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off from Dar-es Salaam, Tanzania, American microbiologist Thomas Butler had some time to reflect on his rising fortunes. Stowed in the plane’s belly was a footlocker containing carefully packed specimens from more than 60 Tanzanian bubonic plague victims. His journal was full of data—painstakingly hand copied from hospital records—that detailed how the patients had responded to a new anti- biotic. The 2002 clinical trial was a scientif- ic coup, and Butler believed that the results, once published in a top-tier medical journal, would help solidify a nervous nation’s de- fenses against bioterror. Not incidentally, they would also send his 30-year career in an exciting new direction. In 1969, as a young Navy researcher in Vietnam, Butler had become fascinated by plague—the “Black Death” that had once decimated European populations but was now largely confined to remote, impover- ished parts of the world such as Tanzania. He soon moved on to other dis But now, Butler, 60, was reunited with scientific love. After three visits to Tanzania, Butler was on the verge of becoming perhaps the United States’ hottest plague scientist. The work would confirm his reputation as a can-do researcher known for getting re- sults under even the most primitive condi- S itting on an airplane preparing to take is first 2054 HEREIN 1 DATE 12-12- tions. Other scientists were increasingly interested in his efforts, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was prac- tically begging him to apply for a $700,000 research grant. “How many peo- ple have a world expert in plague just-an e-mail away?” Butler had bragged in a message‘to an FDA official. The demand for Butler’s talents couldn’t have come at a better time. After 15 years at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock, Butler was feeling frustrated and exhausted by an increasing- ly bitter battle with schoo] administrators over his clinical research and financial dealings. The idea of leaving Lubbock had crossed his mind, and the results of the Tanzanian trial promised to make him more attractive to other institutio ‘Yet, as he stared at other jets taxiing on the tarmac on the morning of 14 April 2002, the veteran clinician also mulled some po- tential problems, he noted in his journal. Among them were the “challenges of get- ting organisms back” into the United States, he wrote. The rules had tightened drastically since Butler had last encountered plague in Brazil in the late 1970s. A British colleague had even warmed him “that in the UK. you be arrested for bringing in pathogens?” Butler wrote. Butler would soon learn that U.S, author- ities could be just as aggressive as their Ul Thomas Butler was a sought-after plague expert, with a clinical trial in Tanzania that promised important results for biodefense. Then he was charged with mishandling plague samples and lying to the FBI. This month, a jury convicted him of financial wrongdoing. Who is Thomas Butler, and what lessons do his trials hold? The Trials of : Thomas Butler British counterparts. On 15 January, 2 days” after reporting that 30 vials of plague bacte- ria were missing from his lab, Butler was shackled and thrown into a Lubbock jail, charged with lying to federal agents about the fate of the vials and illegally importing the Tanzanian samples into the country. At that moment, “my stomach froze in my chest,” Butler said later, Seven months after his arrest, the govern- ment indicted Butler on 69 charges. In addi- tion to allegations that he had mishandled the plague samples, prosecutors acoused him of defiauding his university of clinical trial fees and cheating on his taxes. Butler’s prosecu- tion became a cause célébre for those who felt that the government was using him to scare scientists into obeying strict new bioterror-prevention laws. They urged the government to drop the case, predicting that it would drive researchers out of biodefense research and undermine national security. But on 1 December, a jury convicted Butler on 47 counts, He faces up to 240 years in jail and millions of dollars in fines. How Butler went from hot property to convicted felon is a tangled tale. It reveals a scientist who was able to pull off what others couldn’t, as well as one whose pen- chant for cutting comers ultimately ruined his career and fortune. The jury’s some- times puzzling verdict, however, sends anything but a clear message. 19 DECEMBER 2003 VOL302 SCIENCE wwwasciencemag.org [CREDIT IM WATYINS/LUBBOCK AVALANCHEJOURNAUAP (CREDIT: GARY CAUGLER/PHOTO RESEARCHERS INC,