Ken Goddard, director of the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Lab in Ashland, Oregon, warns about Phoenix’s ecological collapse—urban sprawl since 1960 has worsened air quality, allergies, and disease spread risks like Ebola or engineered pathogens. His lab tracks poaching (75% of cases) but also puzzling viral mutations, such as myxomatosis jumping from a 50km island to millions of rabbits despite immunity. Goddard dismisses human immortality claims as fraudulent yet acknowledges past unethical experiments like Tuskegee while hoping modern science ensures accountability. The conversation ties lab findings—like the sheep-killing pasturelocyces virus—to broader fears: genetic patenting incentivizing reckless research, declining sperm counts despite population growth, and whether cities must be quarantined or abandoned to contain outbreaks. Ultimately, the episode exposes how human interference in nature—from habitat destruction to bioengineering—creates unpredictable, often catastrophic consequences. [Automatically generated summary]
Art, we live in the Phoenix area, known as the Valley of the Sun, since 1960.
Since then, the population, as most people know, has been growing at unbelievable rates.
Yes, Phoenix.
People are moving here from every corner of the country.
They have a tendency to bring with them habits, lifestyles of wherever they came from.
Some of them tend to bring things like plants not indigenous to the desert southwest in the earlier days.
If you had sinus problems or asthma or allergy-related conditions, you were advised to move to Arizona.
Now, even if you've never had sinus problems, allergies, asthma, people develop them when they move here.
I think that it's greatly due to the fact that we have far too many people in this area, which ecologically was never designed to support the mass population.
We've got polluted air, autoexhaust, new types of pollens never known before here.
We've covered much of the desert with concrete, so it's hotter, more humid.
We've altered our weather here.
The desert is a delicate balance of nature.
Can't survive this kind of abuse.
People don't seem to get the fact that we're killing this once beautiful area.
That's from Carol in Phoenix.
Do you agree with that, Ken?
unidentified
Yeah, I love the desert.
That was my first duty assignment of the Riverside and San Francisco County Sheriff's Department.
I spent a lot of time out in the desert doing crime scene work.
And early in the morning, I don't think there's anything more beautiful than the desert.
I guess what I'm asking you is, it's a good question.
What I'm asking you is, is it possible that of the five and three-quarter billion people that are out there right now, there's one or two or ten walking around who've had that switch thrown by nature somehow?
unidentified
I would be skeptical, and then I'm skeptical predominantly because I'm so used to the con game and my work.
And as long as we're there for a second, if somebody was wandering around like that, there's one thing they'd know for sure.
And that is that if they were discovered, people like Ken Goddard and his opponent in every capital in the world would take them and do what we did to frogs in the ninth grade.
unidentified
There'd be that concern?
There would be people that would be afraid, that would want that person destroyed.
I mean, you'd have all these human emotions that would be unleashed.
There'd be absolutely no reason for a person like that to wash their head up.
He has a B.S. in biochemistry from the University of California at Riverside, M.S. in Criminalistics, California State, University L.A. And he is actually director of the Forensic Lab up in, and we're going to talk a little bit about forensic lab too in Ashland.
They don't entirely get funded by the government, even though they are.
Well, actually, I guess we'll ask them in a moment about that and then start taking calls.
Here is the quick version of the telephone numbers if you've got any question generated by what we've done so far.
First time callers to the program, area code 702-727-1222.
The wildcard lines, multiple, your nickel, but let it rain till it's answered.
Area code 702-727-1295.
Toll-free west of the Rockies, it's 1-800-618-8255.
1-800-618-8255.
If you're east of the Rockies, doesn't matter where, it's 1-800-825-5033.
unidentified
And just before we take our first call, Ken, am I right about that?
They gave me a mailing address here if people wanted to make a donation.
Is it okay to give that out?
unidentified
Sure.
We would have to direct the money actually to the Fish and Wildlife Foundation in Washington, D.C. If you sent it to the Department of Interior, it would go there and would get to us eventually.
All right, and so that's a good thing to be donating to.
And if you want to give out an address, go ahead.
unidentified
Well, I don't have it here.
It's the Fish Wildlife Foundation, Washington, D.C. That would get there, but I'll mail you an address once I get back to work for the Fish Wildlife Foundation.
Well, actually, in a lot of ways, that's a very good question from Wisconsin.
unidentified
What can any single individual do?
The one issue is be thoughtful about, for example, if you travel to a foreign country, bringing things back that don't go through quarantine.
That's the whole point of a quarantine, to make sure there's nothing in these fruit, vegetables, or animals that could impact our own resident species, plant and animal.
Lots of people try to smuggle things through, being afraid they'll be from them and they could cause immense damage.
The author's dream is to be surrounded by hundreds of copies of your books, and you have this illusion that people will be climbing over each other to grab for the last one.
I sat at a table in a shopping mall one of the first times I did it, surrounded by all those books, and for a half hour no one would come near me until finally a small chocolate at what I was doing up there.
If I was really a writer, bless her little soul, I talked to her for a few minutes, encouraged her to be a writer, and adults finally came towards me.
Yesterday when they announced this new definitive test for breast cancer, they said it raises some horrendous questions about whether people even ought to take the test.
Well, the rumors are concerning, I guess, the occult, so to speak.
What about it?
Well, when I was in Scottsdale, Scottsdale, Arizona, before, about a year ago, I met a lady at a cafe, and I got talking to her, and she was telling me about how she had been just basically run out of Ashland, Oregon, because she had gotten some mysticism.
And she got into it deeply.
I'm pretty amazed about, because Ashland doesn't seem to be the type of city that runs anybody out there.
No, exactly.
That's a pretty mild.
I used to play soccer there in high school and in tournaments.
Where I'm going with this is that at one point I was in eastern Oregon, northeastern Oregon, and I had a strange experience that isn't worth talking about because it takes too long.
Again, for those who did not hear it earlier, I'll force you to answer the same question because it's a real whiz-banger.
If something got loose, like Ebola, or worse, air horn, and you had to do an operation clean sweep or decide whether you were going to, and there were thousands of people who would be taken out along with the virus.
I take it a virus could be killed with a thermonuclear device, with an airburst fuel air device, burned up, in other words.
As a matter of fact, General Schwartzkopf had to face such a decision during the Gulf War.
He talked about it the other day.
They knew exactly where these biological chemical facilities were in Iraq.
And they came to the general and they said, General, our scientists believe that if we hit them with these weapons that generate high heat and light, we can destroy them effectively without infecting people.
We believe it's true, but we're not sure what are your orders.
unidentified
And then we wonder why you ever got promoted to a general.
Well, yeah, if Ed was right, my chief scientist, his understanding was the mosquitoes, and there's a limit to how far a mosquito can go, even airborne.
But I don't think the mosquito is going to make it.
In other words, on an airplane, one mosquito, it's not wildly, you don't have to turn your imagination and let it go wild to imagine a mosquito might make it.
unidentified
Yeah, sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, this, I mean, we're not in a pristine environment, you know, designed for humans.
This is all very interactive, and it's not exactly a wilderness.
We've resolved a lot of things, but there's a lot of things out there we don't understand.
Well, then, I do believe also there was the announcement by a member of this administration that they said plutonium to some children and that sort of thing.
I truly appreciate your intellectual view on life.
It's not too often.
I don't know how intellectual it is.
I'm just enjoying life.
Well, it's not too often somebody comes along and can have a good moral view and a scientific view at the same time.
I'm sure you could understand the depth of the whole lean not unto thine own understanding.
Oh, yeah.
We try to take our work seriously, but not ourselves seriously.
Yeah.
I wanted to make a couple of comments.
First, that guy that you hung up on with the whole occult thing, I don't know where he was going with it, but I'd like to give you my view on it.
I think it's got a lot of, you know, it's got a, I've read quite a few books, you know, and there's a strong link between that and the New Age movement, you know.
And it's pretty dangerous because the New Age movement, you know, it's a rather positive thinking thing, you know, and it's rather addictive to a lot of people.
A copy of the Seattle Times Thursday, January 18th.
And it is entitled, under the sports section, Fish and Wildlife, it says, I'm quoting the headline, Deadly Virus Sweeps Through Sheep Herds.
A deadly flu virus that nearly wiped out a herd of southeastern Washington, bighorn sheep, two months ago, has now spread to the treatment facility and now other herds roaming the breaks.
The virus called the, oh no, pasturolocyces or something is infecting and causing pneumonia in sheep at the treatment center in Caldwell, Idaho.
They've recovered 74 sheep, 35 have died thus far of it.
And so there it is, right in the middle of your field.
Ken, have you heard of this?
unidentified
Yeah, I have.
Something that folks may not be aware of is that we have a laboratory specifically designed to deal with these types of disease vectors.
It's the Madison Health Lab in Madison, Wisconsin that was a part of the Fish and Wildlife Service and is now a part of the National Biological Service.
They go after these things much the way we go after our crime scenes, trying to figure out what's happening, trying to contain control.
Here's a fact from Scott up in Oregon, where you are as a police officer in Oregon.
I often deal with people that have poor hygiene skills or who, by choice, expose themselves to dangerous substances.
I'm far more terrified of bringing home a dangerous virus or bacteria to my family than a bullet from a crook I might encounter.
What can I personally do to protect myself and my loved ones?
unidentified
If they're talking about giving artificial respiration, they have mouth devices which were issued so that we can do CPR on somebody and not pick up virus bacteria from them.
That's a real issue if you have somebody bleeding and you've got a cut.
If you're in a combative situation with someone, you're taking that risk.
As a general rule, Ken, is it better for a person to be isolated and not exposed to whatever is running around out there, or is it better for a person to be exposed, constantly getting colds and flu, and building in that way their immune system?
unidentified
Be exposed, no question.
You want your immune system functioning fully.
That is the best protection because your immune system's adaptive.
Because I'm out here in the desert, and I don't, you know, since I work at home now, I don't see a lot of people, and I don't get colds.
If your guest goes out to investigate an animal mutilation event with a team and they find everything is true, as Linda Moltenhouse always mentioned, will they go silent like the government normally does?
All right, let us say that you go to the site of an animal, a cattle mutilation, and there is no human explanation or even, let's say more to the point, you find that there is an extra human explanation, Ken, this is going to be a hard question.
We would do just like we do normally, which is we would type up a laboratory report and we would issue that report to the requesting agency, which would be the law enforcement agency out there in, let's say, Phoenix.
It's their investigation.
They're the only ones who can release that report.
We would keep that report in our files.
We don't purge files.
We don't hide things away.
And I imagine somewhere along the line, that case would be of interest to somebody.
The island was only about 50 kilometers off of the coast of South Australia where the CIRSO, which is a government laboratory department, were working on this rabbit virus.
And so it got unleashed onto the mainland.
And mind you, they had been using myxomatosis for a long time, but the rabbits had become immune to it.
But if it can make it to 50 miles, then I speculated a mosquito can get on an airplane and make it here.
Now, if all the rabbits here in the U.S. were to die, somebody might say, who cares?
unidentified
Well, it sounds like there may be a 1, 3, 5% population that are going to develop an immunity also.
I haven't heard that part yet.
Yeah, well, I don't know, but there were people up there and the health authorities and everything in Queensland, I know for sure because it was a big news item for several weeks, really did some heavy-duty stuff.
They were going around in biological suits and all kinds of stuff, trying to figure out exactly what that was and how come it did jump species from the first infected amount of horses into the human trainers that died from it.
Are tests in biochemistry that will confirm and identify the individual that the AIDS virus was contracted from?
In other words, it is genetically specific.
Please ask Ken, as a forensic scientist, if someone were to use their AIDS virus as a murder weapon, in other words, transmit it with the intent to kill, are there any statutes presently on the books that would allow for the individual to be actually charged with and convicted of murder?
unidentified
You're probably asking the wrong person, although I believe the answer is yes, that you can be charged with, if not murder, at least a high level of assault.
If you know you have the AIDS virus and you assault transfer blood, terminal fluid, or whatever.
I don't believe that's true in all states.
You'd have to talk to the local law enforcement people.
In other words, well, no, I heard the exact opposite, that the AIDS people accounted for 22% of the total figure, the total increase.
So it's still horrifying no matter which way you look at it.
But the fact of the matter is, AIDS is here, and it is, and the totality of the increase in disease, infectious disease deaths is up 87%.
unidentified
That's a non-trivial number.
If nothing else, regardless of how someone might feel about the AIDS virus and the related sexual activities, this is something that we need to stop just because we don't know where it's going.
Collar, anything else?
Yes, I was wondering if Ken was aware of, or if he's heard of MHC, major histocompatibility complex.
No, I'm sorry, I don't.
What do I think?
It's an array of immune system genes.
Supposedly, women can smell a difference in men according to these genes.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Ken Goddard.
Good morning.
unidentified
Ding-dongs, Mr. Bell.
This is Pete in Portland.
Hello, Pete.
Yes.
Ken, from physics, you remember conservation laws like conservation of angular momentum.
Oh, yes, I know that.
Things like that.
Correct me if I'm wrong, aren't new conservation laws, the virtual ones, being discovered for the soft sciences, such as, well, in biology, the conservation of genetic information, the thing that causes a DNA molecule to try to get longer, but also shut genes it doesn't any longer need string as copies and so forth?
Yeah, this is part of the intriguing part that my sense is the more I've learned about DNA, the more in wonder you become.
It's such an intriguing, I mean, the word elegant is the only word that really comes to mind that seems to adjust that stuff.
We're talking about viruses, nature, and man, what we're doing on the planet, and all the rest of that with Ken Goddard, who's the director of the National Fish and Wildlife Forensic Lab up in Oregon.
Our National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Lab up in Ashland, Oregon.
He is our guest, and here he is again, and here is Pete.
Pete in Portland, thank you for holding on.
You're back on the air.
unidentified
Okay.
The conservation of genetic information.
The first strategy is that we emulate plants with agriculture.
The second one is where we come from.
We emulate our ancestors by migratory exploitation of patches of an environment, coming back around next season to re-exploit them since they've recovered.
You have the American Indian and the buffalo, the wolf pack and the reindeer herd, things like that.
Okay, the third and most important strategy, I suppose, is that of making a sealed-off ecology, kind of like the biosphere, that's highly controlled as opposed to the chaotic greater ecology from which it arose.
And that is the strategy of social insects, of the beehive, the termite mound, and the antnest.
And it requires a ruthless central control.
So ruthless that only one set of genes can be permitted to be sent on into the future.
And every component part of that system must have its will bent to that one purpose, by chemical means, by fair or foul.
And when we emulate that strategy, we call it city building.
Now, listen, there's a lot of evil that is created, a lot of suffering, let's say.
And it's no surprise that we have to do it because it's the one strategy that can get us what we and every other creature on this planet need.
And that is, quickly, technology to get genetic information off this crusty blue teardrop before some cosmic slushball or one of a million other things annihilates all of us.
And I'm now going to bring up something that's really odd.
I don't know how to address this with you except to tell you I know it's true.
In the New Yorker magazine, the new issue of the New Yorker magazine, there is an article saying that sperm counts, male sperm counts, human, worldwide, are going down at a rate they have never seen before.
And if you were to project the rate of decline would go to zero in our lifetime.
But I mean, that would certainly do the trick, and it wouldn't take very long.
unidentified
Well, I mean, the theory is that we've got built-in mechanisms to control population, the Mother Nature variations, some of which are diseased, maybe the internal ones.
What is your position on the whole spotted owl thing?
Were they really threatened?
Are they really threatened?
Are the measures they've taken justified, in your opinion?
unidentified
Well, let me add an added part to this whole thing, which...
Oh, yeah, that's sure.
They know how to find me here.
There's an interesting twist to all that, which is the barred owl.
The barred owl is a bigger, faster, stronger owl, sort of a turbo owl, if you will.
And if we do nothing, absolutely nothing as humans, the barred owl is probably going to drive this bod owl into extinction by mating with it and creating hybrids or just simply driving it out into the territory.
So one of the interesting questions, should we be out there as the little wildlife law enforcement officers that are shotguns, shooting every bar dowl we can to protect one endangered species and thereby create another one?
Well, actually, there is a little politician in you, isn't there?
Whether the owl itself is crucial, whether a hybrid, you know, barred owl, spot owl is really a better owl to have out there, you know, that's more of a philosophical biology splitter joiner question.
But I don't think there's any question at all that we're causing damage to our habitat.
And that's something we have to worry about as humans because that's our fishbowl.
From what I understand, about half of the people, maybe 55%, will ultimately get full-blown AIDS.
About 20% to 25% will get the ARC.
They'll eventually die along 20-year deaths with AIDS-related complexes.
And then there's about 20%, it seems, and the numbers are going down there a little bit, but it seems to be studying out at about 20% will carry HIV positive, but they'll be asymptomatic.
Which may be, we need to find out why their immune systems can do that.
That may be our key.
I hope I'm one of those that will be asymptomatic.
I'm not HIV positive.
I have checked that out.
But I wanted to just comment hard, keep up the good work, and glad to hear that there's a lot of people here in Phoenix that support your show.
Ken Goddard is the director of the fish and a National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Lab up in Ashland, Oregon.
He is our guest and here he is again and here is Pete.
Pete Portland, thank you for holding on.
You're back on the air.
Okay.
The conservation of genetic information, the first strategy, we emulate plants with agriculture.
The second one is where we come from.
We emulate our ancestors by migratory exploitation of patches of an environment, coming back around next season to re-exploit them since they've recovered.
You have the American Indian and the buffalo, the wolf pack and the reindeer herd, things like that.
Okay, the third and most important strategy, I suppose, is that of making a sealed-off ecology, kind of like the biosphere, that's highly controlled as opposed to the chaotic greater ecology from which it arose.
And that is the strategy of social insects, of the beehive, the termite mouth, and the antnest.
And it requires a ruthless central control.
So ruthless that only one set of genes can be permitted to hang on into the future.
And every component part of that system must have its will bent to that one purpose, by chemical means, by fair or foul.
And when we emulate that strategy, we call it city building.
Now, listen, there's a lot of evil that is created, a lot of suffering, let's say.
And it's no surprise that we have to do it because it's the one strategy that can get us what we and every other creature on this planet need.
And that is, quickly, technology to get genetic information off this crusty blue teardrop before some cosmic slushball or one of a million other things annihilates all of us.
And I'm now going to bring up something that's really odd.
I don't know how to address this with you except to tell you I know it's true.
In the New Yorker magazine, the new issue of the New Yorker magazine, there is an article saying that sperm counts, male sperm counts, human, worldwide, are going down at a rate they have never seen before.
And if you were to project the rate of decline would go to zero in our lifetime.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
unidentified
You sure wouldn't think it by seeing the population explosion, but okay.
But I mean, that would certainly do the trick, and it wouldn't take very long.
unidentified
Well, I mean, the theory is that we've got built-in mechanisms to control population, the mother nature variations, some of which are diseased, maybe the system of internal ones.
What is your position on the whole spotted owl thing?
Were they really threatened?
Are they really threatened?
Are the measures they've taken justified, in your opinion?
unidentified
Well, let me add an added part to this whole thing, which...
Oh, yeah, that's sure.
They know how to find me here.
There's an interesting twist to all that, which is the barred owl.
The barred owl is a bigger, faster, stronger owl, sort of a turbo owl, if you will.
And if we do nothing, absolutely nothing as humans, the barred owl is probably going to drive the spot owl to extinction either by mating with it and creating hybrids or just simply driving to the territory.
So one of the interesting questions, should we be out there as federal wildlife law enforcement officers with our shotguns, shooting every barred owl we can to protect one endangered species and thereby create another one?
Whether the owl itself is crucial, whether a hybrid barred owl, spot owl is really a better owl to have out there, you know, that's more of a philosophical biology splitter joiner question.
But I don't think there's any question at all that we're causing damage to our habitat.
And that's something we have to worry about as humans because that's our fishbowl.
From what I understand, about half of the people, maybe 55%, will ultimately get full-blown AIDS.
About 20% to 25% will get the ARC.
They'll eventually die along 20-year deaths with AIDS-related complexes.
And then there's about 20%, it seems, and the numbers are going down there a little bit, but it seems to be studying out at about 20% will carry HIV positive, but they'll be asymptomatic.
Which may be, we need to find out why their immune systems can do that.
That may be our keep.
I hope I'm one of those that will be asymptomatic.
I'm not HIV positive.
I have checked that out.
But I wanted to just comment, all right, keep up the good work, and glad to hear that there's a lot of people here in Phoenix that support your show.
We have 220 special agents out there throughout the United States.
I would guess between duck waterfowl hunting and deer, that's probably two-thirds to three-quarters of the work, not counting the state fishing game people.
Another interesting thing that I've heard recently, Ken, for what it's worth, is that fish that are normally in the South Atlantic, you know, the Caribbean and down in the warmer waters, are massively showing up in the colder waters to the north, and nobody can figure out why.
unidentified
You're describing a tremendous number of interesting puzzles.
I read several months ago that the way some things are introduced into our United States here is because of the spraters and shipping that comes across.
They let's say dock in Hong Kong, and then what they theorize is that how the swine flu got here is that attaches itself like the barnacles of ships and then they bring it across to the colours.
Although keep in mind, we seem to be getting the we keep getting the new variations that come across from Asia.
So you kind of suspect that there's the old human transport as well.
I was sent there to help evaluate whether China and Taiwan could enforce the Endangered Species Act, but I'm not sure that our views were going to be very tremendous.
But I did get to see a lot of China.
It was fascinating.
I did see a lot of people in close round with swine.