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fan cipated'FDA-grani re : 2) “CDC's David Dennis to Butler on'9 May Z002 19 DECEMBER 2003 VOL 302 SCIENCE firm Butler’s Tanzanian plague samples at their lab in Fort Collins, Colorado, the only lab in the ULS. certified to do so. And USAMRIID researchers were eager to add Tanzanian plague to their microbe collec- tion. USAMRIID plague expert Russell Byrne would later e-mail Butler. “We really want these strains,” In April 2002, Butler returned to Tanzania on a 10-day trip to reap his scientific harvest. He hand copied patient records and then packed the fluid samples in dry ice and dropped them into his footlock- er for the flight home. Despite the worries penned in his journal, how- ever, Butler testified that he did not ask U.S. or UK. officials for trans- port permits before boarding the plane—although he did have a letter from Tanzanian authorities. But he had no trouble clearing British cus- toms when he arrived for a layover in London, where he checked into a hotel near Gatwick Airport. At some point during his stay, Butler met on a London sidewalk with microbiologist John Wain, the Imperial College researcher who had once warned him about the U.K.’s increasingly aggressive en- forcement of pathogen-transport tules. Butler popped open his trunk, he testified, and Wain gave him fresh dry ice to keep the vials cold. The next day, Butler flew into Dal- las, Texas. As he passed through U.S. Customs, he did not declare his plague samplés as “commercial merchandise,” customs forms show. That act, the federal government lat- er alleged, constituted smuggling. More transport violations ensued, ‘court documents show. On 23 June 2002, Butler drove 1200 kilometers from Lub- bock to CDC’s Fort Collins lab to get his samples tested—without the required gov- ernment permits. On 9 September, he sent another set of plague isolates back to Tan- zania in a FedEx box labeled “laboratory materials”’—and without a needed export permit. And on 1 October, Butler flew from Lubbock to Washington, D.C., carrying a third set of samples. He then drove to the nearby USAMRIID—again without the necessary paperwork. . Nobody objected to how he had moved his samples, Butler later testified. Indeed, at least one government scientist had congratu- lated him on his plan to hand carry them (see sidebar at left). And USAMRIID re- searcher Patricia Worsham would e-mail Butler that his Tanzanian study “was nothing short of miraculous.” wn sciencemag.org : » ae ny ro permenant nner et anna IR UPATUIRSE PEL EOD! A078) ORIAE IE OFS IA EEA oneeen 4