December 21, 1988 - Stanley Irving Sigal, 35

-- Expertise: Top AIDS researcher at Merck.

-- Circumstance of Death: He died in seat number 13B on Pan American Flight 103 that was brought down by an onboard bomb over Lockerbee, Scotland.

Date Unknown - Dr. C. Bruton

-- Expertise: He had just produced a paper on a new strain of Creutzfeldt- Jakob Disease. He was a CJD specialist who was killed before his work was announced to the public.

-- Circumstance of Death: He died in a car crash.

1994/95? - Dr. Jawad Al Aubaidi

-- Expertise: He studied veterinary mycoplasma and had worked with various mycoplasmas in the 1980s at Plum Island.

-- Circumstance of Death: He was killed in his native Iraq while he was changing a flat tire and hit by a truck.

1996 - Tsunao Saitoh, 46

-- Expertise: Saitoh was a leading Alzheimer's researcher.

-- Circumstance of Death: He and his 13 year-old daughter were killed in La Jolla, California, in what a Reuters report described as a "very professionally done" shooting. He was dead behind the wheel of the car, the side window had been shot out, and the door was open. His daughter appeared to have tried to run away and she was shot dead.

Dec 25, 1997 - Sidney Harshman, 67

-- Expertise: A professor of microbiology and immunology described as “the world's leading expert on staphylococcal alpha toxins,’ according to Conrad Wagner, professor of biochemistry at Vanderbilt and a close friend of Professor Harshman. "He also deeply cared for other people and was always eager to help his students and colleagues."

-- Circumstance of Death: Complications of diabetes

July 10, 1998 - Elizabeth A. Rich, MD, 46

-- Expertise: An associate professor with tenure in the pulmonary division of the Department of Medicine at CWRU and University Hospitals of Cleveland, she also was a member of the executive committee for the Center for AIDS Research and directed the biosafety level 3 facility, a specialized laboratory for the handling of HIV, virulent TB bacteria, and other infectious agents.

-- Circumstance of Death: She was killed in a traffic accident while visiting family in Tennessee

September 1998 - Jonathan Mann, 51

-- Expertise: He was a founding director of the World Health Organization's global AIDS program and founder of Project SIDA in Zaire, the most comprehensive AIDS research effort in Africa at the time. In 1986, he joined the WHO to lead the global response against AIDS. He became director of WHO's global program on AIDS which later became the UNAIDS program. He then became director of the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, which was set up at Harvard School of Public Health in 1993. He caused controversy earlier this year in the post when he accused the US National Institutes of Health of violating human rights by failing to act quickly on developing AIDS vaccines.

-- Circumstance of Death: Died in the Swissair Flight 111 crash in Canada.

March 2000 - Larry C. Ford

-- Expertise: He served as a consultant to both the CIA and the chemical and biological-weapons program of the South African Defense Forces, headed by Wouter Basson. His contributions to Basson's program included lectures on converting ordinary items into lethal biological weapons. He provided samples of virulent, designer strains of cholera, anthrax, botulism, plague, and malaria, as well as bacteria he claimed had been mutated to be "pigment specific" for the white minority government of South Africa.

-- Circumstance of Death: Died of a shotgun blast at his home in Irvine, Orange County, California. His death was later ruled a suicide.

April 15, 2000 - Walter W. Shervington, MD, 62

-- Expertise: He was an extensive writer/ lecturer/ researcher about mental health and AIDS in the African American community.

-- Circumstance of Death: Died of cancer at Tulane Medical Hospital.

July 16, 2000 - Mike Thomas, 35

-- Expertise: He was a microbiologist at the Crestwood Medical Center in Huntsville, AL.

-- Circumstance of Death: Died a few days after examining a sample taken from a 12-year-old girl who was diagnosed with meningitis and survived.

December 25, 2000 - Linda Reese, 52

--Expertise: She was a microbiologist working with victims of meningitis.

--Circumstance of Death: She died three days after studying a meningitis tissue sample from Tricia Zailo, 19, a Fairfield, N.J., resident who was a sophomore at Michigan State University. Tricia Zailo died Dec. 18, a few days after she returned home for the holidays.

May 7 2001 - Professor Janusz Jeljaszewicz

-- Expertise: He was an expert in Staphylococci and Staphylococcal Infections. His main scientific interests and achievements were in the mechanism of action and biological properties of staphylococcal toxins, and included the immunomodulatory properties and experimental treatment of tumors by Propionibacterium.

-- Circumstance of Death: Unknown.

November 2001 - Yaacov Matzner, 54

-- Expertise: The son of Holocaust survivors, he was Dean of the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem and chairman of the Israel Society of Hematology and Blood Transfusions. One of the world's experts on blood diseases including familiar Mediterranean fever (FMF), Matzner conducted research that led to a genetic test for FMF. He was working on cloning the gene connected to FMF and investigating the normal physiological function of amyloid A, a protein often found in high levels in people with blood cancer.

-- Circumstance of Death: Professors Yaacov Matzner and Amiram Eldor were on their way back to Israel via Switzerland when their plane came down in dense forest three kilometers short of the landing field.

November 2001 - Professor Amiram Eldor, 59

-- Expertise: He served as head of the Hematology Institute, Tel Aviv's Ichilov Hospital and worked for years at Hadassah-University Hospital's hematology department but left for his native Tel Aviv in 1993 to head the institute at Ichilov Hospital. He was an internationally known expert on blood clotting especially in women who had repeated miscarriages and was a member of a team that identified eight new anti-clotting agents in the saliva of leeches.

-- Circumstance of Death: Professors Yaacov Matzner and Amiram Eldor were on their way back to Israel via Switzerland when their plane came down in dense forest three kilometers short of the landing field.

November 6, 2001 - Jeffrey Paris Wall, 41

-- Expertise: He was a biomedical expert who held a medical degree, and he also specialized in patent and intellectual property.

-- Circumstance of Death: Wall’s body was found sprawled next to a three-story parking structure near his office. He had studied at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Nov. 16, 2001 - Don C. Wiley, 57

-- Expertise: One of the foremost microbiologists in the United States, Dr. Wiley, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Harvard University, was an expert on how the immune system responds to viral attacks such as HIV, Ebola and influenza.

-- Circumstance of Death: Police found his rental car on a bridge outside Memphis, Tenn. His body was found Dec. 20 in the Mississippi River.

Nov. 21, 2001 - Vladimir Pasechnik, 64

-- Expertise: A world-class microbiologist and high-profile Russian defector who defected to the United Kingdom in 1989, he played a large role in Russian biowarfare and helped to modify cruise missiles to deliver agents of mass biological destruction.

-- Background: He founded Regma Biotechnologies company in Britain, a laboratory at Porton Down, the country´s chem-bio warfare defense establishment. Regma currently has a contract with the U.S. Navy for "the diagnostic and therapeutic treatment of anthrax".

-- Circumstance of Death: The pathologist who did the autopsy, and who also happened to be associated with British Intelligence, concluded he died of a stroke. Details of the postmortem were not revealed at an inquest, in which the press was given no prior notice. Colleagues who had worked with Pasechnik said he was in good health.

Dec. 10, 2001 - Robert M. Schwartz, 57

-- Expertise: An expert in DNA sequencing and pathogenic micro-organisms, he was a founding member of the Virginia Biotechnology Association, and the Executive Director of Research and Development at Virginia´s Center for Innovative Technology in Herndon, VA.

-- Circumstance of Death: stabbed and slashed with what police believe was a sword in his farmhouse in Leesberg, Va. His daughter, who identifies herself as a pagan high priestess, and several of her fellow pagans have been charged.

Dec. 14, 2001 - Nguyen Van Set, 44

-- Expertise: He was with the animal diseases facility of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization and had just gained fame for discovering a virulent strain of mouse pox, which could be modified to affect smallpox.

-- Circumstance of Death: He died at work in Geelong, Australia, in a laboratory accident. He entered an air locked storage lab and died from exposure to nitrogen.

January 2002 - Ivan Glebov and Alexi Brushlinski

-- Expertise: These two microbiologists were well known around the world and members of the Russian Academy of Science.

-- Circumstance of Death: Glebov died as the result of a bandit attack and Brushlinski was killed in Moscow.

January 28, 2002 - David W. Barry, 58

-- Expertise: He was the scientist who co-discovered AZT, the antiviral drug that is considered the first effective treatment for AIDS.

-- Circumstance of Death: unknown

Feb. 9, 2002 - Victor Korshunov, 56

-- Expertise: He was an expert on intestinal bacteria of children around the world

-- Circumstance of Death: He was bashed over the head near his home in Moscow.

Feb. 14, 2002 - Ian Langford, 40

-- Expertise: He was an expert in environmental risks and disease.

-- Circumstance of Death: He was found dead in his home near Norwich, England, naked from the waist down and wedged under a chair.

Feb. 28, 2002 - Tanya Holzmayer, 46

- -Expertise: She was a Russian who moved to the U.S. in 1989. Her work focused on the part of the human molecular structure that could be best affected by medicine.

-- Circumstance of Death: She was killed by fellow microbiologist Guyang “Mathew” Huang, who shot her seven times after she opened her door to a pizza delivery man. Huang came from the shadows behind the delivery man and opened fire. He then drove off.

Feb. 28, 2002 - Guyang Huang, 38

-- Expertise: Microbiologist

-- Circumstance of Death: Huang apparently shot himself in the head after killing fellow microbiologist, Tanya Holzmayer. His body was found lying near his car.

March 24, 2002 - David Wynn-Williams, 55

-- Expertise: A respected astrobiologist with the British Antarctic Survey, he studied the habits of microbes that might survive in outer space.

-- Circumstance of Death: He was hit by a car while he was jogging near his home in Cambridge, England. 

March 25, 2002 - Steven Mostow, 63

-- Expertise: Known as "Dr. Flu" for his expertise in treating influenza, he was a noted expert in bioterrorism and worked at the Colorado Health Sciences Center.

-- Circumstance of Death: He died when the airplane he was piloting crashed near Denver.

August 05, 2002 - David R. Knibbs, PhD, 49

-- Expertise: Director of Electron Microscopy at Hartford Hospital, he held a doctorate in pathology from the University of Connecticut. He also served as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Hartford.

-- Circumstance of Death: He collapsed and died after an evening run.

Nov. 12, 2002 - Benito Que, 52

-- Expertise: He was expert in infectious diseases and cellular biology at the Miami Medical School.

-- Circumstance of Death: Que left his laboratory after receiving a telephone call. Shortly afterward he was found comatose in the parking lot of the Miami Medical School. He died without regaining consciousness. Police said he had suffered a heart attack. His family insisted he had been in perfect health and claimed four men attacked him. But, oddly, the inquest later returned a verdict of death by natural causes.

April 2003 - Carlo Urbani, 46

-- Expertise: A dedicated and internationally respected Italian epidemiologist, he worked at combating infectious illness around the world.

-- Circumstance of Death: Died in Bangkok from SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), the new disease that he had helped to identify. Thanks to his prompt action, the epidemic was contained in Vietnam. However, due to his close daily contact with SARS patients, he contracted the infection. On March 11, he was admitted to a hospital in Bangkok and isolated. Less than three weeks later he died.

April 2003 ­ 310 Iraqi scientists

--Expertise: These scientists were all involved with Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs, including biochemicals.

--Circumstance of Death: According to findings of a seminar of politicians, journalists and experts with an interest in current Iraqi affairs held in Cairo in October, 2004, more than 310 Iraqi scientists were believed killed by Israeli secret agents since fall of Baghdad to US troops in April 2003. “This is a joint American and Israeli plan to kill as many Iraqi scientists as possible,” said Abdel Raoof al-Raidi, who explained the seminar’s findings. 
 

June 24, 2003 - Dr. Leland Rickman of University of California, San Diego, 47

-- Expertise: An expert in infectious diseases, he helped prepare the fight against bioterrorism after Sept. 11, 2001.

-- Circumstance of Death: He was in the African nation of Lesotho with Dr. Chris Mathews, director of UCSD’s Owen Clinic for AIDS patients. Dr. Rickman had complained of a headache and had gone to lie down. When he didn't appear for dinner, Mathews checked on him and found him dead. A cause was not immediately determined.

July 18, 2003 - Dr. David Kelly, 59

-- Expertise: A biological warfare weapons specialist who held a senior post at Britain’s Ministry of Defense, he was an expert on DNA sequencing and was head of microbiology at Porton Down. He aided Vladimir Pasechnik in founding Regma Biotechnologies, which has a contract with the U.S. Navy for “the diagnostic and therapeutic treatment of anthrax.” Kelly had worked with two American scientists, Benito Que and Don Wiley, both of who are listed here as strange deaths.

-- Circumstance of Death: He was found dead after seemingly slashing his wrist in a wooded area near his home at Southmoor, Oxfordshire.

Oct 11, 2003 - Michael Perich, 46

-- Expertise: An LSU professor who helped fight the spread of the West Nile virus, Perich worked with the East Baton Rouge Parish Mosquito Control and Rodent Abatement District to determine whether mosquitoes in the area carried West Nile. Robert A. Wirtz, chief of entomology at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, stated, “Mike is one of the few entomologists with the experience to go out and save lives today.”

-- Circumstance of Death: Authorities said Perich crashed his Ford pickup truck while heading west on Interstate 12 in Livingston Parish. Perich's truck veered off the highway to the right about three miles east of Walker, LA, flipped and landed in water. The local police chief said Perich, who was wearing his seat belt, drowned. The cause of the crash continued to be investigated.

November 22, 2003 - Robert Leslie Burghoff, 45

-- Expertise: He was studying the virus that was plaguing cruise ships

-- Circumstance of Death: Burghoff was walking on a sidewalk in Houston when a white van jumped the curb and hit him, police said. The van then sped away. Burghoff died an hour later at Memorial Hermann Hospital.

December 18, 2003 - Robert Aranosia, 61

-- Expertise: He was Oakland County, MI, deputy medical examiner

-- Circumstance of Death: He was driving south on I-75 when his pickup truck went off the freeway near a bridge over the Kawkawlin River. The vehicle rolled over several times before landing in the median. Aranosia was thrown from the vehicle and ended up on the shoulder of the northbound lanes.

January 6, 2004 - Dr Richard Stevens, 54

-- Expertise: He was a hematologist, one who analyzes the cellular composition of blood and blood producing tissues such as bone marrow.

-- Circumstance of Death: He disappeared after arriving for work on July, 21, 2003. His disappearance sparked a national manhunt before his body was discovered early the next year. A coroner ruled that Stevens killed himself because he could not cope with the stress of a secret affair.

January 23 2004 - Dr. Robert E. Shope, 74

-- Expertise: One of the world's top experts on viruses and infectious illnesses, he was the principal author of a highly-publicized 1992 report by the National Academy of Sciences warning of the possible emergence of new and unsettling infectious illnesses. He had accumulated his own collection of virus samples gathered from all over the world and worked on a Defense Department project to develop antidotes to viral agents that terrorists might use.

-- Circumstance of Death: The cause was complications of a lung transplant he received in December, said his daughter Deborah Shope of Galveston. Dr. Shope had pulmonary fibrosis, a disease of unknown origin that scars the lungs.

January 24 2004 - Dr. Michael Patrick Kiley, 62

-- Expertise: One of the world's leading microbiologists and an expert in developing and overseeing multiple levels of biocontainment facilities, he led early studies of Lassa fever, the Ebola virus and mad cow disease while at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Ga.

-- Circumstance of Death: Died of massive heart attack. Coincidently, both Dr. Shope and Dr. Kiley were working on an upgrade of a Galveston lab for Homeland Security. The lab needed to be secure in order to house deadly pathogens of emerging infectious diseases as well as those that had been weaponized.

March 13, 2004 - Vadake Srinivasan

-- Expertise: One of the most accomplished and respected industrial biologists in academia, Srinivasan held two doctorate degrees.

-- Circumstance of Death: He died in a mysterious single car accident in Baton Rouge, La. His car crashed into a guard rail. Authorities blamed a stroke.

April 12, 2004 - Ilsley Ingram, 84

-- Expertise: Director of the Supraregional Haemophilia Reference Centre and the Supraregional Centre for the Diagnosis of Bleeding Disorders at the St. Thomas Hospital in London.

-- Circumstance of Death: unknown

May 5, 2004 - William T. McGuire, 39

-- Expertise: New Jersey University Professor and Senior programmer analyst and adjunct professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark.

-- Circumstance of Death: His dismembered body was found floating in three suitcases in the Chesapeake Bay.

May 14, 2004 - Dr. Eugene F. Mallove, 56

-- Expertise: Not known as a microbiologist, Mallove was well respected for his knowledge of cold fusion. He had just published an open letter outlining the results of and reasons for his last 15 years in the field of new energy research. Dr. Mallove was convinced it was only a matter of months before the world would actually see a free energy device.

-- Circumstance of Death: Died after being beaten to death during an alleged robbery.

May 25, 2004 - Antonina Presnyakova

-- Expertise: She was a former Soviet biological weapons laboratory worker in Siberia

--Circumstance of Death: Died after accidentally sticking herself with a needle laced with Ebola.

June 24, 2004 - Dr. Assefa Tulu, 45

-- Expertise: Dr. Tulu joined the Dallas County Health Department in 1997 and served for five years as the county's lone epidemiologist. He was charged with tracking the health of the county, including the spread of diseases, such as syphilis, AIDS and measles. He also designed a system for detecting a bioterrorism attack involving viruses or bacterial agents. Tulu often coordinated efforts to address major health concerns in Dallas County, such as the West Nile virus outbreaks of the past few years, and worked with the media to inform the public.

-- Circumstance of Death: He was found dead at his desk and was said to have died of a stroke.

June 27, 2004 - Dr Paul Norman, Of Salisbury, Wiltshire, 52

-- Expertise: He was the chief scientist for chemical and biological defense at Britain’s Ministry of Defense laboratory at Porton Down, Wiltshire. He traveled the world lecturing on the subject of weapons of mass destruction.

-- Circumstance of Death: He died when a Cessna 206 crashed shortly after taking off from Dunkeswell Airfield. A father and daughter also died at the scene while a 44-year-old parachute instructor and Royal Marine Major Mike Wills later died in the hospital.

June 29, 2004 - John Mullen, 67

--Expertise: He was a nuclear research scientist with McDonnell Douglas which merged with Boeing in 1997.

--Circumstance of Death: He died from a huge dose of arsenic poisoning.

July 1, 2004 - Edward Hoffman, 62

-- Expertise: Aside from his role as a professor, Hoffman held leadership positions within the UCLA medical community. He worked to develop the first human Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanner in 1973 at Washington University in St. Louis.
-- Circumstance of Death: unknown.

July 2, 2004 - Larry Bustard, 53

 
-- Expertise: A scientist at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM, he helped develop a foam spray to clean up congressional buildings and media sites during the anthrax scare in 2001. Although Bustard declined to specify the makeup of the foam to The New York Times in 2001, he did say, “The ingredients are sort of similar to toothpaste and hair conditioner.” Despite these harmless-sounding ingredients, “the foam proved highly toxic to biological agents,” said Dr. Bruce Gingras, a research microbiologist at the I.I.T. Research Institute in Chicago.
-- Circumstance of Death: undetermined.

July 6, 2004 - Stephen Tabet, 42

-- Expertise: An associate professor and epidemiologist at the University of Washington, he was a world-renowned HIV doctor and researcher who worked with HIV patients in a vaccine clinical trial for the HIV Vaccine Trials Network.

-- Circumstance of Death: Died of an unknown illness

July 21, 2004 - Dr Bassem al-Mudares

-- Expertise: He was a PhD chemist.

-- Circumstance of Death: His mutilated body was found in the city of Samarra, Iraq, He had been tortured before being killed.

July 21, 2004: Dr. John Badwey 54

-- Expertise: A biochemist at Harvard Medical School specializing in infectious diseases, he entered politics to oppose sewage waste disposal programs that he said exposed humans to disease.

-- Circumstance of Death: Badway suddenly developed pneumonia-like symptoms and died within two weeks time.

August 12, 2004 - Professor John Clark

-- Expertise: Head of the science lab which created Dolly the cloned sheep, Clark led the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh, one of the world’s leading animal biotechnology research centers. He played a crucial role in creating the transgenic sheep that earned the institute worldwide fame.

-- Circumstance of Death: He was found hanging in his holiday home.

October 13, 2004 - Matthew Allison, 32

-- Expertise: Allsion had a college degree in molecular biology and biotechnology and was working in Orange County, FL.

-- Circumstance of Death: He died in an explosion of his car parked at an Osceola County Wal-Mart store. Witnesses said the man left the store at about 11 p.m. and entered his Ford Taurus car when it exploded. Investigators said the explosion and fatal fire was no accident as they found a Duraflame log and propane canisters on the front passenger's seat.

November 2, 2004 - John R. La Montagne

-- Expertise: He was deputy director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as well as head of US Infectious Diseases unit under Tommy G. Thompson, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, the parent agency of NIH.

-- Circumstance of Death: Died suddenly in Mexico City while in visiting his native country. No cause was given.

December 21, 2004 - Taleb Ibrahim al-Daher

-- Expertise ­ He worked as an Iraqi nuclear scientist.

-- Circumstance of Death: He was shot dead north of Baghdad by unknown gunmen. He was on his way to work at Diyala University when armed men opened fire on his car as it was crossing a bridge in Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad. The vehicle swerved off the bridge and fell into the Khrisan river. Al-Daher, who was a professor at the university, was removed from the submerged car and rushed to Baqouba hospital where he was pronounced dead.

December 29, 2004 - Tom Thorne and Beth Williams

-- Expertise: A husband-and-wife team of wildlife veterinarians, nationally-known experts on chronic wasting disease and brucellosis.

-- Circumstance of Death: They were killed in a snowy-weather crash on U.S. 287 in northern Colorado. Authorities said their pickup truck was wedged under a jack-knifed trailer on the highway.

January 7, 2005 - Jeong H. Im, 72

-- Expertise: A retired research assistant professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia, Im was primarily a protein chemist.

-- Circumstance of Death: He was stabbed several times and his body was found in the trunk of his burning white, 1995 Honda inside a Maryland Avenue parking garage. A hooded man with a gas can was seen running from the scene but no arrests were made.

January 24, 2005 - Roger L. Blair, 54

-- Expertise: Blair worked for the Kennedy Space center as a micro-biologist and most recently for Wuesthoff Medical Center as a Medical Laboratory Technician.

-- Circumstance of Death: Died suddenly with no cause made public.

April 5, 2005 - Barbara Kalow, 45

-- Expertise: A federal government veterinary scientist, she was a researcher before being hired in 1992 as a meat inspector. She then moved to veterinary biologics and was promoted to the science branch to advise on animal health issues.

-- Circumstance of Death: She died of asphyxiation after being smothered by a pillow in her hotel room while on vacation in Arizona.

April 18, 2005 - Douglas Passaro, 43

-- Expertise: An associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health, he had been an outbreak investigator with the Epidemic Intelligence Service for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before completing an Infectious Diseases Fellowship at Stanford University in 2001. His obituary said he “tried to solve the mysteries of infectious diseases.”

-- Circumstance of Death: Passaro died suddenly at his Oak Park home. No cause was given but it was investigated by the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office.

May 8, 2005 - David Banks, 55

-- Expertise: The principal scientist with Biosecurity Australia, Banks was involved in containing pest and disease threats. His primary mission was protecting livestock and plants in the country as well as keeping diseases from crossing into Australia. Among other things, he was an expert in the propagation of diseases by insects.

-- Circumstance of Death: Banks died ,along with 15 other persons, when the commuter plane he in which he was traveling crashed in Queensland, Australia.

May 20, 2005 - Robert J. Lull, 64

-- Expertise: A prominent physician at San Francisco General Hospital, Lull once headed the San Francisco Medical Society. Lull was a highly revered expert in the field of nuclear medicine, a specialty that performs diagnostic screens such as bone scans for cancer patients. Last year, Lull lectured in San Francisco about the threat of nuclear terrorism.

-- Circumstance of Death: He was found stabbed to death inside the doorway of his Diamond Heights home.

June 7, 2005 - Leonid Strachunsky (age unknown)

-- Expertise: World Health Organization expert and director of the Anti-Microbe Therapy Research Institute who specialized in creating microbes resistant to biological weapons.

-- Circumstance of Death: He was found dead in his hotel room in Moscow, where he stopped after traveling from Smolensk en route to the United States. He had been hit on the head with a champagne bottle and some of his possessions were missing.

May 22, 2006 ­ Lee Jong-woo, 61

Expertise: As WHO director since 2003, Jong-woo led the organization’s fight against bird flu, AIDS and other infectious diseases. He was a sportsman with no history of ill health.

Circumstance of Death: He died suddenly after reportedly suffering a blood clot in his brain.

March 10, 2007 ­ Yongsheng Li, 29

Expertise: Li was a doctoral student from China studying receptor cells in a biochemistry and molecular biology laboratory at the University of Georgia.

-- Circumstance of Death: He was last seen alive at 4 p.m. on March 10 His body was found in a pond between the Women's Sports Complex and State Botanical Gardens on March 25. Police gave no explanation for the death although they took as evidence a note to his wife.

October 6, 2007 ­ Dr. Mario Alberto Vargas Olvera, 52

Expertise: Sr. Olvera was an internationally recognized biologist on the science faculty of the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, a public university located in the Mexican state of Baja California.

Circumstance of Death: The same day Dr. Olvera was to have left for a conference in Russia, his body was found in his home in the Pórticos del Mar area. He died due to several blunt-force injuries to his head and neck/ Authorities ruled his death a homicide as nothing was missing from his house and valuables were in view.

July 3, 2008 - Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez, both 23

-- Expertise: Both Bonomo and Ferez were French biochemistry students about to complete a three-month research course into the origins of bird flu at Imperial College in London.

-- Circumstance of Death: According to news reports, both men were bound and gagged, collectively stabbed 243 times and their London flat set fire. London police blamed the “frenzied, brutal and horrific” murders on “drug-addicted burglars” who were after their PlayStation game consoles.

June 3, 2009 ­ Caroline Coffey, 28

Expertise: Coffey was a Cornell University post-doctoral biomedical researcher.
Circumstance of Death: Her body, with the throat slashed, was found along a wooded trail just outside Ithaca, NY, home of the university. Her husband, Blazej Kot of Polish heritage, was seen covered with blood and was arrested after a police chase and an attempt to cut himself. On June 5, Kot was charged with second-degree murder.

June 9, 2009 ­ August “Gus” Watanabe, 67

Expertise: He was head of the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Company’s research laboratories and one of its highest-paid officers of when he retired in 2003.
Circumstance of Death: Friends discovered his body, along with a .38-caliber handgun and three-page note, outside a cabin in Brown County, IN. Authorities said Watanabe was despondent over the recent death of his daughter and ruled his death a suicide.

Febuary 14, 2009 ­ Dr. Noah McKay, 53

Expertise: An Iranian who changed his name from Nasser Talebzadeh Ordoubadi, McKay ran General Medical Clinics in King County, WA. Hospitalized with heart failure in 1989, he used Quantum science based on the work of Einstein, Heisenberg, and Bell to heal his heart.  He went on to establish the largest private integral medical practice in Washington State. Among his notable accomplishments was his discovery of an antitoxin treatment for biological weapons. Suspected by the US Government of working for Iran, McKay in 2000 was convicted of mail fraud under the new Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 and sentenced to 35 months in prison.
Circumstance: McKay reportedly died from complications following heart surgery, although his doctors termed his death “mysterious” and said McKay has vaguely accused “intelligence agencies” of causing his death.

August 6, 2009 ­ Wallace L. Pannier, 81

Expertise: A germ warfare scientist whose top-secret projects included a mock attack on the New York subway with powdered bacteria in 1966, Pannier worked at Fort Detrick, MD, the site of biological weapons testing. According to relatives, he worked in the Special Operations Division, a secretive unit operating there from 1949 to 1969, developing and testing delivery systems for deadly agents such as anthrax and smallpox.
Circumstance: He reportedly died of respiratory failure and it was assumed a natural death.