The X Factor - Volume 3 (1996) by silent-realm

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Des g-:SteveHorton, l|ead of Edirorral: WendyKwok Martin Annable lenior Develooment lditor: Pct"rsResearch: ::,,,'nebecca S ophi eMorti mer S t.j ohnston Production Controller: Marshall t:::.::,!4itor:Erenda TerenceStrongman An Editor: JayneSwanson fditorial: GrahamColeman, f'larkerirg: John Balmond o{[irculation: ,tr,li::'t:e.faig Glenday,lain Reid, Head Richmond ChrisJenner l,],ll::1,99" ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS arthors: Stanton Friedman, Rob lrving, Davjd q:,,,'to*tributing rr,,lescod,Simon Richmond, FergusFleming,Jenny M|!J Pictures. Inset; Stanton friedman. mwr:tranklpooner 1;ii::.:llioat lex features. PktureSource. Topham ;::rr$a* cover: l4aps using flountain Highllaps@ Copyright O 1993 aeated DigiulWisdom, Inc. would liketo thankall those whohelped in rhe Ihe publishers developnent ol The X Factor (Peoph for rhe Eidsall, UfOtlagazine. PITA andGraham

l'lutual UlOfle*o*,i.: Dennis ltarey, 9l,.Animak)'.lmutnin.

CRASFIAT f tt 1947, rnr US ctArMED TO HAVE FOUND A FLYING SAUCE RNEA R R O S W E I L /

Nrw Mrxlco.

LATER THAT

SAMEDAY,THEYDENTED tT. WnS THISTHESTARTOF

rnr UFOcovrn-up? he headlines were spectacular:'RAAI' Captures Flyrg Saucer on Ranch in Roswell', 'At-y Declares Flying Disc ,Ar,ny rc Found', Finds Air Saucer on Ranch in New Mexico'. It was 8 July 1947, and Lieutenant Walter Haut. Public h-rformation Officer at the RoswellArmv Air Field (RAAF), had just issued the most ilnportant press releaseof the centurr'. The timing of the story r'r'ascrr-rcial.It u.as released at noon, New Mexico time, but, becar-rseof the time differences in the US, \\;rs too late for most morning papers. It did, horteveq make it into some evening editions. Tire initial press releasewas expanded upon br tl.rebase,and the sheriff s office and local rcr\Sllapers were inundated with queries ir,,rit tlte media and the public. Then sudclcnlr. anrid the excitement, the Army Air Frrr.. changed its story: it was not a UFO .ritel ell. it riasjust a balloon. Tire heacllines the next day effectively killeci the storr': 'Reports of Flying Saucers D ri i n dle: \ er r \ , Ie x i c o " D i s c " i s o n l y \\eathel Balloon'. Pictures of the 'wreckage appeared in manv papers over the next ferr'davs. ar.rdther-ressentiallynothing more

was

heard

=::

about

the

incident for 30 years.

The crashed-saucerstory have would remained untold had it not been for a chance meeting, in 1978, betlveen nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman and a TV station manager in Louisiana. \Atrile waiting to be interr.iewed about his UFO work, Friedman struck up a conversation with the station manager,who told him that he ought to talk to a man named JesseMarcel. 'He handled

poses with o piece of the supposed Roswell debris. In o press conference ofter the crosh, il wos onnounced thot the

,':l

UFO reported in the :l', newspopers (inset) wcs iust o weother bolloon.

pieces of one of those flying saucersyou're interested in when he was in the military,' the manaser told Friedman.'He livesover in . :::Htiuma,Louisiana.' EYE W I T NE S S

ACCOUNT

.,.,,,The next day, Friedman contacted Marcel, tifi.,,lnd found out that he had been the ::,'11:,,elligence Officer at the RAAF when a ,l :flFng saucer was supposed to have crashed on a sheep ranch near Corona, 120 km from Roswell. Marcel ,:said that his orders .,:a::'i::,:t:,, .were to collect the ;?,::. t::aa':,.. cfash wreckage and :deliver it to Wright Field in Ohio, where ,lthe US Army usually stockpiled captured gnemy equrpment. :l:::...As Marcel was ,.takJlig the debris to lOhio, Press Officer Walter Haut officially announced the story. Later that day, it was decided to cover up the true events, and a second statement was made to the press: the wreckage was just

a::

pieces of a weather balloon. Marcel could not recall the exact dates ,,_butFriedman shared the information with . UFOfogist William Moore, who had agreed to help in the investigation.In turn. Moore across a story that gave the events a ;1,..,:,.qarne ,,,,,,,.,timeframe. In the very frst issue of Flymg t:l:f

' "Tr

IITITITT=III

=-:=s, a<.:-:

RAAF wos home to 5O9rh Bomb Group. In | 945, rhe unit tested the first ofomic bomb ql New Mexico's Whire Sonds Missile R.onge (inset). Could

SaucerReuieu,TV personalin'Hr,rghie Creen reported that. w h i l e dri r i ng near Philadelphia, he had heard a neu's broadcast announcing that a UFO had been recovered by the Army. Creen tried to find out more, but never heard the storv mentioned again. It was not much, but at least he had a date: lateJune or earlyJulr' 1947.

this testing hove ony conneclion wirh the

TH E

two necrby UFO

Moore did a search of the Universin' of Minnesota Library and found the nervspapers from 8 Jul y 1947 cor er ing t he Corona-Roswell event. The papers gave names for the rancher, the sheriff. the RAAF personnel and a time frame. Friedman and Moore went ir-ito high gear and, by 1980, had talked to 62 people concerned with the event,including Bill Brazel, son of the rancher u'ho found the wreckage, neighbours r'r,ho also handled some debris, such as Loretta Proctor, and Jesse Marcel's son,Jessejunlor.

croshes in 1947?

IN TE N S IFIE S

Amazingly, Lieutenant \4talter Haut, the Press Officer rvho released the story, was still living in Rosrvell. He had a base yearbook and n'as helpful in tracking down people and filling in details. By 1986, Friedman and Moore had tracked down 92 people and published six papers. Friedman had convinced the producers of LlnsolaedMysteriesto do a segment about Roswell in their NBC-TV programme,

':.:r..:...

;

enabling him, as a consultant, to seek other rvitnesses.In August 1989, while filming in Roswell, Friedman met with mortician Glenn Dennis. He had worked for the Ballard Funeral Home, which provided mortuary servicesto the base. For the first time ever, Glenn spoke about strange activity at the Army base hospital in the summer of 7947. Not only had

33 r$ We hqd lust gone through o World Wor... Then come this f ly i n g s o u c e r b u si n e ss. l f w o s iust loo much for the public to hqve to deol with ColonelThomosJeffersonDuBose,BthAir Force

the Army asked him how to deal with 'small bodies', but he was forcibly thrown out of the hospital on his next visit. Couid alien bodies have been recovered in the crash? Dennis believes so. He claims to have met rvith a nurse at the base who told him about 'very smelly' bodies she had seer-rbeing autopsied by two doctors. The bodies had brownish-grey skin, big heads rrith slits or holes for nose. ears and mouth. and four slender fingers with no thumb, and no hair. After meetins with Dennis a

few times, the nurse simply disappeared, apparently moving to England. When he tried to contact her, Dennis's mail was returned, stamped'Deceased'. Despite some of the unverifiable details of the Roswell Crash, the broadcast of UnsolaedMysteriesin September 1989 was a great success, being seen by 28 million people in the US. There followed a great rush of books, TV shows and attacks by debunkers. By now, the researchershad separated into two warring factions - while thev all agreed that at least one UFO had crashed on the Foster ranch, one group of researchers, nhich inclr-rcled Friedman, believed there had been a second crash,on the plains of San Augustin, New Mexico. A N OTH E R

CRASHED

V In the mid-l94os, Mogul bolloons were designed to lisfen out for Soviel nucleor tests. The US Air Force now clqim rhof fhe crosh qi Corono wqs. one of the fop-secret: Mogul bolloons. fhq

proiect wos scropped ond declossified within q few yecrc,

U FO?

The second-crash theory relies heavily on the testimony of two key witnesses.The first, Cerald Anderson, contacted Friedman after seeing a 1990 re-run of the (JnsoluedMysteriesdocumentary. By this time, the other witness, Grady 'Barney' Barnett, had -lr@ died, but he had told his story to two friends, LaVerne and Jean Maltais, who passed the information to Friedmarr. Independently, both men told stories about discovering alien bodies in or around saucer debris. And according to Anderson's claims, one

so why did ir roke rhe Air Force so long to reveof the 'lrulh'?

-fu

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o.' -1i

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,.:.:ri:lliiii',.,lti

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' -:

tu=*; ;i,[ A Roswell is home to fwo UFO museums: the lnternotionol UFO Museum, ond the Enigmo Museum, where this model of o crqshed flying soucer is on disploy.

of' the aliens survived the crash. Unfortunatell', becar,rseBarnett had died, he cor.rldnot be quizzed about what he sar.v. As a result, many UFOlogists expressreserrrationsabor.rtthe crash at San Augustin. The facts surrounding the Corona crash, horvel'er, have become almost universallv acceptecl. By the time Friedman's Crash at

C orona (co-rrri tren bv ar-i ati otr science r'r,riter, Don Ber-liner) rtas publishecl in 1992, most of ti re bl anks i n the st or y had been fillecl in. TH E

FU tL

The stoll

S TOR Y

of the Rosr'r'ell crash began on 2

Jul,v 1947. rr'hen sheep rancher Mac Brazel heard a porr'elful explosion in the midclle of an electrical storm. The fbllorving morning. Br-azel.l'ho operated the Foster ranch about 120 krn northlvest of Rosnell and 32 krl southeast of the tin,v tor.vn of' (lorona, \\'ent to check on a \vater pllmp. Otr tl-reNar', he discor,ered an area 1 km long stre\vn n'ith debris n'hich, r'vhen he foldecl it several tirnes, unfolded spontaneoush'. There tr'ere also pieces of nhat lvas later described as small I-beams with \rerv LurrlsLlAl lavendercoioured symbols alorrg tfie ilsicle of the I. The beams had tl-re wcight of balsa ltood but could not be broken or br-rrned. On Sundar,l 6.|ulr'. Brazel made the long cross-countrv

trip l'ith

some of the r'vreck-

age in his old pickup truck. He took it to George

contacted

base and spoke rvith

the Arrny

Wilcox,

lr,ho

the Rosrvell Sheriff,

the Intelligence Officer, Major Marcel. He

in turn checked out the material. and noted it was verv strange and unlike any debris seen during his service in \{orld \{hr II. As the Intelligence Officer for the world's only atomic-bomb r-rr.rit,Marcel's .j u d g e me n t c o u l d b e rel i ed upon. The Rosr,vellbase commander, Colonel William Blanchard, instructed Marcel and Sheridan W. Cavitt, a Counter-Intelligence Officer, to follow the rar-rcherout to the remote field and collect the debris F IN D IN G

THE

ALTERNATIVEEXPLANATIONS While most UFOreseorchers hqve reiecfed cloims thol o bolloon croshed ol Corono, they hove nol lololly ogreed on whot did foll from the sky. Ahernqtives include: o FUGO bolloon. During 1945, ihe Joponese lounched over 9,OOOpoper bolloons corrying explosives. Bul if one crqshed qf Corono, where hod it been in the two yeors since fhe end of ]he wor? . US iesl rccket. Some reseqrchers suggest thot the Americons were tesling o copfured unguided missile. This moy hqve fooled the sheep roncher, Moc Brozel, but surely ihe Army would recognize o missile?And why would it hove been such o secrel? ' o Tesl pilot monkeys. Some reseorcherg suggest thof the recovered'qlien bodies' were jusi rhesus monkeys being used os porl of o militory spoce-trovel experimenl.

W R E C K A GE

In his book, Crash at Coro'na,Fricdrnan published Marcel's first-hand account of what he sar,r'':'When r,l.e arrived at the crash site, it rvas amazing to see the vast amount of area it covered. It nas nothing that hit the ground or exploded [on] the ground. It's something that must have exploded above gror.rnd, travelling perhaps at a high rate of speed... It was quite obvious to me, familiar lvith air activities, P = that it was not a lveather balloon. nor was e

it a plane or a m is s ile. ' The

o o

f illed

two t heir

mell v ehic les

rvith as mtrch of the debr is as t her c olr lc l holcl. 1eavin51a lot of it

behind.

\'va)'

back

t he

the

V Slonfon Friedmon

Roswell base, Marcei

(right) conlinues ro

stopped

off

his

\ \ e ] 'e

' "'':': 1|&

T h e UF O c ro s h e s in Ne w Me x ic o lq u n c h e d t h e US g o v e rn me n l o n o lo n g -t e rm c q mp o ig n o f d is in f o rmq t io n

of the crash

Mexico, often moking

age to his nife and their son,Jessejunior. The next morning, Colonel Blanchard ordered the area near Corona sealed off. A laree eroup of soldiers and militarl, police

lo speok

th e tn a d e

o f t h e a r e a . B a ck a t the

R\\F,

Olficer

Press

Lieutenant

Har,rt issued a press release

a1 t

\!as

.e.rIclt

S toni on Fri edmon

home

Son Auguslin

lanch :rnci a detailecl

seorch for evidence of

to eyewitnesses.

sent

==:::::-:,,:,::::'

the crqshes in New

lrips lo Roswell qnd

to shorv some

a.-t' ,.,,i'

indicating

â&#x201A;Źâ&#x201A;Ź#

that a fl,ving disc had

r.vreck-

been captured. The

nervs made the local radio and appeared in the evening editions of the local papers. Meanlvhile,

Major Marcel r'vasinstructed

to get a B-29 crelv to take him and the rvreckField (norv knorur

age to \{right

as \,\,'risht-

Patterson Air Force Base) in Ohio. On the u'a1,,he stopped at Fort \{orth,

Texas, head-

quarters of the Eishth Air Force. Bv this time, Strategic General

Air

Clemens

abor.rt the

Director

the Actins

Commancl

\{ashington,

NlcN{ullen, had

press release. He

heard

contacted

Colonel

T h o m r r : J e l l e l s o r r D u B o se , th e Chief of Staff ar Forr \Vorth, and told him to inrrent a cover storv and hand over the running o E

-f I !

the incident

to General

Roger

Ramel', the base comrnander. When \{orth, 'Don't

Marcel

touched

he was met

down

bv Ramev

sal' an,vthing. I'll

Fort

zrnd told,

take c:rre of it.'

ii.li

Weather-balloon wreckage and a radar reflector, made of foil and wooden sticks, were brought in with Irving Newton, the base meteorologist. Marcel posed with the bogus wreckage and the press was told that a mistake had been made, that it was not a flying saucer, but a radar reflector. AfterWards,Marcel was sent back to Roswell. The cover story went out about 5 p.-. central time, too late for the newspapers, except the last edition of the Los Angeles iTeratd Express.The subtitle of the headline was 'General Believes it is Radar

) Glenn Dennis, lhe RAAF morticion, mode these sketches of the Roswell oliens bqsed on the description given fo him by o nurse of lhe RAAF.The olien she described beors some resemblonce lo fhe creoture in the outopsy footoge (below) releosed in 1995. But, occording to the olleged outopsy comeromon,

Weather Gadget'.

the film is of on olien

ATI E N

B O DI E S

F OU N D

The clean-up of the Foster ranch and surrounding area took one week, during which time Marcel was forbidden to speak to anyone. The search for debris was expanded and, after two days, the main body of the saucer was found close to the Foster ranch. And just over 1.6 km from the craft, dead alien bodies were found. In 1990, Stanton Friedman interviewed an Army Air Forces photographer (wishing to be known only as FB) who claims to have seen bodies in the field near Corona. FB says he was stationed at the Anacostia Naval Air Station, Washington D.C.,

recovered from o UFO crosh on 31 May 1947, neor Socorro, New Mexico - nof â&#x201A;Źoronq or Son Augustin.

-.-_----------) ,9

o -.9 o

when he and a fellorv photographer were ordered to flr' to the RAAF. When thev arrived at Roswell, the nto tneu n-ere taken to a tent irr a field and told to , photograph its contents. 'Tl.rererras foLrr bodies I could see. recal l s FB , goi ng on t o describe their heads as appearing too large for their small bodies. SinceJannarv 1995, more than 30 countries hale broadcast portions of a supposed alien autopsy. Atrd while the aiien in the filn.r appears to be similar to a few e,vewitnessdescriptions, the supposed cameraman claims to have taken the footage on 31 May 1947 near Socorro, New Mexico. Could there have been a third UFO crash? According to Ray Santilli, the music producer who claims to have bought the film from the cameraman, a number of rnilitary personnel from 1947 recognize the alien as the creature recovered from a saucer crash

In the next issue, LTO I'ILE dissectsthe Roswellalien autopssfootageand asks:is it a monq-spinninghoax or the real thing?

--,.

: :

ruE$

lr rn

ru T!

WERE O P H O T O G R A P HS

FAKED,WHAT WERE N

EASONS?

Tnr coNSPIRAcY THEoRIES * :: UND.EB 1"{,

PUT

. .- ;iFrs'' ''

fter President John F. Kennedv announced to Congress in IIar 1961 that the US should 'comrnit itself, before this decade is out, to r landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth,' the race to the moon began. The Cold War was at its height, and \ASA was one of the leading weapons in that battle. Br-rtit was the Soviet Union who made a1l the eariv advances.They launched the first malr into spacein 1961,and the first woman n\'o lears later. Thev were also the first to olbit tl-reearth. The US had their successes. too. when. lessthan a r-earafter Kennedy'sspeech,John Clenn became the first American to orbit the earth. Triurnph turned to tragedy in

Jar-ruary1967, however,when Apollo 1 explocled in flames during testing, killing the three astronautson board. The many flaws that had lead to the fire meant that a complete design overhar.rlwas required. Many at NASA felt that the end of the decade deadline rvould prove unfeasible.

E A Apollo | | blosted off , from Floridq's Kennedy Spoce Cenfer on t6 July

IMP OS S IB TE

DREAM

It lvas the need to fulfil Kennedy's promise which Californian author Bill Kaysing believes sparked the NASA conspiracy,. Betrveen 1956 and 1963, Kaysingworked as a technical writer for a company involved in the Apollo missions. During this time, Kaysing claims, NASA carried out a feasibiliq, study which found they had only a 0.0017

| 969, londing on the moon four

,"*" ,.t l:tr yeore wos only eight since Presideni Kennedy {inset} ' commified rhe US to the ' moon proiect. Hoox theorisfs soy NASA could:' nol hqve perfected their lunor progromme so fosf.

llcl celrt chancc of landing a man on the nroon and returning him to earth. Kaysing believes it rvas impossible for NASA to go fl'om 0.0017 to 100 per cent by 1969. Some people believe Kaysinghas a point. The t ec hnologl t r s e dto f1 yAp o l l o I I to th e In oon \ \ as ex t r e me l l p ri rn i ti re c o rn p a re d ri i th t oday ' ss t and a rd sIn . l a c t.th e o n -b o a rd co m put - erhad les sm e m o rv th a rr:r rrro d e rn rra s hingm ac hine .

PEl_To RM A N c E 1I,A.91"?. Irr his book, Wr, Npun llprtr to the ,V1oon. Iky s ir r gc laim st ha r N AS \ a rrc lth e D e fe n s e l n telligenc eA gen c r ( D L \ r r' o r k e d to g e th e r o n f ak ing t he A po l l o I I m o o n l a rrd i n g .A n empty SarurnV rocketrraslaunched,bur fell b a c k t - oear lh \ v he n i t rr' a so rrt o f th e p rrb l i c g az e. NA S A als o a l l e g e rl l r c re a te d a l u rra r' l a nds c apein an r rrrd e rg l o u n dc a \e rn a t a remote Nevada site. Meanwhile, the astronaut.sanrl \lissior-r Control were takiilg part in a nleticlrloushstaged performance designed to fool rhe p u blic - and es p e c i a l hth e R u s s i a n s- i n to b elier ing r hey ha d l a n d e d o n th e m o o n . Fake photographs and film were taken and astronauts return to earth staged by ing a dum m y s p a c ec a p s u l efro m a n ane into the ocean.

Ka,vsing goes on to suggest that the astronautswere brainwashed to guararltee their co-operation nith the hoax. Another American

;;;t;;, nnrpnn ,.,e, also trelieves that astronauts could not have made it to the moon. In his book, I{ASA Mo oned,America!, Rene claims that the Apollo spacecraft

teclrrrologl ro take rrrcrrrafelr to lhe moon

h e s p e n f n e o r l y tw o

br tlre errcl of the lgttU.. rlrer resorted to

hours h Vostok l,

fakirrg the ltrtral landings. This ensurecl rlrat

reoching on ohitude of

the;, nor,rld score a propagalda

327 km. Suclr,eienfr

coup agailst

the Sor iets and keep the clollars roUing in

sp.rrredon fhe Americon

for funding their real space projects

sPâ&#x201A;Źce Proglromme.

JOIN T

C ON S F.I.R A C Y

.\nother hoax rheory,cl ai ms rhat the Americarrs and Sor iets secretly devclopcd their space techrrologr roeether. NAS.\ faked the Apollo photoeraphs

because thev

and the Soviets ltere building basesorr rlre rnoon lo use as a staging posr for a full-blorrn

baseon Mars. This theory rvas triugered by a spoof documerrtar; called Al ternn Iiue'l'hrep.made tryAnglia TY's SrienreRzporlserie:. Originally scheduledfor All Fools' Day.rhe programme rvasactual l vbroadcaston 2o.ftrne 1977.It

ffiffil

l -1 .

Unman I

OfABTI

BY Ja ck B'l l

lut , \

o r xr n ttu !!F1 ::

Revision

Nixon ls Seen Offcri ngS hi ft lf Plan l'altcrsi

B: I. t'. Reittrur

}1 OID A\.

N o' :l l I

Studictl

Soaiet

@boNm

Tlrc W eather

92dYear

Stre&[it Will Arrive AsAPollo TakesOff

caused a deluge of response from worried vieu'ers - in many ways comparable to the public panic following Orson Welles' famous ?Var,9lthe Worldsradio broadcast of 1936. y declared de Th e doc um ent ary that the

APOttO T DISASTER

*o*e uently, a team of and government

n ond fhe rest die with

t+,..

f h e i r so u l s? RolphRen6,Hoox Theorist

,- u. t F rd"i;^ cameupwiththreet*.i,,L

;

save the human race. The first alternative was to detonate controlled nuclear r'l.arheads in the atmosphere to allow pollution to disperseinto space.The secondalternative was to build huge subterranean bunkers to house the rich, intelligent and powerful elite of the world. But Alternative Three was the chosen plan.

nrIrBr u4I _lY rr ! : j j _ _ In this scenario,humans would colonize the nearest planet capable of sustaining life Mars.According to the programme, a.joint American and Soviet space probe had

On 27 Jonuory 1967, o lew doys before Apollo l's lqunch dote, there were moior problems wirh the commqnd module. As fhe qstronquts worked in the module, disqster struck. Jusi offer 6.3O pm, o shorl tronsmission come from Apollo f ,'We've gol o fire in the cockpit. Wifhin seconds, the lemperolure hqd soqred to l,4OO"Cdue to lhe module's inflommoble pure oxygen olmosphere. Astronquts Gus Grissom, Ed White ond Roger Chqffee were osphyxioted by corbon monoxide. Conspirocy

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theorists cloim ihcrf NASA $ a i* could not possibly hove a worked out oi cqused ""t fhe fire (obove), solved qll the module's design fqults, builr o new one qnd rr...*frliy r.rt *.. to fhe moon in only two yeors.

already been sent to explore the far side of the moon in the late 1950s.A joint lunar base would be built as a launching post for a proper Martian base.Once the Mars bases were in place, the rich and powerful would "abandon earth for Mars, leaving the rest of humanity to fend for themseh'es on a doomed earth. As unlikel-vas all this mav seem, mauv r,ielers rvere taken in bv the documentarv.

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Mars and believe they have proof that alien ruins exist there. The most compelling evidence they claim, is the famous 'face on Mars' photograph. NASA say the picture is just a trick of the light. The head of TMM, Richard Hoagland, changed the group's name to the Enterprise il:::

33 1*.

Neil Armsfrong reloyed the messqge to M ission Control thot two lorge, mysterious obiects were wotching them Dr Vlodimir Azhozho,Moscow Universil'y

nt despite the fact that it was advertised in many newspapers as a spoof. It also had a cast list of actors at the end of the programme and a copyright notice reading 1 April 1977. The programme was not shown in the US, which fuelled conspiracy theories that the 'truth' was being kept from them. Suspicions grew when people claimed that copies of the book Alternatiae Three were hard to find, and that they were being withheld by the government. There is another theory that is gaining momentum. An American research group called The Mars Mission (TMM) have spent nearly 20 years analysing pictures of

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foken from Viking l, . shows the'foce on Mqrs'. NASA soy it is o rock formqtion 1.8 km wide. The shot of rhe moon (inset), sent bock to eorth by o Russion

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probe in 1965, shows whot Richord Hooglond cloims is on ortificiol slructure (circled).

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Mission in March 1996 becausehe believes he has found evidence of artificial strLtctllres on the moon. Hoagland sayshe has reached these conclusions by using simple geometrical calculations.

r osT ctvtttzATloN Images of the earth taken from satellite photographs at 100 metre resolution shorv straight lines, circles and sqttares, representi ng roads, houses and cit ies. Hoagland was aware of this and, rvhen he looked at the moon, he claims to have found geometric shapesat 100 metre resoltition on its surface. He believesther-are the remains of huge glass structures built to protect lunar cities. Without the constt'aints of

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gravity, Hoagland argues, these structures are much larger than anything we could build on earth. He estimatesthat one of them, which he calls 'The Tower', could have been up to 12 km high. He believes the,vcovered much of the lunar surface and are still visible from earth as the darker patches on the moon. Hoagland saysthey point to a lost interplanetary civilization, arrd believes the Apollo astronauts were arrareof their existence. ATIE NS

THE

MOON

Leading British UFO researcher, Timothy Cood, goes one step further. In his book, Bqond Top Secret,Cood reports that the astronautsactually sarvaliens on the moon. The evidence for this extraordinary claim is an alleged secret conversation between )Iission Control and Aoollo 11 astronauts \e i l A r m s t r ongand Bu z zN d ri n . w h i c h w a s mo n i t or ed by S ov ie ts c i e n ti s ts . Dr Madimir Azhazha,a Russianphvsicist

and Professor of Mathematics, saysthat the encounter occurred shortly after the lunar module landed, but that the astronauts' report was never heard by the public because NASA censored it. Maurice Chatelain, a communications specialistwho worked for NASA at the time, statedpublicly that the Apollo 11 encounrer with the UFOs was 'common knowledge in NASA', and that all the Apollo missionshad been observedby UFOs. This suggeststhat NASA, not wanting to admit to the world that UFOs .lverecloselr. monitoring their astronauts, staged the moon shots on earth so that the public would not panic at what was reall,v happening in space. One of the strangestquestions about the moon is why NASA has not sent astronauts there since the Apollo missions,and has no intention of doing so in the near future? Mavbe the moon has yet to give up all its secrets.

A A spoce-wolking oslronoul works in lhe corgo boy of rhe Spoce Shurtle Endeovour os il posses over Ausfrolio in Jonuory 1996. The Spoce Shuttle's missions oll toke ploce relotively close to the eorth. The conspirocy theory hos been fuelled by the fccl lhot since the Apollo missions, no Americon hos trovelled inlo deep spoce.

BE,I_IINDTFIE,

DO THE UNDEADROAM TfIE EARTHDRINKING HUMAN SLOOO?ON IS THEREA MEDICALEXPLANATION

crrnrrrnY FORVAfvlPlRlSm?

DavloPescoo HrsroRrnru INVESTIGATES Tt a aj:a f hen Arnod Paole was attacked by a f J vampire, he knew what to do to save I t his soul. He tracked the creature to #ffi its grave and thrust a stake.through its heart, smearing his own body with the blood. He would often retell the tale to fellow villagers, drawing gaspsof admiration. Life went on as normal until Paole broke his neck in a fall and was buried at the local graveyard. Then Paole seemed lo come back from the dead. Villagers began complaining about being bothered by Paole, a n d dead bodies w e re fo u n d . drained of blood. Rumours-of vampirism spread and a group of Austrian Army officers were sent to investigate. They disinterred Paole's body, and what thdy saw confi rmed everyone's fears. The officers reported that Paole was 'complete and undecayed... fresh blood had flowed from his eyes, nose, mouth and ears; the old nails on his hands and feet, along with the skin, had fallen otf, and new ones had g.o*h. Since they saw f,rom this

that he was a vampire, they drove a stake through his heart... whereupon he gave an audi bl e groan and bl ed copi ousl y:' This is one of the.many casesof vampirism recorded in the Austrian officersl account from the 1730s. Entitled Vis:14m et R cpcrtum (' S een and D i scovere d') . ihe report details several other exhumations, and a subsequent 'epidernic of vampirism'. Clearly, something had happened to the villagefs in their post-mortem state. But coul d i t real l ybe vampi ri sm? MOD E R N

B E TIE FS

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A survey by California State University revealed that more than 27 per cent,'of Americans believed vampires were real. If , askedwhat such a vampire looks like, these believers would probably describe the . creatures portriyed in numerous films, which have as their source Bram Stoker's lB97 novel. Drarula. This vampire is depicted as a handsome ari stocrat.sexual l yartractedby - an d t o both sexes. By day, he rests.in a coffin in his castle; by night, he has the power of flight, setting forth to drink blood. Despite these superhuman attributes,=lhisvampire =i is terrified b1'crosses,garlic and light. t There ii* horu..'.., anorher type of o : vampire, that of folklore, which is found throughout history in most cultures. This g '. vampire's attributes are very different to : those portrayed in the media. Gone is the F

cultured aristocrat - the vampire of folkl ore l s an ordl nary peasant. U nl i ke hi s medi a counterpart.the f olklore vampire residesin a graveyard.usually without a coffin. \Mh...uf'the meclia vampire loveshis 'undead' state and trave]slar to seek out [urther victims. the l-olklbie "'"vampire hates the condition, never wandeiing beyond his or her village. The gap

ffi# 1e The vqmpire legend is o kind of incesfuous, ribcrophilous, or ql- qnql.sodistic qll- i n wresfling mqtch Author MouriceRichordson,

n \ w& ## between the two is so great that it is true to say that the media vampire and the folklore vampire would neyer meet socially. To understand why there was a universal belief in the folklore vampire; it is necessary to go back ohly 200 years, to an eia when the causesof many ilhlesses were a mystery, and post-mortem decay littlE'"understood. The maioriry of people beliered that death u,' d di rJa.eftere the w ork ol God. Bur lr om time to time, sitr.rations arose tn'at made people suspicious that another, .more sinisrer. force was at work.

MY s T T h I O US

DE A T HS

This was particularly the case when an otherwise healthy person died suddenly be it under mysterious circumstances,or of heart failure, infectious diSeaseor a'stroke. At a time when there was little medical knowledge, an explanation was found by blaming the deaths on the supernatural: a vampire had sucked the life from the living to sustain its undead state. The villagers wotild then consider the possibility that the deceasedhad also become a vampire. The corpsesof such peopl e w ou ld t hen be exhumed and -examined for tell-tale signs of vampirism. These included skin regeneral i on.grow th of hai r and nails. a , ruddy and well-fed cor,nplexion,and bleeding orifices. The undead were also known to groan and break'wind. Today, the process ofputrefaction (bodily decay) is weil known to science. In the past, however, what happened to a corpse

woman ffidaacB-

V According to folklore, if q creqture shows no reflection in c mirror, it is o sure sign of vompirism. Methods for comboiing vompires differ from counlry to country, but fhe most enduring qre fhose of middle-Europeon folklore. A crucifix or holy woter is used to repel the undeod, qnd o shorpened stgke driven through its heort ro kill ir. Finolly, stuffing the decd vgmpire's mouth with gorlic ensurei it "

sloys deod.

after burial was shrouded in mystery. What the vampire-hunters thought was proof of the undead state was, in fact, the typical decomposition of a body. As a corpse decays.,gasesare produced that quickly build up inside the body. causing it to swell and become bloated. The soft tissue of the genitalia also become swollen with gas and, in inen, the penis and scrotum reach a size rarely encountered in life. in the past, a corpse seen at this stage.would look better fed than in life. And the erect poenisof a decomposing body could have s,rftgestedthat it was to some extent sexually active. Once the exhumed corpse was officially declared to be a vampire, various methods were employed to put the spirit to rest. The m o s t p o p u l a r me th o d w as to dri ve a sharp stake through the vampire's heart. This would result in an explosive discharge of fluids and gas, causing the corpse to groan

and fart. In many communities, the heart was removed, the body burned, and the ashesthrown into a river. If, once this had been accomplished, the phenomena did not disappearJ a search would be made for further bodres that exhibited signs of the r.rndead. Methods for hunting r-ampires varied from country to countn, but once a search w-asbegun, finding rnore r.ar.npires could bâ&#x201A;Ź guaranteecl. \ot even animals were safefrom zealousr-ampirehunters. vA M P I R E E P.!.,?:.fl!.1c s

Thus, an infectious and fatal illness present in a village often resultecl in an outbreak of vampires - especiallv if many people touched the corpsesrvhile clisinter. ri ng and destroyi ngthem. Redding the historical accounts of vampires, it is evident that the observations made rvere correct - the ur-rdead did '|---?n look larger and healthier than -4$u' ' in life. They appeared to have grown ,ilrynew ski n. and l onger rrai l s. teet h and 'hair: thev contained fresh 'blood' which dripped from the nose, month and other orifices; and, occasionally, the undead _rffi +"groaned and broke rti nd. But the interpretation of the phe., nomena was wrong. With no other explanation to account for what was observed, it is understandable how the belief in vampires spread to so many culs = tures as people attempted to explain I ? disease, death and decay in refer= ence to their own experience.

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oF DILIGENT RESEARCH

PROVED TO JENNY COCKELL THAT SHE HAD LIVED BEFORE. NOW THE LIVING WITNESS TO REINCARNATION TALKS ABOUT HER PAST AND HER FUTURE LIVES ince childhood, Jenny Cockell vividly remembers being Mary, a mother of eight children, from Malahide, near Dublino Ireland, ffi early this century. In 1987, Je*y set about proving she had once been Mary. Her quest was a success. Not only did she find Mary's surviving children, she managed to reunite the family that had been separated for m.rny years. Chatting across the kitchen table in her Northamptonshire home, the married mum of two reveals herself to be down-to-eartho intelligent and ready to make jokes about her experiences. She treats other people's views with respect. But there's one question that always annoys her:

ENNY

CO CK E LL

Past Lives, Future Lives

S ffi t' * i rri ta te d w h e n people ask, '\Arhendid it all start?' I've always remembered my past lives, sincelwasababy.

How would you describe reincErnotion?

it she describes the lives thoi she hod in ihe post qnd the lives she will live in the future. Cockellhos 'seen'os for qheqd

Bur if we ore qll reincqrnqted,

os fhe yeor 2285 when she will

world's constonfly exponding populotion?

living in Colifornio.

If you go right through history and consider all forms of life being reincarnated - so an animal could

a Post Lives, Future Lives is

@thot

It's true that a lot of people forget about their lives before the age of six. But I believe that everyone has lived before, but that theyjust don't remember. \Arhen we're young children, we do remember things about those past lives. I saw it in my own children, from the way they played and acted. My daughter had been a grandmother somewhere in eastern Europe and my son was a soldier in France.

I believe it's the continuation of the inner person, which is a kind of energy. \A&renour bodies wear out and die, this energy goes on to live in a new body. People like to talk about the 'soul', but I find this can be very confusing because of the religious overtones. I am not r'eligious at all. Anyvay, it's not my place to tell other people what to think. I dislike people who say 'this is the only way of looking at things.'

Jenny Cockell'ssecond book. In

I.mtil th. oI ild b66rung^

Mosf people find it hqrd to remember their childhood, let qlone detqils of post lives.

" be Sheryl Voughn, o leenoger "'"'-ifBR0I

whot

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come back as a human, that sort of thing - it's a possibility. Also, we're probably coming back quicker. More people do seem to be remembering their past lives. But I really don't worry about these things. I'm much more interested in what is actually happening to me.

You come from q broken home. Could the sfress of your childhood hqve been o foctor in enqbling you to remember the lives you hove hod before? Under stressI withdraw back into my subconscious, and that's what we're talking about - accessto the subconsciousmind. This must be part of the reason I've alwaysbeen able to remember my past lives. I have engrossed myself in these memories. I would like to see a personality profile conducted on people who believe they have been reincarnated. I would not be surprised to find that they all shared an introverted personality.

How do you know fhot your posr-life memories qre reql qnd nof iusf your imoginotion? I knew in the same way that you know that your own memories of childhood, or your past, are real - they felt that way. I had also talked to my family about these memories. As with anyone, though, there are gaps between the incidents I do remember.

Whqt's the eorliest life you remember? \Arhen I was a child, one of the most peaceful memories I have is being a hunter dressed in skins, climbing over a wooded hill, going towards a settlement of round huts by a lake. From the research I've since done on these and other details, I believe this was a Stone Age village in Scotland about 3,000 yearsago.

Whof encourqged you fo investigqte your previous lives further? Over the years, I had made notes about the memories and spoke to people about Mary. I also used to draw maps of Malahide, where Mary had lived. I didn't bother saving any of these maps, but it was alwaysthe same one. In 1980, a new bookshop opened in my home town and I ordered a large-scalemap of the Malahide area. When it arrived, the roads and the landmarks matched up with u'hat I used to draw fairly accurately.This was my first confirmation that the dreams and memories I had'rvere real.

How did you follow this up? I read books on reincarnation and talked to people about the subject. I had my psychic abilities tested at Nene College in Northampton. Then, in 1988,I started a course of hypnotic regression. I'nanted to learn more about Mary, her life and her children.

Your reseqrch broughf Mory's five remoining brothers ond sisters together qgoin. Do you still see fhem? I see Sonny fthe eldest brother and the first of Mary's surviving children thatJennv metl mostly, the others lessso. That's their choice. Thev don't need me as much as they need each other. That rvasone of the hardest things for me to do - letting go after all these years.

When did premonitions of your future lives first stqrt? \Arhen I wrote my first book I Yesterday's Child,renl, I thought people might find it really hard to accept my past lives, so vou can imagine how I felt about revealing the lir,esI had seen in the future as welll I had my first vir,id experiences of a future life in 1990. There was a feeling of being an Asian girl and a sensation of this being in the future. Through hypnosis, I have since identified the girl as coming from Kokuwa in Nepal. Her name will be Nadia Tenchan. Hove you ever been fo Nepol? No, and I'm unlikely to go there because I have multiple allergy syndrome, so I can't have the injections you need. I'll just have to wait until I get

natural immunity in my next life. Again, I've drawn out maps of where I will live. The fact that I had a premonition of red earth checked out - there are certain parts of Nepal where the rock formations have created red soil.

There qre gqps between eoch of your lives. Whof hoppens in fhese in-between periods?

known about for a lons time about the way the world will develop.

So how will rhe world develop? There will be a reduced population, partly because of the increase in particular diseases,such as cancer and new viruses. Interpretation is the biggest pitfall. You get used to the feelings and can sensewhether things will happen in a few weeks or a couple of months, but generally it's vague.

\Arhen I went to Ireland to film a television documentary about â&#x201A;Źâ&#x201A;Ź Mary, we managed to locate the It was the strength of the exact room in the Dublin hospital where I had died. I was emotionsand the mernoriesthat How hos your life chonged overcome with a very weird since going public wirh conaincedme that... I was feeling when I went in there, your story? reliaing a past life. and I actually walked out Some people still think that I'm backwards - which is how I crazy.But the best thing is how remember leaving the last time. many other peopl e I' ve com e In the same way people describe near-death acrosswho say they have had similar experiences. It's experiences, I had seen Mary's body on the bed been a tremendous relief - like coming out of the and the nurses rushing all around her. I was going closet. Lots of things that I thought were quirky about toward a shaft of light. There were different colours me I've found are just typical of people who all around me. Then suddenly there was a bright remember past lives. burst of light. I felt like all the uselessemotions of life were being peeled away and I was left exposed, Hqve your psychic gifis ever been q

ffiF

surrounded by people, but feeling warm and comfortable. It's the same kind of relationship a baby has with its mother. You seem to be yery

cerloin

obout

fhese

experiences. That's just the way it is. Some memories are very clear. For example, with Mary, I always knew that the period of time involved was from the 1890s to the 1930s. I knew that my name was Mary and that I had lived in Ireland. I really can't explain how or why the knowledge wasjust there. For the premonitions of future lives, I believe the details provided by hypnosis because they tally with other things I have

problem for you? There are times when it has been hideous. My husband's businesswas going fine, but when I got glimpses of the future, it looked absolutely dreadful. Then his businesscollapsed. That put me off looking linto the futurel for a while.

Whqr qbout your future in this life? Well, I've known when I'm going to die since I was about 21..I thought at the time, 'I must remember to take out a pension!' I might be a year or two out on the exact date, but it feels right. Anyvay, I'll find out eventually.And it will certainly be a very interesting experiment.

PHECIES FoRrHr,

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ichel de Nostradame, popularly known by his Latin name Nostradamus, often spent his evenings

- like a gypsywith a crystal ball until he went into a deep trance and saw into the future. On one such night. Nostradarnus witnessed

date he had predicted. I\, { ^^.of , rNostradamus' Many ^r \ T ^. r - - r ^ -,,-,o900 AA relate to catastrophic predictions .u.:lo at al the end. end of this this r,.,1.1gventr In of the chilling view 1:,,:''nr_illennium. he predicted with which 4ccuracy his own death, his prophecies can not be taken too lightly - especially si n c e ot her pr ophe ts p re d i c t

Similar events.Nostradamus' predictions, culled from a mixture of astrologv and alchemv and delivered in coded versesin

rvill cnlminate in the vear 2000, the veal of Christ's Second Coming. 'Tl-rer-r-rillennium,'Nostradamus \rrote to his son, 'shall end all.'

in his book CenturiesAt first glance his versesmake little sense,bnt in-depth studies byvarior.rsscholars have shed much light on their

futr.rre? The key to his prophecies lies not only in the translation but in the interpretation, u.hich can vary greatly from scholar to scholar.

P E R l tO

U S TIM E S

His outlook for the millennium was ominous. He wrote that in 1999 a 'Great King of terror' will rule, 'blood and pestilence will redden two rivers' and 'pestilence, war and famine shall fall upon the earth.' These events, he predicted,

FromFezthe reign uill + ^those + L-.-^ L' ^,-^a" " ^-.-L -,tEurope, reach to of Fire their cityand cut decisiuely: Thegreatone of Asia b1 land and b1seaa largegroup, Th,ccrossthat has scaredstiff will bedriaen out to death. Astrologer and psychoanalysist Peter Lorie believes this predicts

Nostradamus. Cayce used the trance state as a means of foreseeing the furure. His

pessimisticview of the mil w asoutl i ned i n hi s predi cri ons about a seri eso[ natural disturbancesfollowing the eruption of Mount Etna in Si E tna erupted i n 1991,fol l ow ed further eruprions in the Philippi shortly after. Cayce also told of r ,.:L widespread destruction in San. ,'l...:;:]l Francisco,Los Angeles and Manhatran.In 1989,there w asan

llOnly those divinely inspired con predict por ticulor fhings in o prophet:c spirif

that a new religion, originating in Fez, Morocco, will bring about the collapse of Christianity in Europe. Astrologer A. T. Mann, on the other hand, thinks Nostradamus was predicting a new Arabian power invading Europe, bringing war, violence and destruction in its wake. BecauseNostradamus' verses are so vague, however, researchers tend to see what they want to see in their interpretations. Often, the meaning can hinge on one word ) The prophet Edgor Coyce 'sow'the Woll Srreet Crosh of 1929 (inset) ten months before ir hoppened. He wos olso q fqith-heoler, ond lreoted over 15,(X)Opofents in his lifuiime.

- as here, in the use of the French word 'feu', which could be translated quite differently as the destruction of 'fire' or as ' i n s p i ra ti o n' i n a rel i gi oussense. Again, in another verse, the line 'La loi Moricque on aerra diffeittif translatesas 'The law of Moor rrill be seen to decline.'Astrologer Erika Cheetham thinks it refers to the law of Morocco, or the \Ioors. and interprets the verse as the end of the Islamic faith. On the other hand, Lorie reads Moor as 'more', and interprets this verse as the fall of communism. PS YC H IC

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earthquake in San Francisco and,1.1: fires in Los -$geles jusr two years l arer.-\s rer. \l anhattan r l has Il as escaped- but rhere i s sti l l ti me. Cavce sarr-these disasterseir rvith rhe magneric poles flipping, so that north becomes south, a vice versa, causing tidal waves i

earthquakes that destroy thd Finally,in the year 2000. he foretellsof rhe Second Comin Christ - and a new age of peace. The last prediction reflec*i'ihe prophecies as rold in the New Testament Book of Revelations. in particular the lines 'there was a great earthquake...and the st ar s heaven fell unto the earth...

P R OP H E T

Other prophets are more explicit in their predictions. One of the most famous in modern times was the American psvchic healer Edgar Cayce (1877-1 945) . Like

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erv mountain and island were out of their places.' Cayce was a deeply ls ma n a nd it is m or e t han

the cataclysmic in the Bible had some : e on his v i s i o n s .Bu t h i s made in 1934,of Is in the Arctic', whereby or semi-tropical climates will become more lropical. and moss and ferns will grow' is uncanny icularly in the light of more rit,,,

i,,in"y"" script - known os fhe . - wos the key to their complex cqlendor. pbded, ir reveoled the Moyon's ir.fieend of the world.

recent concerns about the polar ice-capsmelting as a result of global warming. Many of Cayce'sother prophecies have been accurate. In 1939, for example, he predicted that two Arnerican presidents would die in office, amid a climate of violence and racial unrest, although he stopped short of naming dates. His supporters say he was referring to Franklin Roosevelt, who died in 1945 - the year which ended a war that saw genocide on a huge scale - andJohn F. Kennedy, shot during a time of racial strife, in 1963. But sceptics would argue that Cayce'sprophecy was vague, at best a lucky guess. The US is rarely free from violence and racial unrest, and history shows that, sooner or later, a president is bound to die in office. MA YA N

P R OP H E C IE S

Nostradamus and Cayce were both C h ri s ti ans.so i t i s not surpri si ng that they should follow the millennial lead set by Revelations. What is disturbing, however, is that that they should be supported by prophets who not only knew nothing of Christianity but who used a totally different calendar. The Mayans were an advanced civilization that existed about 1,500 years ago

in Central America. Among their manv achievements was the ability to map the heavenswith pinpoint accurac\'.Har-ing no Christ equivalent to set their dates by, they turned to the stars.The result was the Mavan 'Long Count', E based on the movements of the .9 planet Venus. This dirided time o i nto a seri esof cr cl esbegi n nir r g the birth of \-enus. Each cycle with s was 1,872,000davslong. The o'cle that we are now liring in began on 13 August 3114BCand rrill end on 22 December AD2012. The Mayans were certaill abollt this current cycle and believed. moreover, that it was the last one.

one sfole d tre sun, ond plonets orronged in o st side (lefi). Srudies by NASA hove lhd

when only two of t{rese

- Jupiter ond theie is o 2O per cenf octivity. Since qctivity,-fhis eorth's ci6t

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by mony i n c r e a s e o f s t a t i c i n r a d i o w a v e s.

The di srurbancei ncreasesw i rh t he number of pl anersi nvol ved.The ' Grand C ross' .as i t i s cal l ed,occur s so rarely rhar nobody has ever r e c o r d e d w h a r h a p p e n s w h e n th e ,, entire solar svstent assumes this position. Stephen Plagemann and '

33 : E o

Once it had run its course. the world, they said, would encl in devastating fl oods, earthquakes and fires - which is remarkabh. si mi l a r to t he Chr is r ia np ro p h e c i e .. Some critics claim that humans a cro ssthe globe hav e a n i n n a te fear of fire and flood and that the prophecies are therefore merelv manifestations of this fear. yet scientific evidence points to the fact that something is definitely going to occur at the millennium. In 1980,ProfessorHideo Itakawa,Japan's rocket programme pioneer, used computer projections to show that, on 19 .\ugrist 1999, heralded by a solar eclipse.the sun and the planets

r-ill take on the shape of a cross. Coincidentally, the arms of the cross will fall in the astrological sigr-rsof Aquarius, Taurus, Leo and Scorpio. Astrologers believe this corresponds to the four riders of the -\pocalypse as described in the Book of Revelations. SC IEN T IF IC

E V ID E N C E

Apart from the astrological and religious implications, however, there is also ample scientific evidence to show that such a configuration will have harmful effects on our planet. NASA studies have shown that when three planets slot into a 90" or 180" arrangement, there is a marked

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ust before Christmas 1995, American AIDS patientJeff Getty was given an unusual present - a bone-marrow il transplant from a baboon. Doctors h o ped t hat t he m a rro w w o u l d procluce enough white blood. cells to help Getry to fighr off rhe effectsof the HIV virus. Unf or t unat ely ,th e tra n s p l a n t failed. Two months later. Steven the scientist who performed ,,,Dâ&#x201A;Ź,eks, admitted that the ,,ihe,,experiment, had not reproduced in Getty's ,,cellq ,:,,blood.Luckily for Getty, the ,,eiperiment did not kill him. At ,ihe time of the transplant, critics w a rned of t he r is k th a t v i ru s e s 'from the baboon may infect Getty, i0r that he may die from a

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complication known as 'graft \rersus host' disease,where the baboon and human immune systemsbattle it out to destroy each other. AN IM AT

TR A N S P LA N TS

The Getty experiment was the most recent in a Iong line of attempts by surgeons to transplant animal organs or tissue into humans. Over the last 30 years, a n u mb e r of theseexperi ments. known as 'xenotransplants', have hit the headlines:in 1984, 'Baby Fae' was given a baboon's heart, only to die 20 days later. N i n e yearsl ater.surgeonsi n Pittsburgh, USA, transplanted a baboon's liver into a 35-year-old man. He lived for 70 days.

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A In o widely-publicized cross-species lronsplonf, AIDS sufferer Jeff Gefiy received on iniection of bone morrow token from o boboon, os these onimols qre HIV-resislont.

have been genetically engineered so. . that their heartswill be acceptedby the human body.The biggesr problem lacing scientisrsgiving animal organs to humans is that our immune systemrejecrs'foreign'

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=a,@'*.ffifl**-** So why are doctors transplanting animal organs? The answer is that there are not enough human organs available. Because of increased health awarenessand public safety campaigns, there are less young people dyrg, and it is young people who are the prime donors of transplant organs. In the meantime, the waiting lists for transplant operations grow longer. In the UK in 1994, there were at least 5,000 patients waiting for a kidney transplant but, because of the shortage of suitable donated organs, only I,744 operations were carried out. And, in 1996, the amount of donated organs in the UK actually fell ten per cent on the 1995 total.

'Realistically,it is r-rnlikelythat we'll ever be able to achieve enough human organ donations to meet our needs,' says Chris Rudge, consultant transplant surgeon and Chairman of the Ethics Commitree of the British Transplantation Society.Becauseof th i s . s c i e n r i srs are l ooki ng ro arrimals to make up the shortfall. The race is nol'on to find a successfulmerhod of transplanting ar-rimalorgans into humans. T R AN SGE NIC

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Soor-r.surgeonsin the UK clairr ther rrill be readl to transplant speciallr adapted pig hearts ir-rto human patient-s. L nlike prerious animal-rohrinan transplants. the hearts rrill come from 'uansgenic pigs - pigs that

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'hlperacute rejection'. This can turn the organ into a black swollen mass within minutes, as the tissue dies and the blood clots. But the closer an animal is genetically to a human, the less violent the rejection will be. This makes chimpanzees the ideal organ donors for humans. But they are an endangered species,which is why US researchershave used baboons instead.

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*u*oii ?9I'* pigs have been successfullyused in human operations for years. Imutran's scientistshad to genetically engineer pig embrros in order to trick the immune system into believing that the organ was human. ln August 1992. a rirgin sow was given fertility treaLment so that she

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Irnutran, the British research company behind the transplant trials, has bred transgenic pigs to overcome this problem. They chose pigs because: o the risk of disease spreading from pigs to humans is less than from baboons. because we have been breeding pigs in captivity for hundreds ofyears o pigs breed much faster than baboons and have larger litters, so they can meet the demand for R organs more quickly o pigs look less like humans than apes, causing less of an ethical dilemma . heart valves and insulin from

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would produce a great many eggs. She was mated with a boar and the fertilized eggs were then washed out firom her body. Scientists injected these eggs with human genes, in a process called transgenesis.The result was Astrid, dubbed 'the pig with a human

{ Somenewspoperslorieshove led to unfoundedfeors lhot fronsgenic operotionsmoy cousehumonslo developonimol chorocleristics ofler their operotions. heart' by newspapers.In fact, the su rfac eof A s t r id' sce l l sc o rrta i n sa human protein, rvhich should stop the rejection of her organs if transplantedinto a human. Astrid has prodr.rcedthree g e n e r at ionsof t r ans g e n i cp i g s . In October 1995, Imutran took the hearts from ten of these pigs and transplanted them into ten monkeys to see whether they would work. They also transplanted regular pig hearts into other monkeys,so that they could compare them with the transgenicpig hearts.None of the transgenic hearts died instantly and two of them survived for more than 60 days, compared to the normal hearts rvhich lasted an average ofjust 55 minutes.

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CONCERNS

But the day when a patient will be routinely offered a pig's heart when waiting for a transplant is still some time away.Meanwhile, Imutran will have to address the concerns that many people have about xenotransplants. The biggest f'ear is that deadly diseasesrvill be transferred from animals to humans via such transplants. A virus lurking in a pig's heart or baboon's kidney m i g h t i n fe ct the pati ent.causi nga ner,vdiseasethat may then spread thror.rghout the population. The po-ssibilitvthat 'rnad corv clisease' h a s a l l e a dv i rrfcrted l rtrrrrarrs is a

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The next stage is to try these hearts on humans. If the trials are a success,Imutran believesthat transsenic pigs could solve the world's organ crisis. They will be speciallybred to meet human demands for new hearts, kidneys and pancreases.

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worr)4ng example of how such thingq can happen. The origins of the HIV virus are still not known, trut one theory is that it came from donkeys in West Africa. ':,,.,rlmutran takes these concerns seriously.'We've been working on ,thib for some years now. There's a ,the6retical risk that pig infection could be transferred to a human,' a spokesperson saicl.To redr,rcethis risk. Imutran breeds its pigs in

controlled conditions, and tests e a c h p i g. and each organ. fol arrr possibleinfection. It also keeps a record of everv pig that is brecl and monitors its health closelr'. Even so, a number of British doctors are so concerned about these risks that, in April 1996, they launched a group to oppose animal-to-human transplants. The pressure group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

fâ&#x201A;Ź The risks ossocioted with pos s ib le t rq n s mis s io n o f diseq s e sq s q c o n s e q u e n c e of xenolronsplqntotion hqve not been odequotely deqlt with Nuffield Council on Bioethics

(PETA) is also strongly opposed to xenotransplants. PETA believe that, if the money spent on research into xenotransplants was spent or1 educating people abor.rtthe need for organ donors, then the demand for organs could be met. 'We already slaughter over a million pigs a year for human consumption,' said Tony Vernelli, campaign co-ordinator for PETA. 'Now we're breeding more to replace our failed organs. Using

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In March 1996,an independent medical watchdog, the Nuffield Courlcil on Bioethics, published a report looking at these issues.The report' s concl usi onrvas' Pr oceed, br-rtproceed rr'ith car.rtion,ahvays paving attention to the highest standardsof patient care and ar-rimalrr'elfare.'The council said that no trials on humans should go ahead llntil a specialgovernment comrnittee had been set up. The report also raised another question: how would it feel to have a pig's heart beating inside you? It is recommended that patients who were offered animal organs should be counselled. Still, those working at the cutting edge of this technology have conjured up an amazing vision of the future. One day, according to transplant surgeon Roy Calne, we may all own a custom-made transgenic pig, ready to provi de us w i th organs . r __ shoul d they be needed. *