#17
Don C. Wiley December
20, 2001
57,
Photo- http://www.stevequayle.com/index1.html
On Nov. 16, Dr. Don C. Wiley, 57, of Harvard University vanished, and his abandoned rental car was found
on the Hernando de Soto Bridge outside Memphis, Tenn. His body was found on Dec. 20. The final report
on Wiley’s death stated that he had stopped his vehicle in a moving traffic lane on a bridge over the
Mississippi river, gotten out, and suffered a rare seizure while a heavy truck passed, bouncing him into the
air at the same instant that a gust of wind blew him off the bridge. Wiley was a Nobel-level award winning
expert in DNA sequencing of disease organisms who also had published research papers on the swine
flu – a coronavirus cousin of SARS.
http://www.talkaboutgovernment.com/group/alt.politics.bush/messages/2437646.html
November 30, 2001
HHMI Offers Reward for Information Related to
Disappearance of Dr. Don C. Wiley
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) today announced that it is
offering a $15,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and charge of
anyone connected to the disappearance of Dr. Don C. Wiley, an HHMI investigator
at Harvard University.
http://www.hhmi.org/news/113001.html
Professor Don C. Wiley
Obituary
Harvard
College,
21 Dec 2001
Don C. Wiley, one of the most distinguished structural biologists of his
generation, has died. He was 57.
Wiley, whose teaching and research career spanned three decades at
Harvard
University, conducted key research
on the structure of viruses and of proteins in the human immune system. His
work focused on the molecular mechanisms that enable viruses to infect cells,
and on how cells respond to external challenges by presenting antigens and
mobilizing defensive cells. A senior investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical
Institute, Wiley studied the structure of such viruses as the AIDS virus,
Ebola, herpes simplex, and influenza. He examined the ways in which viruses
bind to cell surfaces, enabling their entry into the cell, and the ways in
which viruses evolve to infect different organisms and to escape the immune
response of their hosts. By understanding these processes, Wiley sought to find
new ways to combat these viruses.
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/linkscopy/DCWobit.html
Harvard biochemistry professor Don C. Wiley has been declared missing after his abandoned rental car was
discovered on a highway outside of Memphis, Tenn. The car, discovered on I-40—which runs between
Memphis and Arkansas—had the keys in the ignition, the hazard lights off and a full tank of gas. Body was
found on December 20, snagged on a tree along the Mississippi River in Vidalia, LA, 300 miles south of
Memphis. Until his body was found, Dr. Wiley's death was handled as a "missing person" case and police
did no forensic examinations. Early reports about Wiley's disappearance made no mention of paint marks
on his car, or a missing hubcap which turned up in subsequent reports. The type of accident needed to knock
off the hubcaps (actually Complete wheel
photo - http://www.mcb.harvard.edu/DonWiley/Links.html
cover) used on recent would have caused marked damage to the sheet metal on either side of the wheel, and
probably the wheel itself. No body or wheel damage to the car has been reported. On January 14, 2002
(almost two months later) Shelby County Medical Examiner O.C. Smith announced that his department had
ruled Dr. Wiley's death to be "accidental"; the result of massive injuries suffered in a fall from the Hernando
de Soto Bridge. Smith said there were paint marks on Wiley's rental car similar to the paint used on
construction signs on the bridge, and that the car's right front hubcap was missing. There has been no report
as to which construction signs Dr. Wiley hit. There is also no explanation as to why this evidence did not
move the Memphis police to consider possibilities other than "missing person." Wiley was considered one
of the world's leading researchers of deadly viruses -- among them AIDS and the Ebola virus. Police, who
are scanning surveillance tapes from late-night convenience stores and gas stations, say there are a number
of interesting elements to Wiley's disappearance, not the least of which is his background.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/11/28/missing.scientist/index.html
Professor Don C. Wiley, 1944-2001