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Crash kills CWD expert
Husband also dies in accident while returning to Wyo.
By Todd Hartman, Rocky Mountain News
December 31, 2004
An internationally renowned Wyoming wildlife veterinarian who was credited with discovering chronic wasting disease died Wednesday night in a traffic accident near the Colorado-Wyoming border. Her husband, also a prominent wildlife biologist, was killed, too.
Beth Williams, 53, and Tom Thorne, 63, died after their 2002 Ford pickup truck hit a jackknifed tractor-trailer on northbound U.S. 287, three miles south of the Wyoming state line. They were returning home to Laramie after a holiday trip to the Caribbean.
The deaths stunned the region's wildlife research community, leaving fellow scientists mourning not only the loss of two likable people, but also the storehouse of expertise that both carried. They were experts on animal diseases such as CWD, a fatal brain-wasting disease of deer and elk, and brucellosis, which causes infertility in cattle, bison and other animals.
Williams, a pathologist at the University of Wyoming's State Veterinary Lab, was well-known in Colorado wildlife circles as the first person to diagnose CWD, a discovery she made while examining a deer's brain tissue during a late-night laboratory session as a graduate student in 1977 at Colorado State University.
Williams went on to become an international authority on the disease, writing academic papers, speaking at conferences and conducting dozens of research projects, including those designed to help discover how the mysterious illness was spread.
In recent years, Williams watched CWD become the center of a media frenzy as the public started to question whether the illness, which has similarities to mad cow disease, could be transmitted to hunters or others who consumed venison. Mad cow has been spread to humans consuming meat from infected cattle.
"It's a huge loss to our progress in understanding (CWD)," said Mike Miller, a top researcher on the disease for the Colorado Division of Wildlife. "I don't see anyone stepping in" to fill the knowledge gap left by Williams' death, he said.
Thorne, too, conducted research into several animal diseases, including CWD and brucellosis, an affliction that caused the killing of infected bison wandering out of Yellowstone National Park to prevent transmitting the illness to cattle.
"Tom was really to brucellosis in the greater Yellowstone area what Beth is to CWD," Miller said.
Thorne spent 36 years with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, including nearly a year as its acting director before his retirement in 2003. Since then, he had worked for the agency as a wildlife disease consultant.
"Tom was a real giant in the field of wildlife veterinary medicine," said Terry Cleveland, director of Wyoming Game and Fish. "He entered (the field) at a time when very few wildlife agencies had veterinarian personnel on staff. He pioneered many of the aspects of wildlife veterinary medicine now used around the nation.
"Professionally, it's an international loss to the wildlife field and a heart-breaking tragedy personally," Cleveland added.
Colorado State Patrol said the tractor-trailer was driven by Bruce Gustin, 45, of Divide. The truck was traveling south on U.S. 287, descending a steep stretch of road, when it jackknifed.
The trailer section spun into the northbound lanes. The northbound pickup, driven by Thorne, struck the trailer and became wedged underneath. The road was icy and snowpacked at the time, the State Patrol said.
Gustin wasn't injured. State Patrol investigators cited him with two counts of careless driving causing death.
Williams was featured in a Rocky Mountain News special report on CWD in 2002 titled "Killer in the Herds." In that piece, she described her excitement at discovering similarities between a deer's diseased brain tissue and the patterns that afflict sheep with a similar disease called scrapie.
"No one had an idea at the time what was causing deer to waste away in our pens, but as I looked at the slides, I noticed lesions that were absolutely striking," Williams said. "They looked exactly like scrapie, the holes that form in sheep brains."
After posting a slide of the diseased tissue on the door of her mentor, a CSU neuropathologist, she made a call to Wyoming wildlife veterinarian she knew.
Both agreed that Williams might be on to a possible cause of the deer's death.
The person she called: future husband Tom Thorne.
Husband also dies in accident while returning to Wyo.
By Todd Hartman, Rocky Mountain News
December 31, 2004
An internationally renowned Wyoming wildlife veterinarian who was credited with discovering chronic wasting disease died Wednesday night in a traffic accident near the Colorado-Wyoming border. Her husband, also a prominent wildlife biologist, was killed, too.
Beth Williams, 53, and Tom Thorne, 63, died after their 2002 Ford pickup truck hit a jackknifed tractor-trailer on northbound U.S. 287, three miles south of the Wyoming state line. They were returning home to Laramie after a holiday trip to the Caribbean.
The deaths stunned the region's wildlife research community, leaving fellow scientists mourning not only the loss of two likable people, but also the storehouse of expertise that both carried. They were experts on animal diseases such as CWD, a fatal brain-wasting disease of deer and elk, and brucellosis, which causes infertility in cattle, bison and other animals.
Williams, a pathologist at the University of Wyoming's State Veterinary Lab, was well-known in Colorado wildlife circles as the first person to diagnose CWD, a discovery she made while examining a deer's brain tissue during a late-night laboratory session as a graduate student in 1977 at Colorado State University.
Williams went on to become an international authority on the disease, writing academic papers, speaking at conferences and conducting dozens of research projects, including those designed to help discover how the mysterious illness was spread.
In recent years, Williams watched CWD become the center of a media frenzy as the public started to question whether the illness, which has similarities to mad cow disease, could be transmitted to hunters or others who consumed venison. Mad cow has been spread to humans consuming meat from infected cattle.
"It's a huge loss to our progress in understanding (CWD)," said Mike Miller, a top researcher on the disease for the Colorado Division of Wildlife. "I don't see anyone stepping in" to fill the knowledge gap left by Williams' death, he said.
Thorne, too, conducted research into several animal diseases, including CWD and brucellosis, an affliction that caused the killing of infected bison wandering out of Yellowstone National Park to prevent transmitting the illness to cattle.
"Tom was really to brucellosis in the greater Yellowstone area what Beth is to CWD," Miller said.
Thorne spent 36 years with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, including nearly a year as its acting director before his retirement in 2003. Since then, he had worked for the agency as a wildlife disease consultant.
"Tom was a real giant in the field of wildlife veterinary medicine," said Terry Cleveland, director of Wyoming Game and Fish. "He entered (the field) at a time when very few wildlife agencies had veterinarian personnel on staff. He pioneered many of the aspects of wildlife veterinary medicine now used around the nation.
"Professionally, it's an international loss to the wildlife field and a heart-breaking tragedy personally," Cleveland added.
Colorado State Patrol said the tractor-trailer was driven by Bruce Gustin, 45, of Divide. The truck was traveling south on U.S. 287, descending a steep stretch of road, when it jackknifed.
The trailer section spun into the northbound lanes. The northbound pickup, driven by Thorne, struck the trailer and became wedged underneath. The road was icy and snowpacked at the time, the State Patrol said.
Gustin wasn't injured. State Patrol investigators cited him with two counts of careless driving causing death.
Williams was featured in a Rocky Mountain News special report on CWD in 2002 titled "Killer in the Herds." In that piece, she described her excitement at discovering similarities between a deer's diseased brain tissue and the patterns that afflict sheep with a similar disease called scrapie.
"No one had an idea at the time what was causing deer to waste away in our pens, but as I looked at the slides, I noticed lesions that were absolutely striking," Williams said. "They looked exactly like scrapie, the holes that form in sheep brains."
After posting a slide of the diseased tissue on the door of her mentor, a CSU neuropathologist, she made a call to Wyoming wildlife veterinarian she knew.
Both agreed that Williams might be on to a possible cause of the deer's death.
The person she called: future husband Tom Thorne.
