Here's the photograph of Wiley that accompanied the article from Der Spiegel:
I think I might have seen one or two other photos when I went to his web site a few days go.
Posted on 11/27/2001 1:30:04 PM PST by Mitchell
[This is translated from German into English by Google. I fixed the machine translation slightly, for clarity. Click on the Der Spiegel link above for the original German.]
FEAR OF TERROR IN THE USA
Eleven days ago, American Harvard professor Don Wiley disappeared. The point: Wiley is an expert on deadly viruses. Speculations over an abduction by terrorists become loud. But the FBI gives itself still left.
Boston - On 16 November, Don Wiley's car was found, on a bridge over the Mississippi close of the city Memphis in threshing floor lake. The key was there, but the driver was not to be seen. Had he fallen himself into the river?
Hardly anyone believes in this suicide theory in the USA. First of all there are for it no proofs, and secondly Don Wiley is a famous scientist, prominent expert in the area of dangerous viruses such as Ebola. On eve of the daily, at which one discovered the car, it had held still another lecture on its special field. There it lies near that upon a connection in terrorism one speculates.
Was the Harvard professor kidnapped by terrorists, who want to use his knowledge? Or does the 57-year-old make common cause with terrorists? Those are questions, which are placed now before the American public - and allegedly also the federal police FBI places itself.
"Terrorists will be very disappointed"
"Wiley's field of activity and the spleen arson [anthrax?] attacks make the case very interesting for us", quote the "Bild" newspaper for the FBI Ermittler William Woerner. But the "New York Times" appoints itself evenly to this Ermittler and reports, the FBI introduced still no official investigation of the case.
The renowned American daily paper lets besides Gregory Verdine to word come, who is likewise a biochemist in Harvard. "If terrorists have kidnapped Wiley, they will be very disappointed", says Verdine. "His research consisted always of studying the components from viruses to - and helps one not really to manufacture still more dangerous versions of a virus."
"There is no logical explanation, and exactly with it I have a problem", says Wiley's wife, Katrin Valgeirsdottir. She is only sure herself that her husband did not take his own life. Family problems it did not give, to just as little as financial. As the "New York Times" reports, the police of Memphis in the Mississippi looked also in vain for a corpse.
Before his disappearance, the virus expert is to have gone still to Joggen. Wiley was obvious with the car on the way to his brother, who lives in Memphis. At the vortag colleagues heard him talk still about the fact that he wanted to drive on the next day with his two children to a river, where they could drive their remote-controlled boats.
I keep seeing Wiley characterized in the media as an ebola expert, but I'm not sure that that's really true. I have the impression that he does basic reseach in biology, a small part of which happened to have involved ebola.
The famous American daily reached Gregory Verdine for comment.
Here's the photograph of Wiley that accompanied the article from Der Spiegel:
I think I might have seen one or two other photos when I went to his web site a few days go.
I'm deeply concerned about this disappearance...
Behind In The Biowar (Antrax Expert Disappeance Mystery, Death of Another Top Expert,etc)
Yes. It is incredibly exasperating.
He is an expert in protein structure. He is one of the formeost, if not the world's foremost, structural biologist. He determines the structures of proteins which is essentially doing physics on biological samples.
He has determined the structures of so many proteins from different species and systems including the immune system, flu virus, a protein from ebola I guess as well.
But the way he is presented as some sort of expert microbiologist who would have bio-weapon wizardry or secret knowledge is so off the mark it is astounding.
True. I guess from what I've read I would have described him as an expert on the mechanics of the initial stages of viral infection in humans. He specializes in how virus proteins initiate an infection and how human proteins produce an immune response.
I believe he has studied this process (the first stages in viral infections) in a number of different viruses (including, I think, Ebola). To me, this is different from saying that he is a specialist in Ebola, which implies a study of the full course of that disease specifically.
I'm not an expert in this field, though, so I could easily be misjudging the nature of his research.
Yes, Milzbrand = anthrax
I concur that it can not have simply disappeared itself. Something here smells like the Danish fish.
Now my mind is real fuzzy here, the book could have been fictionalized truth, or true or fiction. It may or may not have been banned. (This memory comes from listening to a talk show for a few minutes one afternoon 15-20 years ago)
It seems also that I have heard somewhere during those years that a rash of scientists either here in the US or in Britian were being kidnapped, or just disappeared with no trace....
Anyone remember such a scenario?
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