UM researcher faces drug charges after death of girlfriend

Doctor who studied effects of narcotics died after using 'bupe'

Nick Madigan 

Baltimore Sun reporter

9:53 p.m. EDT, September 29, 2009

Clinton McCracken, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Maryland medical school, is facing drug charges after his live-in girlfriend, also a researcher at the university, died of an apparent overdose. (Photo courtesy of Baltimore City police)

Clinton McCracken and Carrie John knew all about addictions and obsessive behavior.

Both worked as postdoctoral research fellows at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and earlier this year published their conclusions from a study of "compulsions and habit formation."

But their research might have taken too personal a turn.

John, 29, a Wake Forest University graduate with a doctorate in physiology and pharmacology, died Sunday after apparently injecting herself with what McCracken called a "bad" batch of buprenorphine, a narcotic known on the street as "bupe" and commonly used to treat heroin addiction.

McCracken, 32, was arrested after police searched the couple's unkempt rowhouse on Dover Street in Baltimore and found a large quantity of drugs, including pills, "huge gardens" of marijuana with an elaborate lighting system and "more than 20 bongs in all shapes, sizes and configurations strewn about the home," a police report said.

In an interview with detectives, McCracken -- a fellow Wake Forest graduate charged with six counts, including manufacturing drugs and possession with intent to distribute -- said that for the past two or three years he had used the New Mikee Online Pharmacy, a Web site based in the Philippines, to buy "various narcotics for recreational use." He mentioned not only buprenorphine but morphine, OxyContin and marijuana. The firm did not respond to an e-mail message from The Baltimore Sun seeking comment.

McCracken said he and his girlfriend had purchased 20 buprenorphine pills at $2 each and had dissolved a 2-milligram pill in water, placing half the solution in each of two syringes, the report said. John "began to have trouble breathing" immediately after injecting herself, McCracken told police.

He called paramedics and "never got to inject himself with his own 1 mg. dose due to the deceased's medical crisis," the police report said. "The defendant stated that he thought they could control the morphine and buprenorphine."

John was pronounced dead shortly before 7 p.m. Sunday in the University of Maryland Medical Center's emergency room, a few blocks from her home.

John and McCracken conducted scientific research in the labs of the university's department of anatomy and neurobiology and did not see patients, said Karen A. Buckelew, a spokeswoman for the medical school. John had worked there since 2006 and McCracken for the past three months.

"Dr. McCracken is still employed here, and no administrative action has been taken yet to affect his employment status," Buckelew said.

Police seized the drugs and paraphernalia from the couple's home, and McCracken was released Monday night on $100,000 bail pending a preliminary hearing Oct. 9.

"He probably didn't kill her," said Anthony Guglielmi, chief spokesman for the Baltimore police, noting that there were no signs of foul play. But he said he found it ironic that "two pharmacy Ph.Ds were ordering drugs from an online pharmacy" overseas.

Such long-distance purchases are an increasingly common way of obtaining drugs that in the United States are either illegal, considered too expensive or available only by prescription. McCracken and John arranged to have their imports hidden in stuffed toys or disguised alongside toys and trinkets, Guglielmi said.

"We will be conferring with federal authorities" such as the Drug Enforcement Administration as to the legal ramifications of having drugs sent from abroad, Guglielmi said. "I think they'll be interested in talking to Mr. McCracken."

Guglielmi, who worked previously at the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc., said that online pharmacies present a grave risk to public safety.

"These potent drugs are regulated for a reason," he said, "and people shouldn't shortcut the medical process and self-?smedicate."

Introduced in 2003, buprenorphine -- prescribed as Suboxone for treatment of addiction -- is often misused, according to a series of articles in The Baltimore Sun in December 2007. Health officials said addicts were injecting or snorting the narcotic to mute cravings for heroin and opiate-based pain pills such as OxyContin.

Experts said bupe is safer than methadone -- the traditional heroin treatment, normally given out under close supervision -- and more likely to appeal to addicts because they can get bupe from their doctors. Some patients sell the pills on the street for up to $50 each, said Michael Gimbel, former director of Baltimore County's Bureau of Substance Abuse.

"Because [the pills] are expensive, many people have turned to the Internet to purchase bupe from other countries and getting them much cheaper," Gimbel said. "Obviously, quality is not guaranteed, and that may be what killed the doctor."

On the street, bupe pills are known as "subbies" or "stop signs," an allusion to their hexagon-like shape. Fatalities have been reported in India, Pakistan and other countries as a result of black-market bupe, which is usually mixed with some kind of tranquilizer and injected.

In the 600 block of Dover, a tree-lined cobblestone street near the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum, the sight of a police canine unit outside John and McCracken's rented two-story rowhouse Sunday night took some neighbors by surprise.

"There's never been any problem like this," said Kofi Kyei-Asare, a 13-year resident who owns four houses on the block. "This is always a very quiet street and extremely safe," he said, describing it as populated mainly by young professionals.

There was no sign of activity Tuesday evening at the house in which the couple lived, and no one answered the door. The couple's dog, a black Labrador mix, was taken to an animal shelter after McCracken's arrest.

"To me, they were just normal, regular people," said landlord Kevin Jarrell, who lives elsewhere. Jarrell rented the house to John a couple of years ago, he said, and McCracken moved in recently.

Asked if he had known what was going on inside the house, Jarrell said, "Of course not."

In their online biographies, McCracken and John emerge as accomplished scientists. McCracken's area of expertise is addiction and compulsive behaviors, according to the Neuroscience Academic Family Tree.

John's available record is more extensive. In 2004, while at Wake Forest, she wrote a paper on the effect of cocaine on serotonin levels in mice, and, that same year, another paper on the "acute and neurotoxic effects of psychostimulants."

Last year, at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, John led medical students in a neuroscience discussion titled "This is your brain on drugs."

Baltimore Sun reporter Jonathan Pitts contributed to this article.

RELATED STORY PHOTO OF CARRIE JOHN:

http://www.foxbaltimore.com/newsroom/top_stories/videos/wbff_vid_1609.shtml