Do you suppose that they know the havoc they have wrought and can't live with it? Or are they coerced into jumping (dieing)? With the Japan disaster upon us the guilt may have been too much for this guy.
With the molecular biologists, there was a Coast to Coast recently, that said that they were continuing the Nazi Eugenics program in a compartmentalized way, and anyone who figured out the real objective would turn up dead.
Maybe some compartmentalized objective with the nuclear scientists as well?