I don't know about the rest of you, but stories like this cause me not to sleep well at night. :-(

Ebola Expert Missing

FBI hunts Ebola scientist

By AP

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- A Harvard molecular biologist with expertise in Ebola and other lethal viruses was last seen leaving a banquet in Memphis just before midnight on Nov. 15. His rental car was found a few hours later, abandoned on a Mississippi River bridge with the keys in the ignition and the tank full of gas.

Don Wiley's family does not believe he committed suicide, and police say there is no evidence that the 57-year-old married father of four with no known financial or domestic problems was kidnapped or killed.

But the disappearance has attracted the attention of the FBI. Wiley is an expert on how the human immune system fights infections and had recently probed such dangerous viruses as AIDS, Ebola, herpes and influenza.

"Right now nothing is pointing at anything ...," police Lieut. Walter Norris said yesterday.

Wiley is a professor of biochemistry and biophysics in Harvard University's molecular and cellular biology department. He and colleague Dr. Jack Strominger have won honours for their work on how the human immune system works, including the Japan Prize two years ago.

-- Anonymous, November 28, 2001

Answers

Quit giving me nightmares Jim-Bob, now this stuff is scary, I agree!!!

Ebola makes anthrax look like a mosquito bite compared to being attacked by a herd of pit bulls, did you read the book about Ebola almost being released "accidentally" from the Fort Detrick labs back in the 1980's? Creepy crawly is how it makes me feel!!!

Ebola has the potential of killing 90% of the ENTIRE population of the planet within a week, with the optimum virus vectors in place, it is very serious sh** indeed.

-- Anonymous, November 28, 2001

...did you read the book about Ebola almost being released "accidentally" from the Fort Detrick labs back in the 1980's?

Yeah, I read that book. VERY scary sh*t, indeed!

I fear that what happened on Sept. 11th was just an opening shot on a very frightening future. Of course, my view on the human race is rather dark to begin with so I guess my "pessimism" colors my outlook just a tad.

But sometimes I wonder if the fundamentalist Christians are right and we ARE living in the end times... :-(

-- Anonymous, November 28, 2001

Ebola---isn't that the one thats something like a hemmoragic virus and your body starts falling off your bones or something like that?

There was a hemmoragic flu going around a couple years ago. Chris had it and broke out with two massive nasty looking bruises that just appeared.

As far as end times are concerned you don't have to be a fundy about that. I've believed since I was a very young child that I'd be around to see the "end of the world" and my folks weren't fundies.

-- Anonymous, November 29, 2001

OK JOhn and Jim, YOu are not allowed to talk that way because when I started to talk that way I got called prememopausal. So I am very jealous that you can talk this way and I can't! But I feel exactly the same way. It's just a matter of time.

-- Anonymous, November 29, 2001

Here's the info from the NYT article. It might ease your mind.

November 27, 2001

A Harvard Professor's Baffling Vanishing By FOX BUTTERFIELD The Associated Press OSTON, Nov. 26 — The disappearance of a prominent Harvard biochemist in Memphis earlier this month has baffled his family, friends and law enforcement. But because the professor, Don C. Wiley, is a leading expert on dangerous viruses like Ebola, the mystery of his disappearance has provoked wider attention as well.

Professor Wiley, 57, has been missing since early Nov. 16, when the police found his rental car abandoned on a bridge over the Mississippi River outside Memphis.

There have been reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is examining the case in connection with its antiterrorism work. But Bill Woerner, the acting assistant special agent in charge of the F.B.I.'s Memphis office, said today that it was not investigating the case, since there was no evidence of foul play.

And Gregory Verdine, a professor of chemical biology at Harvard, said, "If bioterrorists were to abduct Don Wiley, they'd be very disappointed," because his research was in studying the component parts of viruses, and "that doesn't really help you make a more dangerous version of the virus."

All of which has only added to the mystery for Professor Wiley's wife, Katrin Valgeirsdottir. "There is no logical explanation, and that is what I'm having problems with," said Ms. Valgeirsdottir, reached at her family's home in Cambridge, Mass.

Professor Wiley had no history of mental health problems, there were no family or financial problems, and he was intensely involved with the upbringing of his two children, 7 and 10 years old, according to Ms. Valgeirsdottir, neighbors and colleagues. In fact, the couple had just bought tickets to fly to Iceland for Christmas, she said, and Professor Wiley had been spending time learning Icelandic, his wife's native language.

Ms. Valgeirsdottir was at Logan International Airport in Boston on Nov. 16, heading with her children to Memphis, where her husband had arranged to pick them up at the airport later that day. She received a cellphone call telling her that his rental car had been found at 4 a.m. on the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, which connects Memphis with Arkansas. The keys were still in the ignition, the gas tank was full, and the car, a white Mitsubishi Galant, was blocking truck traffic.

Professor Wiley had been in Memphis attending the annual meeting of the Scientific Advisory Board of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. That evening he had been at a banquet for the board at the Peabody Hotel, a short drive from the bridge.

Others who were at the banquet said Professor Wiley left about midnight, heading for his father's home in the suburb Germantown, where he was staying. The suburb is east of the city and in the opposite direction from the bridge.

Professor Wiley also has a brother who lives in Memphis, and it was the family's custom to gather after the annual St. Jude Children's Research Hospital meeting, Ms. Valgeirsdottir said.

J. D. King, an inspector with the Memphis police homicide division, said the disappearance had been classified as a missing-person case, and there was no evidence of foul play or suicide. The police have searched the river, but found nothing, Mr. King said.

"Our main focus is trying to discover his last movements between the time he was at the Peabody and when his vehicle was discovered," between midnight and 4 a.m., Mr. King said. "There have not been any breakthroughs so far."

Patricia Donahoe, the chairwoman of the scientific advisory board for St. Jude and head of pediatric surgical services at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, said she had been at the banquet and had seen Professor Wiley as late as 10:30 p.m.

"He was normal, very much engaged with what he was going to be doing with his family the next day, talking about his children and sailing these little remote-control power boats on the Charles River," Dr. Donahoe said.

"I certainly saw no signs of depression," she said. "I am just very suspicious that were was some form of accident or foul play. He was a leader in his field and was really on top of his game."

In 1999, Professor Wiley and another Harvard scientist, Dr. Jack Strominger, won the Japan Prize for their discoveries of how the immune system protects humans from infections. They had also won the Albert Lasker Medical Research Award in 1995 for their work on the immune system.

Mr. Woerner of the F.B.I. said he had asked that his office monitor the investigation by the Memphis police. Separately, George Bolds, a spokesman for the F.B.I. office in Memphis, said, "If there were a link to the events of Sept. 11 or a link with some sort of biological weapons or terrorist act, we would want to take a more active role in this."

But the likelihood that Professor Wiley was kidnapped by terrorists "is considered pretty low right now, and unsupported by any kind of objective investigation."

-- Anonymous, November 29, 2001

This is funny.........LOL, here I am the fundie and I don't think it is the end times at all!!! I believe we are in a serious time of transition, but then who knows..............I sure have been wrong about many, many things.

-- Anonymous, November 29, 2001

I know what you're saying Diane. To me its like the simultaneously born opposites thing, the end of one thing-the beginning of another, ad infinitum. Big changes in the wind tho. It would be nice to think that we'll (humanity) finally be able to get past our petty differences and concentrate on the essentials.

On the other hand I heard a story on NPR the other day that the incidence of rape is going way up in south africa because there's a rumor going around that if a guy with aids has sex with a virgin he'll be healed of aids. That is just so pathetic and tragic. Don't these people think?

-- Anonymous, November 29, 2001

Thanks for posting that article, Anne.

So john, does humanity go out with a bang or a whimper in your "end of the world" scenario?

Just curious. :-)

-- Anonymous, November 29, 2001

Diane, I agree with you, I don't think these are the "end times" at all either. All societies go through transition times, nothing ever remains static for too long. Even the Roman Empire had it's ups and downs, but Ebola still scare the crap out of me, especially when us humans keep "playing" with it!!!

Sometimes the stupidity of humans is really amazing!

-- Anonymous, November 29, 2001

Jim: I don't really have a scenario as you put it. It's just a "feeling" I've had since I was a pup and I gotta say I still have it. I may be completely full of it but it is what I've experienced.

I doubt if its gonna be a total extermination as much as it'll be a manmade die-off where some survive, hopefully some wiser than their predecessors, thus the "end" of one "order" and the beginning of another.

-- Anonymous, November 29, 2001