Another Side to today’s Story?

By now I am sure most of you have heard the news reports about Dr Bruce Ivins’ death. What some of you may not have known is that we were expecting a lot more people out of Ft Detrick at BioBeers Wednesday. Only a few people showed up. One person I had not met before told me that everyone on campus was basically mourning and the campus was “like a funeral home”.

He told me that this was due to the news that Bruce had died. From the emotion and passion he conveyed in the brief couple minutes we sat around talking about the circumstances of Dr Ivins’ death, it was obvious to me that Dr Ivins was a man of integrity who commanded tremendous respect both as a person and for his tremendous body of work (last publication on July 7, 2008 in Antimicrob Agents Chemother).

He was a civil servant, a man of science dedicated to learning and understanding how this particular, nasty little microbe works and how to protect mammals from it’s devastating and terminal affects. In 2003, Dr Ivins and two of his colleagues at USAMRIID received the highest honor given to Defense Department civilian employees for helping solve technical problems in the manufacture of anthrax vaccine. He was a member of the American Red Cross, Frederick County Chapter. He also was a parishioner at St. John’s the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church in Frederick where he was a musician for many years for church services.

Not that the research he conducted was not without some controversy, but I think someone needs to consider the other side of the story before rushing to judgement. The side of the story I heard was how Dr Ivins had been hounded by the FBI for the past 5-6 years, harassed into submission. The side of the story I heard was about a man who was well liked and respected.  A man who worked in a lab like many other labs in Frederick County for the past 36 years, who was looking forward to retirement.

If the evidence was so damning and compelling, why take so long to bring charges? And watching Matt Lauer on the Today Show at 7 AM this morning proclaiming that “Dr Ivins prepared the Anthrax powder that was mailed to Sen. Daschel & Tom Brokaw in his own lab at Ft Detrick”?  Come on, where is the evidence for that?  Where in the world do these guys get off proclaiming indisputable guilt as if this were a foregone conclusion?  I was outraged watching that broad cast this morning, that spectacle.

When I got home Wednesday night, I told my wife the story about hearing of the suicide and only briefly pondered “scooping” the national media and blogging something about it Wednesday evening.  I remember thinking that this was a bit too controversial and thinking it probably wouldn’t be a big story anyway.  I acquiesced finally when I thought of how the family must be grieving at this moment and I did not want to interfere.

This we do know, according to the Wall Street Journal:

Ivins died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital after ingesting a massive dose of prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine, said a friend and colleague, who declined to be identified out of concern that he would be harassed by the FBI.

And I can tell you that this is what I heard.  His suicide appears to be the result of severe depression brought on by years of harassment.

Although I never met Dr Ivins and did not know him personally, I hope that the media circus will fade quickly so that he may finally rest in peace.