US scientist 'kills himself'

2008-08-01 12:08

Lara Jakes Jordan and David Dishneau

Washington - A top US biodefence researcher apparently committed suicide just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against him in the anthrax mailings that traumatised the United States in the weeks following the September 11 2001, terrorist attacks, according to a published report.

The scientist, Bruce E Ivins, 62, who worked for the past 18 years at the government's biodefence labs at Fort Detrick, Maryland, had been told about the impending prosecution, the Los Angeles Times reported for Friday editions. The laboratory has been at the centre of the FBI's investigation of the anthrax attacks, which killed five people.

Ivins died on Tuesday at Frederick (Maryland) Memorial Hospital. The Times, quoting an unidentified colleague, said the scientist had taken a massive dose of a prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine.

Tom Ivins, a brother of the scientist, told The Associated Press that another of his brothers, Charles, told him Bruce had committed suicide.

A woman who answered the phone at Charles Ivins' home in Etowah, North Carolina, refused to wake him and declined to comment on his death. "This is a grieving time," she said.

A woman who answered the phone at Bruce Ivins' home in Frederick declined to comment.

Justice Department spokesperson Peter Carr and FBI Assistant Director John Miller declined to comment on the report.

Henry S Heine, a scientist who had worked with Ivins on inhalation anthrax research at Fort Detrick, said he and others on their team have testified before a federal grand jury in Washington that has been investigating the anthrax mailings for more than a year.

Heine declined to comment on Ivins' death.

Norman Covert, a retired Fort Detrick spokesperson who served with Ivins on an animal-care and protocol committee, said Ivins was "a very intent guy" at their meetings.

Ivins was the co-author of numerous anthrax studies, including one on a treatment for inhalation anthrax published in the July 7 issue of the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

- AP