UBBOCK, Tex., Nov. 6 — In the first four days of the
trial of a Texas Tech professor accused of lying to federal agents when he
reported that cultures of plague bacteria were missing from his laboratory
in January, federal prosecutors have argued that the professor
deliberately contrived the story to distract university investigators
closing in on ethical and financial improprieties in his research.
Until now, the prosecutors had not spelled out how they planned to tie
together the 69 seemingly disparate counts, which include lying, smuggling
and fraud, or offered their theory about why the professor, Thomas C.
Butler, might have lied about the missing vials.
The case started as a bioterrorism scare, but now encompasses
university research policies, the correct way to fill out shipping forms
for biological materials and the propriety of what prosecutors called
"shadow contracts" between Dr. Butler and drug companies.
"Things were not as rosy at Texas Tech as you might think for a tenured
professor," Robert Webster, a United States attorney, told the jury during
opening arguments on Monday in the Federal District Court here. "As a
matter of fact, Dr. Butler was in trouble."
The university's institutional review board, which ensures the safety
of clinical research, had suspended him from all such research involving
humans last November. That would include the plague bacteria, because they
were grown from samples taken from patients in Tanzania, prosecutors said.
Meanwhile, auditors had been trying to meet with Dr. Butler to inquire
about the financing of his studies, but Dr. Butler had been stonewalling,
prosecutors said.
Dr. LaJean Chaffin, associate vice president for research at the
university, sent Dr. Butler a letter on Jan. 9 reaffirming the suspension.
That pressure, prosecutors say, led Dr. Butler to "lash out" at Texas
Tech.
Four days later, on Jan. 13, Dr. Butler, the chief of the infectious
diseases division at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center,
reported to the laboratory safety officer that 30 of 180 vials of plague
were missing. Dr. Butler "requested that law enforcement not be
contacted," Mr. Webster said.
"It's telling," Mr. Webster added. "He wanted to throw a monkey wrench
in the internal affairs of Texas Tech."
The next evening, 60 F.B.I. agents searched for the missing vials. On
Jan. 15, Dr. Butler signed a handwritten affidavit saying he had actually
accidentally destroyed the vials. He was then arrested.
Yesterday, lawyers for Dr. Butler showed an e-mail message from him
saying that he was interested in moving to the University of Texas in
Galveston and that he was on the verge of receiving a two-year grant from
the Food and Drug Administration for his plague research. The defense
lawyers questioned why Dr. Butler would endanger his career by lying about
missing plague.
In cross-examination, Texas Tech police officers and agents for the
Federal Bureau of Investigation agreed with Dr. Butler's defense lawyers
that he had cooperated.
The defense also argued that the university had been aware of the
plague research, that the Board of Regents had approved Dr. Butler's
sabbatical in 2001 to work in Tanzania on the plague, and that a
university committee had approved his laboratory for plague research.
Also at issue are numerous contracts in which drug companies split the
payment for clinical trials between Texas Tech and Dr. Butler. University
officials were unaware of the contracts with Dr. Butler. The university
typically takes 20 percent of the money for overhead costs.
One prosecutor, Michael Snipes, said the arrangement meant that "in
effect, the defendant is being paid twice for the same work."
Defense lawyers contended that the second contract could be considered
consulting work, which was allowed by the university.
Dr. Butler is also charged with shipping plague samples without the
proper permits and illegally bringing the samples back from Tanzania.
He had driven samples in his car to two federal laboratories:
an office of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Fort
Collins, Colo., and the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious
Diseases in Maryland.
Yesterday, a defense lawyer, Charles Meadows, introduced e-mail
messages from researchers at the two laboratories acknowledging Dr.
Butler's plans before his trips. The messages did not tell him that under
new regulations, he could not do that.
The case has drawn protests from the scientific community. On Monday,
four Nobel Prize winners — Dr. Peter Agre of Johns Hopkins University;
Torsten Wiesel, a former president of Rockefeller University; Sidney
Altman of Yale University; and Robert Curl of Rice University — issued a
statement strongly critical of the prosecution.
The four said: "Rather than demonstrating the importance of strict care
in the handling of research materials — something that all right-minded
scientists appreciate — the determination to convict Dr. Butler and put
him in jail sends a strong message to the scientific community that runs
counter to the best interests of our country and scientific research."
