outset of the anthrax scare, the Bush administration contracted with Bayer Pharmaceuticals for millions of doses of Cipro, an antibiotic to treat anthrax. This was done despite many in the medical community stating that there were several cheaper, better alternatives to Cipro, which has never been shown to be effective against inhaled anthrax. The Center for Disease Control's (CDC) own website states a preference for the antibiotic doxycycline over Cipro for inhalation anthrax. CDC expresses concerns that widespread Cipro use could cause other bacteria to become immune to antibiotics.

After three months of conflicting reports it is now official that the anthrax that has killed several Americans since October 5 is from US military sources connected to CIA research. The FBI has stated that only 10 people could have had access, yet at the same time they are reporting astounding security breaches at the biowarfare facility at Ft. Detrick, MD; breaches such as unauthorized nighttime experiments and lab specimens missing.

The militarized anthrax used by the United States was developed by William C. Patrick III, who holds five classified patents on the process. He has worked at both Ft. Detrick, and the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah. Patrick is now a private biowarfare consultant to the military and CIA. Patrick developed the process by which anthrax spores could be concentrated at the level of one trillion spores per gram. No other country has been able to get concentrations above 500 billion per gram. The anthrax that was sent around the eastern United States last fall was concentrated at one trillion spores per gram.

In recent years Patrick has worked with Kanatjan Alibekov. Now known by the Americanized "Ken Alibek", he defected to the U.S. in 1992. Before defecting, Alibek was the #2 man in the FSU's biowarfare program.

His boss was Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik.

A PATTERN?

The DNA sequencing work that the above microbiologists were doing is aimed at developing drugs that will fight pathogens based on the pathogen's genetic profile. The work is also aimed at eventually developing drugs that will work in cooperation with a person's genetic makeup. Theoretically, a drug could be developed for one specific person. That being the case, it's obvious that one could go down the ladder, and a drug could be developed to effectively treat a much broader class of people sharing a genetic marker. The entire process can also be turned around to develop a pathogen that will affect a broad class of people sharing a genetic marker. A broad class of people sharing a genetic marker could be a group such as a race, or people with brown eyes.

ANTHRAX

About 10 weeks before 9-11, in June, 2001, senior government officials gathered at Andrews Air Force Base for an extremely complex war game called Dark Winter. One Dark Winter scenario had several major media outlets receiving letters demanding the immediate removal of all U.S. military forces from Saudi Arabia and the waters of the Persian Gulf. The demand is backed by the threat of biological attacks using anthrax, smallpox and plague. Another part of the Dark Winter exercise involved a terrorist smallpox release in Oklahoma City infecting 300,000 people, killing a third in about three weeks. Analysis of the exercise concluded that dealing with the epidemic was impossible due to an inadequate vaccine supply.

In 1998, the BioPort Corporation was founded for the express purpose of buying the Michigan Biologic Products Institute from the State of Michigan. MBPI was the only firm in the U.S. making Anthrax vaccine, and their sole client was the U.S. government. Until recently, BioPort has not been able to deliver any vaccine due to continuous problems with the FDA in areas such as sterility, contamination, as well as improper procedures and record keeping.

BioPort now has on its Board of Directors Admiral William J. Crowe, Jr. In October 1985 Crowe was appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He retired from that position in 1989 and was appointed US Ambassador to Britain. Admiral Crowe, a long-time member of the Council on Foreign Relations, was given ownership of 22.5% of BioPort's stock without investing any money. Crowe's role at the company was to facilitate cooperation and good relations with government agencies and to secure military contracts from the Department of Defense.

After four years of constant factory violations that prevented the vaccine from being shipped, on December 13, 2001 the FDA began re-inspecting the BioPort anthrax facility in Lansing, MI. On January 14, 2002 The FDA issued a full approval of the facility, and on January 31 BioPort got final approval to distribute their anthrax vaccine.

BioPort's anthrax vaccine is quite controversial, with a great deal of debate about both its safety and efficacy.

SMALLPOX

An October 17, 2001 story in USA Today reported that the US government wanted to order 300 million doses of smallpox vaccine. Apparently, that wish has been granted. On November 28, 2001 a British vaccine maker, Acambis, announced that it had received a $428 million contract to provide 155 million doses of smallpox vaccine to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). This was Acambis' second contract. The company is already in the process of producing 54 million doses. The U.S. government has 15.4 million doses stockpiled, and HHS plans to dilute them five to one. The two contracts and the dilution program will bring the total HHS stockpile to 286 million doses.

Smallpox was officially declared eradicated by the World Health Organization in 1977, after treating the last known case in Merca, Somalia.

According to Steven Black, a director of the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center, vaccinating the entire U.S. population for smallpox will probably result in 600 to 1,000 deaths, and several thousand cases of encephalitis. Chief of the infectious disease department at Thomas Jefferson University Medical School, Roger Pomerantz, warns about the complete lack of knowledge about the reaction to the vaccine of people under the age of two or over 65. He also expressed great concern about the reaction of persons with weakened immune systems, such as those with transplants, people undergoing chemotherapy, and those with HIV/AIDS.

MEHPA A LAW FROM HELL

On October 5, 2001 a meeting was convened of the Center for Law and the Public Health (CLPH). This group is run jointly by Georgetown University Law School and Johns Hopkins Medical School, and was founded under the auspices of the Center for Disease Control (CDC). CLPH was formed one month prior to the 2000 Presidential election. The purpose of the 10/5/01 meeting was to draft legislation to respond to the then current bioterrorism threat.

After working only 18 days, on 11/23/01 CLPH released a 40-page document called the Model Emergency Health Powers Act (MEHPA). This was a "model" law that HHS is suggesting be enacted by the 50 states to handle future public health emergencies such as bioterrorism. A revised version was released on 12/21/01 containing more specific definitions of "public health emergency" as it pertains to bioterrorism and biologic agents, and includes language for those states that want to use the act for chemical, nuclear or natural disasters.

Under the terms of MEHPA, after declaring a "public health emergency", without consultation with public health authorities, law enforcement, the legislature or courts, a state governor or anyone he/she decides to empower, can, among many other things:

· Require any individual to be vaccinated. Refusal constitutes a felony and will result in quarantine.

· Require any individual to undergo specific medical treatment. Refusal constitutes a felony and will result in quarantine.

· Seize any property, including real estate, food, medicine, fuel or clothing, an official thinks necessary to handle the emergency.

· Seize and destroy any property alleged to be hazardous. There will be no compensation or recourse.

· Draft you or your business into state service.

· Impose rationing, price controls, quotas and transportation controls.

· Suspend any state law, regulation or rule that is thought to interfere with handling the declared emergency.

When the Federal government wanted the states to enact the 55 mph speed limit, they coerced the states using the threat of withholding federal monies. It is reasonable to assume the same tactic will be used with MEHPA. As of this writing, the law has been passed in Kentucky. It has been introduced in the legislatures of Arizona, California, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. It is expected to be introduced shortly in Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, and Wisconsin. MEHPA is being evaluated by the executive branches in North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Washington, DC.

So now we come to the end of the story, and it's reasonable to ask "What¹s the connection between dead microbiologists, vaccine contracts and MEHPA?²

The research the microbiologists were doing could have developed methods of treating diseases like anthrax and smallpox without conventional antibiotics or vaccines. Pharmaceutical contracts to deal with these diseases will total hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars. If epidemics could be treated in non-traditional ways, MEHPA might not be necessary. Considering the government¹s actions nullifying many civil liberties since last September, MEHPA seems to be a law looking for an excuse to be enacted. Maybe the microbiologists were in the way of some peoples' or business' agendas.

We also know that DNA sequence research can be used to develop pathogens that target specific genetically related groups. One company, DynCorp, handles data processing for many Federal agencies, including the CDC, the Department of Agriculture, several branches of the Department of Justice, the FDA and the National Institute of Health. On 11/12/01 DynCorp announced that its subsidiary, DynPort, had been awarded a $322 million contract to develop, produce, test, and store FDA licensed vaccines for use by the DoD. It would be incredibly easy for DynCorp to hide information pertaining to the exact make-up, safety, efficacy and purpose of the drugs and vaccines the U.S. government has contracted for.

One thing is certain: the small and elite community of world class microbiologists is well aware that its numbers are shrinking and these dead microbiologists were among the few who could have answered these important questions.

http://www.copvcia.com/free/ww3/02_14_02_microbio.html

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JEFF RENSE INTERVIEWS

PATTY DOYLE & Dr. WILEY'S SISTER

Superb Interview on the Jeff Rense show with

Patricia Doyle, PhD and Pamela McIsaac (Dr. Wiley's Sister)

(Move show position forward to 01:00:50)

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Was Dr. Robert Schwartz Murdered in an

HHMI secluded Farmhouse?

There are still so many questions regarding the "flurry" of deaths of major scientific researchers in the span of a few weeks.

Dr. Wiley was associated with Howard Hughes Med. Inst. lab at Harvard. Dr. Robert Schwartz founded the Virginia Center for Innovative Technology. He was also responsible for grant funding of various research projects. Va. Center for Innovative Technology is also affiliated with Va. Biotech Association.

It was reported that Dr. Robert Schwartz was murdered in a secluded farmhouse outside of Leesberg, Loudon County, Va. Was this the same HHMI farmhouse?

I have been going over archive news reports and found the following that is of interest.

Also, in 1996 Dr. Tsunao Saitoh world class scientist, CJD, Alzheimer Disease neurological researcher was murdered along with his daughter in what LaJolla police call a very professional hit. Dr. Saitoh had been associated with HHMI, Columbia Univ. lab before taking a position at UCSD.

In 1994, Jose Trias and his wife were murdered in their Chevy Chase, Md. home. They had met with a friend and journalist the day before their murder. They told him that they planned to come foward and divulge HHMI funding of "special ops" research. Grant money that comes (as they put it) in the front door of HHMI, but is diverted "out the back door" to special black ops research projects.

What research was going on at the HHMI farmhouse? Was there a lab there as well as offices? Was Dr. Schwartz expertise in DNA sequencing being used in HHMI special research? What about Dr. Wiley's expertise i.e. infectivity and immunity of viruses, bacterias and mycoplasmas?

Patricia Doyle, PhD

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Loudon Facility a Major Shift for Hughes Medical Institute

By Rob Terry,

Washington Techway

Thursday, February 1, 2001; 3:17 PM

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute's planned computational biology center in Loudoun County has the potential to bring Northern Virginia a newfound visibility in life sciences research, and not just because of HHMI's endowment and worldwide reputation.It also represents a major shift in HHMI operations, a first-of-its-kind, stand-alone, research-and-development outpost that will bring 200 to 300 scientists, and possibly up to 500 total jobs, when construction is complete.

At least 500,000 square feet of space is planned for the 281-acre site, bordered by the Potomac River to the north and Route 7 to the south. Initial construction, to begin in 2003 and be completed in 2005, calls for laboratories for up to 24 investigators, plus their staff. Lab space and housing will be available for visiting researchers, scientific support teams and administrators, as well.

One HHMI executive likens the center's concept to that of Bell Labs, AT&T's famed research and development institution (now the R&D arm of Lucent), home of such seminal inventions as the transistor, the laser and communications satellites. The modern history of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute began in 1984.

A new board of trustees was appointed to oversee the scientific and philanthropic organization created by reclusive aviation-industrial magnate Howard Hughes. The board decided to sell the organization's primary asset, the Hughes Aircraft Co., to General Motors for $5 billion.

The sale was a strategic shift that set in motion a chain of events bringing HHMI to its current place of prominence as the nation's largest private medical research organization, with an endowment of $13 billion. Currently, 3,000 scientists lead 350 research groups at 72 sites through partnerships with host institutions, focusing on six primary areas: cell biology, genetics, immunology, neuroscience, structural biology and computational biology.

HHMI funds each investigator an average of $600,000 to $1.5 million annually, then largely leaves them alone. Institute investigators - which in the past included HHMI President Thomas Cech when he was at the University of Colorado, where he still runs his lab, and Gerald Rubin, HHMI's vice president for biomedical research and a genetics professor and an HHMI investigator at the University of California, Berkeley - praise the freedom and lack of bureaucracy.

HHMI also distributes about $100 million a year on science education grants.

Reported by Washington Techway,

http://www.washtech.com/washtechway

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Hughes Medical Institute Boosts Virginia's Biotech Vision

By Rob Terry,

Washington Techway Staff Writer

Thursday, February 1, 2001; 9:05 AM

On Jan. 25, about 20 members of Virginia's nascent biotechnology community gathered in a seventh-floor conference room at the Center for Innovative Technology for lunch, once again chewing over the vision. Three speakers outlined a future of medicine and science radically impacted by genomics discoveries and powerful computing tools. And again the underlying subtext, the tantalizing scenario that hadn't quite come to pass over the last several years, was the same: What would spur Northern Virginia's emergence as a biotech hub, a center of research prominence capable of spinning off groundbreaking startups?

The official announcement made one week later could set those wheels in motion: The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the largest private biomedical research organization in the United States, will build a $500 million campus in Ashburn devoted to bioinformatics and other advancements in computational biology.

"Northern Virginia has always been trying to get their toehold in biotech," said Walt Plosila, vice president with Battelle Memorial Institute in Cleveland, and former director of the High Technology Council of Maryland. "This certainly would be a major anchor for them."

Virginia is currently home to about 160 life science companies, roughly 65 of which are in Northern Virginia. Maryland has about 255 life science companies. The choice of Loudoun County - HHMI bought the Janelia Farm site in December for $53.7 million - represents for Northern Virginia probably the region's greatest biotech coup since American Type Culture Collection announced in 1994 it would leave Rockville for Manassas and become Virginia's largest biotech company.

The 10-year project in many ways underscores the unique nature of Chevy Chase, Md.-based HHMI, and the enormous advantages and resources available to it. With such a huge endowment - $13 billion - and such a stable of scientific talent, clustering, economic incentives and the like are the least of HHMI's concerns.

And Loudoun County will get to reap the benefits. County officials may be praising their good fortune - much the way Montgomery County officials give thanks for the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, without which there would be no "DNA Alley" up the Interstate 270 corridor - for years to come.

"We think it could have substantial impact," said HHMI President Thomas Cech, a 1989 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry who took the reins at the institute last January. "As soon as people know the Howard Hughes Medical Institute is located there, and especially [with] this kind of activity. I mean, we're going to be bringing a lot of the most exciting scientists in the country, who will be passing through there every year. We're going to have all of our scientific meetings out there at the farm [Janelia Farm is the name of the site] instead of having them here at headquarters. There will be I think a lot of opportunity for collaboration."

While small biotech clusters have formed in Blacksburg, Charlottsville and Roanoke, efforts in Northern Virginia have suffered through fits and starts. Entrepreneurial energy, and available capital, was channeled into dot.coms, information technology and Internet infrastructure companies.

Biotech companies were expected to cluster around American Type Culture Collection at Innovation@Prince William, a tech park outside Manassas. George Mason University's School of Computational Sciences is there as well but otherwise shares space with chip maker Dominion Semiconductor and Lockheed Martin.

The perception of Northern Virginia as a biotech hub just hasn't quite caught on, said Jerry Coughter, biotechnology director for the Virginia Center for Innovative Technology.

"[The HHMI project] is perfect for us because nobody wants to do the 10-year, $500 million investment in biopharmaceuticals. Particularly around here, where you're used to Internet time," he said.

Travis Sample, a professor of business administration at Shenandoah University who, along with colleague Jim Wong has a business plan on how to position the region as a bioinformatics hub, said the HHMI center's impact "is going to be bigger than AOL," largely because of the region's Web and IT dominance.

"It wouldn't have happened three years ago here, because of the infrastructure. We're ready now," he said.

For HHMI this newest strategic shift, in the works over the past year, will put HHMI at the forefront of cutting-edge bioinformatics discovery.

Cech and his management team had to figure out how the institute could get the greatest impact out of the healthy annual return the endowment was providing: Should they funnel an extra $50 million into funding roughly 50 more investigators? Or would bringing on those investigators create additional layers of administration and change the character of the institute?

"We felt we could probably do something that would take greater advantage of the institute's flexibility," said Gerald Rubin, HHMI's vice president for biomedical research.

Cech wants the new center to be a catalyst for new avenues of HHMI scientific collaboration and information sharing.

"It's a completely new concept for us and we think it's completely new for the country," Cech said. "The subject material that we're going to be tapping is not unique. There are many other institutions that have recognized that making more of an investment in imaging, proteomics and bioinformatics is the way to go over the next 10 to 20 years. So we overlap a lot in those concepts with what's being done at Berkeley and Stanford and Harvard and Princeton and other places.

"What I think is unique is this emphasis on dissemination of information to the community. Instead of it being a competitive situation, where we're building this to get a leg up on our competitors, the opposite of that is we're building this to increase everyone's competitiveness, in terms of solving problems rather than competing with each other, and trying to have as open and sharing a mode of operation as possible."

HHMI management, with the help of commercial developer Mark Winkler Co. in Alexandria, narrowed their search to about six sites using a basic criteria: They wanted the center to be an hour's drive from headquarters in Chevy Chase, on a site at least 100 acres and no more than an hour's drive to an airport. They wanted plenty of space, "to be on a piece of land large enough where we could control the environment," said Rubin.

That factor worked against Montgomery County. Space is running out in DNA Alley. The Janelia Farm site, on the other hand, is eight miles from Dulles International Airport.

"I would have preferred something closer," Rubin, a Montgomery County resident, noted with a laugh. "We wouldn't have been very happy with the site Celera [Genomics, at a busy Rockville intersection] is on, which is very nice. We need something bigger."

Plosila, who vividly remembers Montgomery County's emergence as a biotech center and the contest to keep American Type Culture Collection from leaving, knows full well the impact major research institutions have on geographic areas developing that all-important critical mass of high-tech companies. Northern Virginia, he notes, traded on its Department of Defense

contacts to become known as an IT and Internet hub. NIH fueled Maryland's biotech ascension. And an NIH-affiliated research center, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, combined with IBM to help put Research Triangle in North Carolina on the map.

"This could help create a cluster, clearly on the bioinformatics side," Plosila said. Promising bioinformatics startups like LabBook in McLean are already mining reams of biological data. And American Type Culture Collection has launched a bioinformatics sciences program.

"I don't think the significance of the Hughes thing can be overstated," said CIT's Coughter. "It works on so many levels. The first thing is it brings some prominence. . You can start to change the mindset. Look at how long it's taken people to get used to the idea of going to Frederick," he added, pointing to the rural Maryland city now home to manufacturing centers for MedImmune and Invitrogen.

It's a prominence that Leslie Platt, head of a McLean-based Ernst & Young health sciences group, asked everyone seated in the seventh-floor conference room to imagine at the Jan. 25 CIT lunch.

"Look out the window here," said Platt, scanning the construction cranes dotting the skyline and the traffic streaming up and down the Dulles Toll Road. "This is meltdown central for the next information technology revolution."

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Building the 'Bell Labs' of Biology

By Terence Chea,

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, February 1, 2001

Since its founding almost 50 years ago, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, one of the world's premier research organizations, has been an institute without walls. With headquarters in Chevy Chase, the institute employs a select group of more than 350 leading scientists who work out of laboratories at more than 70 "host" universities and research institutions scattered around the country.

Now for the first time the institute is laying out plans to create its own research complex, to be built on 281 acres of picturesque farmland in rural Loudoun County. The institute, which purchased the property known as the Janelia Farm in December, will announce today plans to spend $500 million over the next 10 years to construct a research campus where scientists from all walks of academic life can gather to contemplate some of the most vexing problems of biology and medical science.

Howard Hughes officials say the new research center will initially focus on the emerging field of computational biology, also known as bioinformatics, which taps the power of computers to interpret vast quantities of biological data from projects such as the mapping of the human genome.

"We think the next decade will see a massive explosion in this area," said Thomas R. Cech, the institute's president. "These are brand-new fields that have very few practitioners now, but everybody sees it as the wave of the future."

Launched in 1953 by Howard Hughes, the founder of Hughes Aircraft Co., the institute is one of the world's largest private medical research organizations, with an endowment of more than $12 billion and an annual budget of $667 million. After the federal government, it spends more money on basic biomedical research than any other organization.

The idea for the new research center was hatched not long after Cech, a Nobel laureate and Howard Hughes scientist for 12 years, took over as the institute's president about a year ago. Cech and other institute officials wanted to create an environment in which scientists are free to dream up new ideas.

"Some say it sounds like the Bell Labs of biology," Cech said, referring to the research organization that invented the transistor, the laser and other pervasive technologies. "People are freed from the constraints of having to write research grants. They're given generous support and are free to invent and think up new ways of solving these problems."

When the research facilities are finished, institute officials hope to attract a mixture of biologists, chemists, computer scientists and other specialists who can pool their expertise to create cutting-edge technologies that answer the future needs of biomedical research.

Initial plans call for the construction of a laboratory research facility and housing complex, which are scheduled to be completed by 2005. The institute will later announce plans for other facilities, which may include a science education center, Cech said.

The institute plans to hire a permanent staff of 24 chief scientists, their research staffs and administrative personnel, totaling about 300 employees, who will work at the new campus. The institute will also invite up to 24 visiting scientists, who can live and work on campus for weeks to years at a time. The new facility will be open to both Howard Hughes researchers and outside scientists with ideas for innovative projects.

The research center will be built in Ashburn, about four miles east of Leesburg and eight miles from Washington Dulles International Airport. The property was purchased for $53.7 million. It is a rustic piece of land, bounded by the Potomac River to the north and Virginia Route 7 to the south, that is home to a historic Normandy-style manor house as well as three recently-completed office buildings.

Although the institute does not harbor its own commercial ambitions, Cech said it has the potential to stimulate the local biotechnology industry. Across the country, many biotech companies have been founded based on discoveries made by Howard Hughes researchers.

"Clearly, it benefits the region," said John Holaday, chairman and chief executive of Rockville biotechnology firm EntreMed Inc. and chairman of the Maryland Bioscience Alliance, a not-for-profit organization that promotes Maryland's biotech industry. "The name Howard Hughes itself evokes excellence."

Although the center plans to first concentrate on the field of computational biology, Cech said the center's focus could change as the demands of biomedical research change.

"This is a very rapidly moving landscape of opportunity and we want to be at the very forefront of it," Cech said.

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Washinton Techway / Washington Post Links:

Hughes Medical Institute Boosts Virginia's Biotech Vision

http://www.washtech.com/news/biotech/7128-1.html

Loudon Facility a Major Shift for Hughes Medical Institute

http://www.washtech.com/news/biotech/7129-1.html

Building the 'Bell Labs' of Biology

http://www.washtech.com/news/biotech/7126-1.html

http://www.stormtronic.co.uk/9-11/schwartz-hhmi.htm

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Missing Scientist Found Dead in Mississippi River

(Reuters) (site down 02/22/02)

The body of a Harvard scientist missing for more than a month since his rental car was left parked on a bridge over the Mississippi River has been found downstream, police said

Workers at a hydroelectric plant in Louisiana found the body of Don Wiley on Thursday, about 300 miles south of where the molecular biologist was last seen on Nov. 18 at a medical meeting in Memphis

Police identify body found in Mississippi River as missing scientist

December 22, 2001 Posted: 5:42 PM EST (2242 GMT)

MEMPHIS, Tennessee (CNN) -- Police on Saturday identified a body discovered in the Mississippi River this week as that of a Harvard University biochemist, missing for more than a month.

The body of Don Wiley, 57, was found Thursday in the waters of a hydroelectric plant along the river near Vidalia, Louisiana, across from Natchez, Mississippi, said Memphis Police Director Walter Crews.

"Identification on the body was that of Dr. Don Wiley," he said.

The medical examiner confirmed the identity through dental records, according to Memphis Police Lt. Walter Norris. "However, the medical examiner has not released the cause of death," Norris said.

The renowned biochemist disappeared in the early morning hours of November 16 in Memphis. He had gone there to attend a scientific meeting at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and to visit family.

At 4 that morning, his rental car was found abandoned on the Hernando de Soto Bridge that spans the Mississippi River. The car doors were unlocked, and the key was in the ignition. The car's gas tank was full. Wiley had not been heard from since then.

"We began this investigation as a missing person investigation," Crews said. "From there it went to a more criminal bent. We've deferred it to homicide in the event there is some criminal activity."

Wiley was considered one of the world's leading researchers of deadly viruses -- among them AIDS and the Ebola virus.

Ebola is a highly contagious disease that kills 50 percent to 80 percent of its victims. There is no vaccine.

Memphis police said there is nothing to suggest the doctor's expertise had anything to do with his disappearance. His family said it is out of the question that the successful researcher would commit suicide.

Dr. William Evans from St. Jude said that hours before Wiley vanished he appeared upbeat and happy during a banquet at the Peabody Hotel.

http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/12/22/missing.scientist/

==================================================

Professor Don C. Wiley

Harvard biochemistry professor Don C. Wiley has been declared missing after his abandoned rental car was discovered on a highway outside of Memphis, Tenn. The car, discovered on Interstate 40—which runs between Memphis and Arkansas—had the keys in the ignition, the hazard lights off and a full tank of gas.

Scientist's disappearance confounds police

November 28, 2001 Posted: 12:35 PM EST (1735 GMT)

From Martin Savidge

CNN

MEMPHIS, Tennessee (CNN) -- Dr. Don C. Wiley went to Memphis to attend a scientific meeting at St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital and to visit family. But in the early hours of November 16, the renowned Harvard University biochemist disappeared.

Now Memphis police are exploring several theories involving suicide, robbery and murder. They also wonder if the disappearance could be connected to his expertise.

"We began this investigation as a missing person investigation," said Walter Crews of the Memphis Police Department. "From there it went to a more criminal bent."

At 4 a.m., the 57-year-old's rental car was found abandoned on the Hernando de Soto Bridge that spans the Mississippi River. The car doors were unlocked, the key still in the ignition, the tank full. He hasn't been heard from since.

Wiley is seen as one of the world's leading researchers of deadly viruses, including HIV and the Ebola virus.

The case worries U.S. investigators because Dr. Wiley specializes in dangerous viruses. CNN's Martin Savidge reports (November 28)

Ebola is one of the most frightening diseases known to man. It's highly contagious, killing 50 to 80 percent of its victims, and there's no vaccine. Some nations outside the United States reportedly have experimented with the virus as a possible weapon of war or terror.

Memphis police say there is nothing to suggest the doctor's disappearance has anything to do with his background, but his family says it is just as out of the question he committed suicide. Married with two young children, he was at the pinnacle of his career.

He was last seen at a banquet at the Peabody Hotel in downtown Memphis the night he vanished. Those who saw him last say he showed no signs of a man contemplating his own death.

"It's inconceivable to us who were with Don that night and the day before that there was any possibility he would do any harm to himself," said Dr. William Evans of St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital. "We've simply dismissed that as a possibility."

Wiley left the hotel around midnight. The bridge where his car was found is only a five-minute drive away and in the wrong direction from where he was staying, leaving authorities with a four-hour, unexplained gap until his vehicle was found.

Police, who are scanning surveillance tapes from late-night convenience stores and gas stations, say there are a number of interesting elements to Wiley's disappearance, not the least of which is his background.

http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/11/28/missing.scientist/index.html

HAS PROFESSOR WILEY BEEN "DISAPPEARED"?

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/wiley.html

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Published on Tuesday, December 04, 2001

Memphis Police Got Late Start On Wiley Search

Slow weekend could have cost investigators key evidence

By DANIEL K. ROSENHECK and ELISABETH S. THEODORE

Crimson Staff Writers

MEMPHIS—Memphis police waited four days after Harvard professor Don C. Wiley’s disappearance to launch a full investigation into explanations other than suicide, possibly losing crucial evidence.

Both Wiley’s sister-in-law and a Memphis police officer familiar with the investigation said the preliminary police inquiry—handled by the police department’s Missing Persons bureau—did not include the forensic tests and area canvassing conducted by Homicide bureau detectives when they took over the case four days later.

Wiley, Harvard’s Loeb professor of biophysics and biochemistry, was last seen after a banquet at the Peabody Hotel in downtown Memphis on midnight Nov. 15. His rental car was found abandoned on a bridge over the Mississippi River four hours later.

Susan Wiley, Wiley’s sister-in-law, said Missing Persons investigators told her the day after the disappearance that they were only actively investigating suicide at that point.

When she urged them to explore other possibilities and dust the abandoned rental car for fingerprints, she said she was told, “Let us do our job.”

“They certainly weren’t beating the bushes,” she said. “I don’t think they did much. I have absolute faith in the people investigating it now.”

Missing Persons is a branch of the Memphis Police Department’s (MPD) general assignment bureau. “[They] seldom get out of the office. [They] make telephone calls and put information in the computer,” the MPD officer said.

The Missing Persons bureau does not do the field work that characterizes the Homicide bureau.

The MPD officer familiar with the investigation said the department’s heightened response and the shift to Homicide were a direct result of pressure from Harvard and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which sponsored the convention Wiley attended Nov. 15.

“It was transferred from [MPD’s Missing Persons bureau] to Homicide because it was a high-profile case,” the officer said.

Susan Wiley said police told her they made the switch because Homicide had more manpower than Missing Persons, and MPD spokesperson Latanya Able said the bureaus frequently worked together.

Able said that the homicide department conducted forensic tests on Wiley’s car when they took over the case. By this time, the car had been handled and removed from the bridge.

Able would not comment on the results of the tests, but Susan Wiley said that police told her they found just two partial fingerprints.

Tests are rarely done at the scene of the crime without signs of foul play, according to the MPD officer. But Susan Wiley said that Sgt. Robert Shemwell, the homicide detective in contact with the family, told her that the car’s missing hubcap and the yet-unexplained streaks of yellow paint on its bumper indicated that, even at first sight, the disappearance was not a clear-cut suicide.

Tennessee Department of Transportation official Bob Parrish said that the car, parked in a construction zone on the Hernando de Soto Bridge, was moved promptly, letting construction work continue the next morning.

A half-inch of rain also fell in Memphis Nov. 19, the day before homicide detectives took over.

According to James Burke, a state-certified private investigator in Boston, any precipitation could have compromised forensic evidence on the bridge and its railings. Wiley would have had to climb over the bridge’s high railings in order to jump off, MPD spokesperson Richard True said.

Within days of taking over the case, homicide detectives also scanned surveillance videos at local stores for evidence of Wiley’s activity after he left the hotel, put up posters with Wiley’s picture and interviewed Peabody employees, conference attendees and others in the area around midnight on Nov. 15.

According to True, the department has assigned three full-time detectives to work exclusively on the Wiley case and can add more as needed.

Able stressed that Wiley is still being investigated as a missing person, not a suicide.

But the MPD officer said, “We probably know where he is right now, but no one wants to believe us. Ninety-nine percent of abandoned cars we find, [the drivers] go in the river.”

Able, who took over responsibility as the MPD spokesperson on the Wiley case yesterday, declined to comment on any of the evidence Susan Wiley says Shemwell discussed with her.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=160979

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Published on Friday, November 30, 2001

Colleagues Doubt Wiley Suicide Theory

Memphis police fail to turn up additional leads in disappearence

By JENIFER L. STEINHARDT

Contributing Writer

Two days after the Memphis police declared Loeb Professor of Biophysics and Biochemistry Don C. Wiley likely to have committed suicide, colleagues of the professor, now missing for 15 days, have expressed doubt that he took his own life.

Hidde Ploegh, Mallinckrodt professor of immunopathology, said that despite the police department’s statements yesterday, he is not convinced that Wiley committed suicide.

“What the police say is one thing, and what happened, I don’t think anyone knows,” he said. “I think there are no new facts to shed light on [the situation] and anything people add should be labeled as speculation.”

Since Wiley’s disappearance, rumors have circulated that he was perhaps distraught about not winning the Nobel Prize in 1996, when two scientists working on similar research received the award.

Jack L. Strominger, Higgins professor of biochemistry at Harvard who shared the Lasker Award in 1995 and the Japan Prize in 1999 with Wiley, said that “from everything I know, there is no possibility that he committed suicide.”

The Lasker Award is awarded to clinical scientists annually and is considered “a precursor to receiving the Nobel Prize,” said Philippa Marrack, a professor of immunology at the National Jewish Medical Center and an investigator with Wiley for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Since 1962, more than half of those who won the Lasker Award went on to receive the Nobel Prize, most within two years of receiving the Lasker.

The year after Wiley received the Lasker Award, the Nobel Prize went to scientists Peter Doherty and Rolf Zinkerngel who had shared the Lasker Award with Wiley in 1995.

They had done earlier but similar work to Wiley’s on immunology, said William Evans, deputy director at St. Jude’s Hospital which hosted the banquet in Memphis where Wiley was last seen.

A total of five people, including Wiley, were conducting the research, and only two of the five were awarded the Nobel Prize.

Marrack said she believes Wiley knew why the two recipients were selected.

“The Nobel Prize that year was given for biological discoveries rather than the structural solutions [which Wiley worked with],” said Marrack, a colleague of Wiley’s for more than 15 years.

Marrack said she never discussed the 1996 Nobel Prize with Wiley but emphasized that he wasn’t the only candidate not to receive the Nobel Prize that year.

“It wasn’t just Don Wiley; there were others, and they didn’t throw themselves off bridges,” said Marrack.

Marrack said she does not believe Wiley committed suicide.

“He didn’t seem to be a person who would do that, not under any circumstances, and especially in his father’s town. He cared about his family,” she said.

James Davis, a colleague of Wiley’s and head tutor for the Chemistry Department, said he doesn’t “know anymore what to think.”

“I walked across campus with Don three weeks ago, and he seemed as cheery-eyed as ever,” he said. “I’m mystified. It’s extremely hard to believe that he would take his own life, given what people know about his personality and sunny disposition.”

Evans said that at the conference in Memphis where Wiley was last seen the scientists did not discuss this year’s Nobel Prizes, whose recipients have already been announced and will receive their awards on Dec. 10 in Stockholm.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=160940

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Published on Monday, December 03, 2001

Wiley’s Family Says Suicide Highly Unlikely

Family considers hiring a private investigator to search for clues

By DANIEL K. ROSENHECK and ELISABETH S. THEODORE

Crimson Staff Writer

MEMPHIS—While police have emphasized the possibility that missing Harvard professor Don C. Wiley committed suicide, Wiley’s family members said Saturday that investigators have told them there is no evidence besides his rental car—found abandoned on a bridge—to support that theory.

“I hate that suicide keeps getting brought up as the possibility rather than one of many,” Wiley’s sister-in-law, Susan Wiley, said in her home Saturday. “I just don’t think he committed suicide.”

Wiley, Loeb Professor of Biophysics and Biochemistry, was last seen at midnight Nov. 15 at the banquet for a scientific meeting in Memphis.

There were no signs of foul play when his car was found on the Hernando de Soto Bridge—over the Mississippi River—four hours later.

Memphis Police Department (MPD) Lt. Richard True, the department’s spokesperson for the Wiley case, said last week that based on past cases with similar evidence, “indications are [Wiley] parked the car on the bridge and took his own life.”

But Susan Wiley said that Sgt. Robert Shemwell, an investigator on the case, stressed to her after True’s comments were published that the MPD was treating the disappearance as a missing persons case rather than a suicide. The MPD prohibits investigators from commenting publicly, and recently directed supervisors on the case to reroute all inquiries to True.

Family and colleagues who saw Wiley right before his disappearance agree that his behavior was pl