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Feb. 28, 1997 - Art Bell
02:54:51
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - The Implications of Cloning - Dr. Kevin FitzGerald
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Welcome to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from February 28, 1997.
From the high desert and the great American southwest, I bid you good evening or good morning wherever you may be across all these many prolific time zones.
From the Hawaiian and Tahitian island chains in the west, eastward, all the way to the Caribbean and the U.S.
Virgin Islands, south into South America, north well to the pole, And, of course, worldwide on the Internet, this is Post Ghost AM, top of the morning, everybody.
I'm Art Bell.
Coming up, somebody who is uniquely, I believe, qualified to comment on this whole cloning story.
And I want to thank Michael Lindemann of the 2020 group for putting me on to him.
He is Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald of Loyola University.
He is all at once And we're going to ask about this.
A geneticist, a Jesuit priest, and a bioethicist.
Holy smokes!
I don't know how you find all that in one person, but it's like hitting the lottery, but we did.
And so we'll be talking about that, and this whole big cloning story, and there is an update tonight on CNN.
Strange, strange things going on out there.
There was also a story about magnetic levitation That just simply doesn't seem possible, and I'll tell you about that a little later.
So all of that coming up on tonight's program, and then eventually, I'm sure, open lines as well, it should be very, very interesting.
To remind you, British scientists have created the first clone of an adult animal by producing a lamb from a cell from a sheep's udder.
Previous clonings have been from embryo cells.
The success of this work brings the possibility of human cloning, which is not legal under present laws governing research, one step closer.
It also has far-reaching implications for genetics, medicine, and aging.
And I'm reading to you from the Sunday Times story, incidentally, The researchers from the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh have found a relatively, quote, simple way, end quote, of producing clones of sheep and possibly other mammals which would potentially allow the production of clones on a industrial scale.
So, we're going to find out about this, both scientifically and from a religious perspective, I guess, and an ethical perspective, in a moment.
I believe this story, if it is accurate, is probably ultimately important, as important as the splitting of the atom was in its time.
And it is going to begin to increasingly dawn on the world how very important this story is.
Now there's an update to the story, and we'll get to that in a moment.
And then, Dr. Fitzgerald.
And, Dr. Fitzgerald.
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Now we take you back to the night of February 28, 1997, on Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
In just a second, Dr. Fitzgerald, a brief update.
CNN, at 9 o'clock, on cloning, said, the British government, get this folks, British government says that money for the cloning project from the Ministry of Agriculture will be, quote, drastically cut, end quote, if the original purpose of the project has been accomplished.
In other words, the cloning is done, they're saying, and so, so is your money.
The director of the institute where the cloning was accomplished Says he will move heaven and earth to continue the research.
So, commentary here, it sure sounds to me like there's political pressure on the British to stop this right now.
Or stop it to the degree it has gone, and that is with the cloning of the sheep.
A real cloning here is Dr. Fitzgerald, Kevin Fitzgerald, From Loyola University near Chicago, I think in Maywood, Illinois.
Doctor, welcome to the program.
Thank you very much, Art.
Boy, it's great to have you.
Doctor, I don't have a bio from you.
All of this was done so quickly, and I was so lucky to find you.
Perhaps you could tell us a little bit, give us a brief biological sketch of yourself.
Okay, a biological sketch.
Well, I'm presently at Loyola University Medical Center.
It is in Maywood, which is just outside of Chicago, just west of Chicago.
I do work there as a research associate in cancer genetics and also work in medical ethics.
And it's true, I am a Jesuit priest at the same time.
The Jesuits have Long been known, I think, for being involved in education and also being involved in just about everything that there is available to be involved in.
It does seem an unusual combination to the layman.
A geneticist, a Jesuit priest, a bioethicist.
I guess in a way they do go together.
I guess they do.
I've never talked to anybody with these particular disciplines.
What led you What came first in your life?
The genetics came first.
That's what I studied, undergraduate genetics at Cornell University in New York.
And then it was after I graduated from Cornell that I entered the Jesuits, the Society of Jesus is its official name.
And as I was progressing in training in the Jesuits, I kept up my interest in genetics and picked up an interest also in philosophy and in ethics.
Was there anything in The hard science of genetics that led you toward a spiritual path?
Well, I guess for myself, you might say the two were always combined.
I always was fascinated by nature, by creation, if we want to put it in theological terms, because I believe that there In nature, I mean, the awe and the wonder that, for me at any rate, I get when I investigate that is, in one sense, part of, I suppose, the awe and the wonder that I have experienced in many ways throughout my life.
And the two sort of naturally went together.
All right.
And I'm sure we'll come back to that.
Now, the other day when this story broke, The world seemed to go into sort of a state of catatonic shock.
And, you know, the news was everywhere.
I'm sure you heard it, and I wonder what your reaction was when you first heard this.
Well, you know, it was very interesting because when I first heard it, the thing that was most incredible to me was from the scientific end of things.
That I had been told that this cloning had come from an adult animal.
And as you mentioned before, most of the research had been done on embryos or fetal tissue, something like this, in animals because they thought that's where you had to go.
So that was an amazing breakthrough.
That's an incredible breakthrough.
And you're right, it does have ramifications for our own medical applications.
It's going to have ramifications, I certainly hope, even for cancer genetics, where I work.
So I was quite surprised.
I mean, I would say pleasantly surprised that someone had been able to overcome the technical obstacles to this.
Now, if you look closely at the research, and it's been published, I believe, in the journal Nature, you will find that it's not been terribly successful as of yet.
I mean, they've done it once.
Out of 277, I believe it was, original tried.
Now what they did is they attempted to form this fusion of cells between an adult cell and an egg cell without a nucleus.
And I believe they had something around 17 or so of these successfully done so that they could implant them back into the sheep.
And then one of those was able to implant and further develop.
You had a young you that was sort of the delayed identical twin of its mother.
First of all, how much confidence do you now have that the story is true?
I mean, I listen to various talk shows, and on a lot of them, people are so shocked, they're calling in and saying, it's a hoax.
Well, you know, you always want to see Something like this repeated, especially by another lab.
Now, my guess is as soon as the story broke, because when the story broke, they told them a little bit about how it had been done.
And I'm sure as soon as that happened, there were places around the world where people who would be working on this thing said, this is the way we're going to go.
And we've got to change direction here and try this technique or try this pattern of technique.
And so I wouldn't be surprised to hear within a few months if it has been repeated or not.
People, if they're not able to repeat it, people are going to start questioning.
Now, when you look at the data itself, though, that was presented in this paper, They show, everybody is familiar, most people are familiar these days with the concept of DNA fingerprinting.
A lot of the trials have given us that general knowledge and they have DNA fingerprinted this young lamb and when you look at the DNA fingerprint it is exactly the same as the donor, the sheep that donated the cell.
So that in itself is pretty compelling evidence.
Hard evidence.
There would be no other way that you could imagine that they could hoax that.
Oh, well, they could intentionally hoax it, I suppose, you know, just by falsifying the data, but in talking... I was on one of the programs with a Dr. Bullfield, who is the director of the Institute there, and just from the short time I was talking to him, I didn't get any impression that there was any desire Sure.
On their part, for this sort of thing.
I think it may be, I know they've been working on it, but I think in some ways perhaps they got surprised too when it happened, which was months ago, because they immediately wanted to move to patent it.
Okay, so you're, oh really?
Oh yeah.
So then your confidence that this is a real story is pretty high.
Yes it is.
How much of an application is there, do you think, That having shown that it will work for sheep, it might work for a human somewhere down the line.
Well, one of the things that Dr. Bolfield said is that they have tried this not only on sheep, but also on pigs and on cattle, and they have not yet been successful in those other species.
So there are certainly obstacles to applying this technology to other species, and people are going to have to do A good bit of work in order to get this to this particular technique to be successful in other species.
I've heard it said that it may be either easier or very much harder to clone a human and ostensibly, of course, nobody has tried that yet.
I'm not sure I believe that.
By the way, do you?
I know that officially and I know what the laws are, but do you think it possible That in private labs, quietly, in some part of the world, that it's already been tried or even done with regard to humans?
I would not be surprised if in private labs somewhere in the world it hasn't been tried.
I mean, I would not be surprised, you know, that someone has tried this before.
Because, well, you know, there's always reasons.
There could be a desire for fame or infamy, as the case may be.
There could be a desire to clone oneself or, you know, whatever.
Similar things have probably been tried in the past with other sorts of technologies and stuff.
So that somebody has tried and, you know, if someone were able to come up with some evidence for that, I wouldn't be that surprised.
I'd be very, very, very surprised if someone said someone's already been successful at this.
I would be stunned because that would have required a great deal of research and that involves humans and I'm not sure anybody could keep that quiet.
Assuming that somebody wanted to clone me and the technique worked, what would they need from me to do that cloning?
In other words, What exactly would have to be extracted from me or peeled from me or whatever?
Right.
Well, that's actually a very good question because one of the questions that's going to have to be answered now is are all your cells, I mean all your living cells, possible targets for cloning?
Because what they did is they took a mammary cell, a cell from a sheep mammary gland, out of a pregnant sheep.
to use, it was an adult sheep, a pregnant adult sheep, to use in the cloning.
Now, the thing is, since the sheep was pregnant, that area obviously was under some rapid changing, it was under some growth pressure as the sheep is getting ready to nurse.
And so, the question is, were those particular characteristics important in this cloning?
Or could they have used You know, a cell, say, from the kidney or from the lung or the skin or something.
Right.
So the fact that this was successful in a mammary cell from a pregnant sheep, that might have something to do with the technique itself.
So actually, if that is the case, it may be true that you could not supply the necessary cells, since you cannot become pregnant, And go into a period of developing your mammary gland for lactation, you know, for breastfeeding.
You know, there may be other obstacles to work out when trying it in a cell from a male sheep even.
Well, I'm not immediately sorry.
I can't provide all that.
However, let us, for the sake of discussion, let me first establish this.
Every cell in my body does contain Does it not?
The DNA that I am?
Basically, yes.
There are cells in our body, and this is getting very, very esoteric and detailed on you, but just to be accurate, there are cells in your body, for instance, for men it would be the sperm cells, that have only half The other is that in some of your immune system cells, genetic rearrangements occur so that they can do a particular job, you know, make particular antibodies or whatever.
And so if you were to use one of your T cells or B cells for cloning like this, you would in fact have a sort of semi-impaired immune system.
All those cells you couldn't use either.
But every other cell, all the other cells I can think of off the top of my head here, yes, have that full complement of genes that are available for, you know, recreating you.
Wow.
So in other words... You genetically, not you as a whole.
Yes, yes, yes.
So that, if then, it is possible to use any full You're going to have to bear with me, because I'm not a scientist and I'm struggling along here.
But if it's possible to use, say, a scraping of my skin and get the full genetic code from that, and if cloning is possible under those circumstances, then theoretically, a little scraping of my skin could provide the information that could be used to provide another me.
Yeah, genetic.
Well, actually, not you, because what you would end up with, as I said with the sheep, it's a delayed identical twin.
So, you know how much identical twins can be different, actually, in personality, and likes, and desires, and all that sort of things, or triplets, or quadruplets, whatever.
They can be genetically identical.
But we could never, not that this goes completely to your head, Art, but we could never make another you.
Well, these would be differences attributed to environment, or Given an identical environment, I know these questions are getting hard, with twins, do you end up with identical central beings, or not?
Even given an identical environment, which I guess you can't really have, is it only that environment, or is there some subtle genetic difference that we can't measure?
What I would say is that it's definitely, in a sense, non-genetic factors.
Now these non-genetic factors also would include interactions within the developing embryo and fetus, which can make a difference in how things are, what kind of structures are created.
For instance, when the brain The sort of nerve connections are laid down.
Doctor, we're at the bottom of the hour.
All right.
Hold us on on the brain and we'll be right back.
All right.
All right.
My guest is Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald and he'll be right back.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from February 28th, 1997.
This is a song that I wrote in the early days of the band.
It's called Coast to Coast.
I wrote it in the early days of the band. I wrote it in the early days of the band.
the comments.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time, on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM, from February 28, 1997.
My guest is Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald.
From Loyola University, who is a geneticist, Jesuit priest, and bioethicist.
What a combo, huh?
Ken in Colorado writes, Art, you said biological sketch at the beginning of the program.
It should have been biographical sketch.
Why didn't he correct you?
Well, Ken, because he understands my sense of humor, apparently, which you don't.
I mean, consider the subject.
Anyway, we'll get back to the good doctor in a moment.
We are discussing, obviously, cloning, and we are going to continue to do that, but we're going to move into other areas shortly.
The technical, scientific aspect is fascinating, and I want to get that groundwork laid, and
then we'll move into some of the doctor's other areas of expertise.
Now Back now to Dr. Fitzgerald, and Doctor, it seems to me we were saying something about the brain.
Yes, you were talking about If we are going to do this cloning, what would the differences be if there were non-genetic factors involved?
And one of these non-genetic factors that gets involved would be, say, as these nerve connections are being laid down as your brain is forming.
And I have to say, I'm not a neurologist and I'm not an embryologist, but it's my understanding that even if you have identical twins, In utero, which has got to be a fairly similar environment, if you were to look at how the brain is developing there, you would see there were actually changes, there were differences in the way some of these nerve connections were made.
So that even under those circumstances, you would still have some differences, even if you had genetically what you would call identical But you believe that those changes that you could document would be as a result of environment?
Yes, they're a result of factors which interact with the genetic code, which interact with the genetic regulation of this development, and in some way direct it in that way.
There are, with every powerful, just like the splitting of the atom, Doctor, there are very positive and then, of course, potentially very negative things that can be done with this technology.
If you imagine it becoming fruitful and plentiful and moving on into the human population without yet addressing the ethics or the religious aspects, what do you see as possible positive application?
Well, In the animal area or do you just want to talk about the human area?
Actually the human area is fairly easy to answer.
I can't see too much benefit for cloning humans in the sense that you just think what are the benefits of having an identical twin?
I imagine identical twins would be better at answering that question.
I guess I do believe that they Well, I'll give you one then and it will thrust us into this ethical, religious area.
and in some circumstances do a lot of the same things.
Okay.
But other than that, I'm not sure there's going to be much benefit.
So that's why I don't think, even from a medical or scientific view, you're going to see human
cloning.
Well, I'll give you one then and it will thrust us into this ethical, religious area.
If I'm a 60 or 70 year old man, and I'm a Christian, and I'm a Christian, and I'm a
And I see myself aging and deteriorating, you know, like the picture of Dorian Gray, slowly, or not so slowly, getting older with organs failing.
A clone that was, say, 15 or 20 years old, which would have organs, presumably, now you can answer this for me, but organs that would be absolutely compatible with me, I might consider that a great benefit.
The clone might not, but I certainly would.
Right, and right in there is one of the big issues, not only theologically and ethically, but maybe even legally and practically in this country, and I think in most countries around the world.
Even if you were to find someone, as you were aging, that was a perfect match for a transplant, they have to sort of agree to that.
And so your 15 to 20 year old clone, who may not be too thrilled with the idea that you cloned him to begin with, might refuse.
On the other end of the scale there though, if you talk to some of the scientists involved in this cloning of animals, one of the targets that they have down the road is that they would be able to, in animals, genetically engineer An animal to be able to provide organs, which would be if it had a very low chance of rejection.
And so the idea being, since the cloning has already started in animals with this one success, if they work on that and make it more successful, they could take a genetically engineered animal That would provide for you, say, bone marrow for a transplant or something.
Okay, let me stop you there and ask you, does that mean that geneticists would begin to combine some aspects of human DNA with animal DNA to achieve that?
Well, let's see, some aspects, in the sense that the reason for rejection, say, of an organ, as I think many people are aware, is the fact that you have On all cells and all tissues, you have certain proteins that are expressed.
It's a way that cells recognize each other.
In one way, in a sense, our immune system works.
We can recognize, to a great extent, what is self and what is other.
If you can express those sort of signals on the cells of an organ and make those signals say that it is self, or at least it's not other, then the immune system would attack it. So if you want to
say human genes, the genes that are responsible for making
that particular signal come up on the cell surface, yes, that's what you would do. You would move those
or at least engineer the ones that are in the animal to mimic those.
When we begin to tamper in this way,
what potential dangers Are there?
And are there potential dangers?
Or can it all be easily controlled within a lab?
Or could something untoward occur as you begin to modify the genetic structure of an animal to be more compatible with a human being?
Well, certainly it isn't easy.
That's for sure.
If it was easy, I think we'd have that already, that particular technology.
Something untoward happening, what usually, I would guess for me at least, I would think is untoward happening is of course this is difficult research and so there are a lot of failures and misdirections that are taken in this sort of thing.
Now, the question that we have to ask ourselves is, is this something that we would even do to animals?
You know, this kind of research and the possibility of Having something go wrong in the sense that it doesn't work out perfectly for the animal.
Maybe there's an immune response within the animal.
Maybe the animal gets some kind of immune disease like an arthritis or even worse from an experiment gone awry.
Is that worth doing that in the animals in order to provide human beings with The kind of medical technology to fight the diseases that we want to fight.
Well, to imagine that something like that might occur, and then imagine that there might be some sort of a jump, some unexpected jump from animals to humans, perhaps after a transplant, something you would find out later.
I know it sounds like a horror story, but it seems to me as though it might be possible and unanticipated results.
Well, the interesting thing with that is One, we may have some evidence of something like that having already occurred.
If, for instance, they're starting to look at now the fact that when some of these vaccines were made early on, animals were used in the production of the vaccines.
Now, we all know animals carry some different viruses than we have.
Though, in a sense, we can't get those viruses, right?
Part of those viruses may have moved along with the vaccine, and may be now showing up in certain forms of cancer that people are getting.
So there is... Now this is, again, this is the cutting edge right now in science, and I don't know how Definitively, this has been shown, but it is something that's being investigated, and this would be something, of course, that we'd have to ask ourselves, certainly with an organ transplant, and I'm sure the people who transplanted the baboon heart had these issues in mind, too.
Now, there was also, let me stop you and remind you, if you had not heard, there was, in essence, I believe, the transfer of a baboon's immune system To an AIDS patient in San Francisco whose immune system had been intentionally or completely eradicated.
In other words, they had an AIDS patient, a human, and they eliminated his immune system almost entirely and took the baboons and substituted it and told us, the public, about it afterwards.
Right.
I was a little concerned about that.
Was there any, uh, would there be any basis to my concern for that, do you think?
Well, a concern in the sense of?
Of the possibility of something the baboon had, uh, then being transferred to the AIDS patient, who would then perhaps transfer it to somebody else, and so forth and so on.
Right, right.
Well, I think the situation, if I'm in, it actually never did know all the details of that situation.
And I think this is similar in the sense to the baboon heart in the sense that these were done as drastic last step measures to keep someone alive.
Sure.
Now if, let's say for instance, it had worked and for some, you know, in some amazing way the baboon cells had taken and had eradicated the virus from this patient and the patient recovers.
Well then I'm afraid It would be interesting to ask this person what they realized they were getting in for.
Because if they did recover, then of course there would be these questions.
Wait a minute, we've got to see if this person is carrying anything.
That could be contagious.
Right, okay.
So that brings me to my point.
And that is, I guess, isn't science sometimes beginning to race a little bit ahead of where it perhaps ought to be?
And is science doing stuff?
Like this, that could result in some sort of tragic occurrence, not just for the individual involved, but for society at large.
And if that is the case, should there not be some sort of societal discussion prior to doing it?
Right, I agree, and I think that this is something that we need to do, is more of this discussion.
Not in the sense of saying, We have to do it to prevent some sort of global or widespread disaster that the scientists are going to engender.
Because, I mean, the scientists are people, too.
And if some widespread disaster is going to happen, it's going to happen to the scientists, too.
In fact, they'll probably be the first ones because they're the ones in the lab working
you know with this material if it is dangerous.
And so they'd be the first ones to get it.
Of course.
If you take that into consideration, you have to realize that scientists are not in a sense
some other entities you know out there removed from the danger, the presence of danger.
You are absolutely correct, but in the words of Alan Greenspan, as applied to the market the other day, is it not possible that some scientists have irrational exuberance?
It is always possible that some scientists have irrational exuberance, but the good aspect
of a scientific community is that oftentimes any claim or any work or something always
has to be repeated or collaborations occur, other people are involved.
And when other people are involved, they may not have the same exuberance.
And usually what they would do is go in and say, look, this is, you know, a little dangerous.
And actually, to be honest, I have been there many times when people have said, well, let's
try X.
And someone else says, well, you don't really want to do that, not because you're going
to create some disaster, but because it's dangerous to you.
You don't, you may not realize it, but, you know, doing this sort of thing under these
conditions, this could result and, you know, it could, it could harm yourself.
So it's often done that the scientists talk to each other and discover ways in which, you know, they may be moving into something which they're taking risks that they really wouldn't want to take if they knew.
And so I think a lot of that is dealt with just even in the day-to-day aspects.
But that is not to say That we shouldn't have these conversations because, as I said, the scientists are people.
They're part of the community.
They're part of the whole community that has to make up these ethical decisions and these legal decisions and vote for, you know, people who go to Congress and pass legislation.
So, yes, I believe the conversations are important.
The biggest problem I see is that sometimes the conversations become difficult because we like scientists.
Sure.
We sit around and we discuss our work, and it sounds like gobbledygook, you know, to a lot of people, and so there's education that needs to be involved in this.
But then again, you take a bunch of scientists and you sit them down and you explain, you know, an insurance program or an investment, you know, 401K or something, and they can look as stunned and glassy-eyed as anyone.
In fact, perhaps even more of the time, percent of us are deeply buried in academia.
Let me circle back For a second, something that caught my ear when you said it.
You said that the area that the cells were removed from, in the case of the sheep for the cloning, was an area of... in other words, that sheep was pregnant at the time.
It was great.
It was great growth going on, you said.
Alright, another area of great growth, in fact, out of control growth, is cancer.
Yeah.
Your discipline.
Now, Now I'm sure a little bell went off in your head when you heard that the most fertile area for taking some of this for cloning would be in that area of great growth.
Does that intrigue you with regard to cancer research?
Tremendously!
This could be a fascinating animal model for looking into that very thing because the amazing thing is since this was an adult animal and As we know, as we develop, from one cell, and we get more and more cells, these cells take on specific tasks.
They become kidney cells, and liver cells, and lung cells.
Well, when you're a lung cell, you don't want to do what kidney cells do and what brain cells do.
So you shut off those genes.
You shut off the genes that are responsible for brain function and kidney function, and you just keep on the genes that you need to function as a lung cell.
So the amazing thing is that you could take any specialized cell and somehow get it to turn all those genes back on.
Now, as you mentioned, cancer is an area where cells have, in some inappropriate way, gone backwards in time and recaptured that ability to divide very, very rapidly and lose in the process some of their specialized A function.
That's why when you look at cancers, or people talk about looking at cancers, you see that they say this type of tissue has reverted back to a non-specific kind of mass that's not doing anything that's helping you.
It's just growing.
It's just right.
And it's using your nutrients and all to grow.
And so, yes, this could be a tremendous use to look into and investigate.
how they did this to to look at the how the team to get turned back on
because that's what we need
to understand better have you broached this subject with anybody at loyal uh...
in terms of uh...
uh... perhaps trying to get some funding or uh... take advantage of an ongoing
program to begin to look in these directions Well, I mean, the biggest problem in that area, of course, is the key magic word, funding.
Yeah, of course.
Now, getting funding, it's a very competitive thing.
And if you were to write up a grant which said what we would like to do is look at this animal model, which has just been sort of created, They would say, and what experience do you have in doing this?
What success can you promise us?
Can you show us that you've had any?
So I would say probably until this becomes a little more widespread, until they do more research and get this technique down to where it can be picked up by labs and used and that sort of thing, the other techniques that we have at present will probably be more Likely to be employed, especially when you're looking for funding and things like that.
But down the road, and maybe in a relatively brief time as far as research goes, which could be a few years, yes, I could very much see people saying, I'm interested in this model, I'm interested in applying it to the cancer research that I'm doing.
Very good.
Alright, Doctor, we're at the top of the hour, so you're going to have several minutes, maybe 10-12 minutes, To relax, go get a cup of coffee, cup of tea, whatever you would like.
I know you're just back... you were on a show in New York, is that right?
Yeah, I was on... well, no, actually, that I didn't go to.
They ended up choosing to go in a different direction.
So I didn't have to go.
So I've been here working.
I actually got some time in the lab this week, which was great.
I see.
All right.
Well, relax.
We'll be back to you after the top of the hour.
Okay.
My guest is Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald from Loyola University.
He is a geneticist, a Jesuit priest, and a bioethicist.
We've covered a lot of the hard science part of it.
and we're going to move on from there after the top of the hour
I'm going to play a little bit of the song I wrote for you.
I'm going to play a little bit of the song I wrote for you.
Oh, and it's alright, it's over, oh, we gotta get right back to it.
Love is good.
Love is good, love can be strong.
We gotta get right back to where we started from.
Do you remember that day?
When you first came my way?
I said, no one can take your place.
Premier Radio Networks presents Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight's program originally aired February 28th, 1997.
I really don't think we're gonna go backwards.
This one's out of the bottle.
We'll ask about it.
My guest is Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald from Loyola University.
He is a geneticist, a bioethicist, and a Jesuit priest.
That's some kind of combination to discuss cloning.
And that's the subject.
We'll get back to them in a moment.
You hear a lot of stuff on my show about my website.
As a matter of fact, I wasn't going to do this, but there is a new version of the website up tonight.
You're going to want to go take a look at it.
It really is cool.
It's my kind of color scheme.
At any rate, as you know, we put all kinds of interesting things on that website.
Next week we should have the Alleged chupacabra photographs up there from San Antonio, Texas.
This weird creature.
Very befuddling.
and uh... that should be on the way to me from my source in san antonio
now we take you back to the night of february twenty eight nineteen ninety
seven on our bills somewhere in time
and Back now to Maywood, Illinois, and Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald.
Welcome back.
We're joined by Los Angeles and San Francisco, so I suppose we've got to do a little bit of catch-up for them.
But we are discussing the story of the cloned sheep, and the possibility, then, of cloning humans.
And that's what we spent the last hour on, folks.
Now, I want to ask the doctor, Doctor, is it possible that You spoke of the different kind of genetic structure in cells, for example, the lungs, the kidneys, and so forth.
That's correct.
As we unravel the human genome, is it possible that one day we might be able to, in effect, grow a lung?
It's always hard to predict the future in that way when you say one day.
If we're given enough time, I think we could do that.
Or at least, perhaps, if we weren't going to grow a lung, maybe we can get to the point where we could take a diseased lung, take out the diseased part, and be able to stimulate the healthy part that's left to regrow at least enough, you know, regrow in enough of a way to be able to function again.
Well, you know, I think we'd even be better than sort of regrowing something in a, you know, dish or something and then putting it in.
But the idea being, of course, that at some point in time, as we developed, we grew a lung.
And so obviously the genetic commands on how to do that are there.
So somewhere there is a genetic switch that, if thrown, says grow lung.
Well, I mean, there'd be a common, it wouldn't be that simple, but there'd be a lot of switches.
But yes, if switches were thrown and if we were able to do that in a specific pattern, we may be able to stimulate the organ to regenerate part of itself.
In fact, even at present in human beings, part liver can regenerate itself from some damage or if part of it is cut out.
Alright, Brad in Nashville, Tennessee faxes, how much of intelligence is genetic and how much is environment?
That retrenches a little of what we've done, but again, that's a good question.
How much of intelligence is genetic?
How much environment?
Boy, that is a very good question.
Because intelligence would be one of those things that is a very complex trait and one of the difficulties in answering that question is That there are different ways of measuring intelligence.
For instance, if you were to take a world-renowned violinist or a composer, let's say, and someone who had incredible musical talent, that person might not be able to balance his or her checkbook.
And so would you say, which part is the intelligence?
So it's very, very difficult to say exactly how do you measure intelligence.
Is it common sense?
Is it mathematical ability?
Musical ability?
Linguistic ability?
So these things are all... and there may actually be genetic, shall we say, proclivities or greater abilities, greater underlying basic Trends in genetics toward one or the other.
Not to say that that's how it's always going to work out, but you can see, for instance... Well, let's try this question.
If we were able to clone Einstein, would we have another Einstein, potentially?
Or would we have just an average guy?
Well, I mean, one of the interesting things about Einstein is he...
The biographies of his life.
He was a pretty lousy student.
He didn't do so well in school.
He got terrible grades.
So there were obviously a lot of people when he was growing up who didn't think he was very intelligent.
Now perhaps they weren't measuring it the right way.
What would we get?
It would be hard to say.
He certainly would have some underlying genetic ability.
The question is would that be able to be tapped and developed and all.
Maybe in some ways in the process of saying, okay, you are, you know, the clone, the late identical twin, you know, of Einstein.
I keep saying that because people keep thinking when you get a clone you're getting a Xerox copy, but you're not.
You would say to that child as that child was growing up, you have to be this way.
So maybe under those circumstances you wouldn't get somebody who would be more interested in playing Soccer or basketball, you know, than doing physics.
All right.
Again, your genetic expertise is being applied to cancer research.
Yes.
So a quick question in that area again, and that is, the American public is told that lots of money, of course, is poured into cancer research.
Yes.
And we're told that great progress is being made, and yet I see statistics indicating that cancer in men, for example, there was a story indicating non-smoking related cancer, that's a very key phrase, is up since World War II some incredible amount, like 300%.
And so are we making progress, or is there more cancer?
Well, I mean, in one sense, There's more cancer because there's more people living longer.
And the longer you live, the more chance you have of developing cancer.
So, we're moving from a period of time where people died of infections, and people died earlier on of just age-related sort of wearing out kinds of things, but not going as long as they could.
To a time when people are living longer, maybe, you know, 10, 20 years longer, therefore giving their bodies more time to develop to these cancers, especially the cancers that come in late in life.
So, in one sense, yes, there is more cancer, but in another sense, we are much better at understanding what is causing cancer, much better at treating it, than certainly in the 40s and 50s.
How much of the human genome have we mapped?
That's a good question.
I'm trying to remember what the latest statistics were on that.
It depends, I guess, again, on how you look at it, but they are ahead of schedule, that much I can tell you.
What is it earlier on?
I think they predicted they'd be done by 2005, and I think they'll be done ahead of schedule at that point.
But again, you've got to remember, we're talking about mapping the human genome.
Somebody's, somebody's genes are being sequenced, are being mapped.
So if it's not you, and it's not me, you know, our particular sequence is going to differ from that sequence.
Now, not by very much, but obviously in some significant way.
And yet, once this mapping is complete, one imagines our ability to manipulate, which seems to be growing by the day, as evidenced by this recent story, Combined with this cloning technique would make possible all kinds of things that a lot of people wonder whether we ought to be doing.
Now let me ask you this so we can get it out of the way.
You're a Jesuit priest.
Yes.
Are there religious concerns with regard to cloning?
In other words, if it were possible to take a cell from Art Bell, clone him, would the junior Art Bell Well, I mean, if you have identical twins, don't you believe that the two of those have their own unique souls or human spirits?
Indeed, but it was an entirely natural process, and I'm coming at it from a religious point of view now.
One, you might suggest, is God's hand at work.
The other seems to be man's hand at work.
Right, and I think that was some of the Discussion around the birth of Louise Brown the quote-unquote first test-tube baby Since this was a again quote-unquote unnatural method of reproduction was she going to have in the popular parlance a soul and I don't know
Exactly what her state of life is at the moment, but she's, I gather, a very healthy, normal teenager.
A very soulful person.
Alright, do you have any concerns at all, as a Jesuit priest, or religious concerns, as this work continues?
At some point, we really do begin to get into the creation business, don't we?
We've been in the creation business for a long time already.
In many, many ways we have taken a lot of what is in creation around us and we have manipulated it.
We have used it for our own advantage and also, hopefully, the idea is to make things better.
My concern, from what you would say a theological perspective, is that You know I believe it is important and it is God's gift and even in a sense God's mandate to us to use our creative powers but to use them well to use them for proper purposes which would be to heal as one thing which is what you know certainly God has done for us and God has done among us as Jesus Christ.
I mean not what you read In the Bible, a lot of what Jesus did, spent his time healing people.
And so we, too, as Christians, if we are Christians, we accept that responsibility to bring that healing.
Sorry, Doctor, I'm going to ask you to stay good and close to the phone.
I'm losing your audio here a little.
I'm sorry, I was probably pulling away there.
You're right.
We have a responsibility as Christians to use this technology in a Christian way.
But here's somebody else.
Here's a negative aspect of cloning.
Now one clear thing that you could do with cloning, unfortunately I suppose, would be, as you would with animals, you could breed for strength and aggressiveness and when you you bred properly you could then clone and of course the the horrible prospect of coming up with an aggressive group of clones who would be just perfect soldiers, doctor.
Right, I mean, of course we've all heard those sort of scenarios, you know, in the futuristic literature and whatnot.
The difficulty with that is a difficulty that even cloning animals is going to bring to the fore, and that is when you clone any individual, as I've mentioned, what you're getting is sort of a delayed identical twin.
Well, whatever susceptibilities that particular animal or person would have to disease or a particular susceptibility to weakness within an environmental situation or whatever, You are going to multiply that.
So if you went and tried to clone an entire army, what you would get actually is an army of people who you may look at and say, gosh, look at their all, you know, the same super build and everything like that, but they all have the same weaknesses.
Genetically, they'll all have the same weaknesses.
So of course if I'm, if you're coming up against me, I'm on the other side, and I'm saying I'm sending against you my army, which has got just a whole mishmash of everybody from my population in it.
I'm going to target them.
The weaknesses?
The weaknesses in yours.
Which is going to be common?
Yes, to all of them.
To everybody.
And so, in fact, I would say your force would be much weaker than mine.
I mean, it may look good, but genetically speaking, the fitness of a species, the strength of a species, is in its diversity.
Let me ask you a question about aging.
Interesting area for somebody in genetics.
Somewhere in our genetic code there must be, what do I know, let me ask you, is there in your opinion a group of switches that instead of, I'm not really sure, at some age I know A very early age, we stop a generation of more cells and we start generating fewer new cells and the aging process begins.
We literally eventually rot away.
Right.
And is it possible that genetics will eventually lead us to the point that we can halt or reverse even the aging process?
Well, I would say we're just now We're beginning to get some insights into the aging process.
What we have discovered is that there are genetic switches or signals in our cells, which are used a great deal, actually, if anything is to go wrong in a cell.
Normally, there are mechanisms within that cell that tell the cell to commit suicide, and it's a process called apoptosis or apoptosis.
And it's becoming highly studied because what you see in cancer, for instance, is a failure of this fail-safe system, in a sense, and cells that are not working properly don't commit suicide, don't kill themselves.
But what you wonder is then, sort of looking out into the future, do we have I'm like limited lifespan at which point the genetic signal comes in and says that's it you know whatever left and is running shuts down now and actually I think some some people who are in the the field of aging studies and genetics of aging all that are speculating somewhere around 120 to 150 years we're built sort of maximum for that and at that point the genetic switches all just go off or whatever
And to say, could we then, in some way, turn that off?
Or change it?
Well, that's what happens in cancer.
Now, so it seems to be, there might be a very interesting trade-off there.
You seem to be suggesting, when we can cure cancer... Well, no, no, no, it would be the opposite.
Cancer, if we tried to cure aging, we might actually increase cancer.
Increase cancer?
Sure.
Because cancers are the cells, they're the cells that live forever.
The rest of our cells are programmed to die at some point.
The cells that live forever are the cancer cells.
That's fascinating.
Alright then, here's yet another factor who asks, it is said, if a person could be made of cancer cells, they could live a thousand years.
Sure.
Sure is the answer?
Sure.
The problem with the cancer cells is that in order to continue to keep dividing, right, without ever stopping, they can't perform their specialized tasks.
And so... Because they've given that up.
Exactly.
Because everything is now into dividing and just keep growing and growing and growing and growing.
Yes, but if you produce the cancer cell that somehow was given back its specific job, and yet continued its nearly uncontrolled growth, then what would you have?
Well, that would be interesting.
I'm not sure.
I'm trying to... it's a good question.
Well, you're really pushing that.
I'm trying to think of all the switches here and how this... because usually it's a trade-off.
You know, when these cells become specialized, they stop dividing.
And if you push them again, To start dividing, if you trigger them somehow to start dividing, they again lose this other ability.
Could you have all the switches on at once?
That may be sort of what you're asking.
It is.
Could you turn everything on at once?
I think what we'd have to do at that point is go to more the chemists and the biochemists and say, is the structure of the cell, is the cell's machinery capable of that kind of power overload?
You know, it would be like wiring everything in your house together into one switch.
I've got you, and who knows what would happen.
All right, Doctor, hold on.
We'll be right back to you.
Another break.
Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald from Loyola University is my guest.
We'll be right back.
If you have questions, get on the phone now.
you're listening to art bell somewhere in time tonight featuring a replay of coast to coast am from february
twenty eight nineteen ninety seven
and and
and you're listening to art bell somewhere in time
Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from February 28, 1997.
And my guest is Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald from Loyola University.
And I would imagine the range of questions that you could ask would be the range of disciplines that he has studied and pursued.
He is a geneticist specializing in cancer research.
genetic application for cancer research, a Jesuit priest, and a bioethicist.
You're listening to Arc Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM, from February 28, 1997.
All right, back now to Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald in Maywood, Illinois, near Chicago.
Doctor, people who are fat, obese, there is an obvious environmental consideration, i.e.
they eat too much.
But is there also, do you think, a genetic reason for obesity?
Is that clear at this point?
Well, they have recently discovered Several genes which seem to be involved in weight gain and weight loss and that sort of thing.
The question is to what extent in the population are these things of significance?
So you could actually have a genetic condition, I believe, where even if you try very hard to watch what you eat and all that you would still have quite a tendency for gaining weight and this of course results in people of quite enormous weight and you have to take rather serious measures to work against this because something obviously in their biological makeup has gone somewhat awry and in order to combat that it takes rather stringent measures
I think, from what I've heard from nutritionists and most physiologists, for most people, watching your diet, exercising, can handle the kind of weight problems that most people would encounter.
As we continue to map the human genome, and you said we're ahead of schedule, there are going to be all kinds of problems involved.
For example, insurance companies.
If I was an insurance company, And I was able to get the genetic information on Art Bell.
Oh boy!
I'd be very pleased to have that and I sure as heck would use it before I'd issue a million dollar policy on somebody who is going to have some genetic problem at age 52 years of age and drop dead of a heart attack.
Absolutely.
This is a huge issue right now.
It's an issue where several states have actually passed laws In order to prevent insurance companies from getting information from genetic tests and screens that people have undergone for various health care reasons.
The point being that in some instances, companies have just taken the fact that you went in for a genetic test, not even the result.
Just the fact that you went in as an indication that something is wrong and that they should either drop you or hike your premiums.
So, right, on the one hand you say, well, that's business, that's how they make their profits and everything, but on the other hand, if this technology is going to be applied, you're right, we have to work to keep the abuses down, certainly to a minimum, and the insurance industry was built on the idea that you took a group of people, an entire population in an area, and said, what is the projected risk for everybody in this group on average.
That's how you work it out. Well now, you know specifically for each person what their projected risk is.
It seems to me to sort of undermine the whole basis for insurance.
Are you generally supportive of laws that are protective of this kind of information,
genetic information, or do you think this is a genie that's out of the bottle and
laws are just not going to do the trick.
No, I'm definitely saying that there have to be laws, there have to be ways in which people can be protected so that they can have access to this medical technology.
Now, that's not to say laws won't be broken or laws will not be inadequately written in this sort of thing, but we've got to keep trying.
I mean, this information, at least at present, It's very powerful in the way people are seen in our society, since the whole concept of a genetic identity, in a sense, you know, you have a tendency toward this, or this runs in your family, that kind of thing, carries with it a good deal of social stigma, and so people can be, in some ways, injured more just by
The idea that there's a genetic condition in their family, then they are by the condition itself.
Alright, let's try a few phone calls.
First time caller line, you're on the air with Dr. Fitzgerald.
Hi.
Good evening, Art.
Good evening, where are you?
I'm in Eugene, Oregon.
Alright.
I'm listening on KPNW.
Right.
Speak up good and loud and go ahead and ask your question.
Alright, I have two questions for the doctor, if that's alright.
One for the bioethicist and one for the priest.
Okay.
In the bioethics field, I guess I should explain my situation a little bit.
I'm facing losing my job because I refuse to give a genetic assessment.
And I'm concerned about data banking and I was wondering what your position was on that, about the creation of human DNA data banks.
Again, this sort of thing is supposed to be done under very strict confidentiality and privacy laws and regulations.
I'm not sure what the laws are in Oregon.
I'm not sure what you can do.
I'm not sure a company can force you to take a particular test.
Actually, I don't work for a company.
United States Navy.
Oh, in the Navy.
On the military, as a matter of fact, he is forcing people to give these samples.
Right.
Now, that's an entirely different issue.
You're talking about federal and the military.
You are presently in the Navy?
That's correct.
I actually applied for a waiver from the DNA Identification Program on religious grounds.
Uh huh.
And I'm awaiting an answer from the Secretary of Defense.
Wow.
That's something.
That's a hard question to answer.
I guess you'll get your answer and we would both appreciate it if you'd let us know what it is.
I'd be happy to do that.
Alright, what is the second part of your question?
The second part of my question is for the doctor.
I want to call him father.
I get both.
Okay.
Father, I was wondering how you felt about this science.
Given an afterlife and an eternal soul, is it really worth the risk of affecting people's lives and their health insurance and their employment to prolong life for the short term when you look at it from an eternal aspect?
Well, that is a good question.
That is a good question.
For you, it's a good question.
It's a good question, and I think the answer primarily to that is that if you see part of a person's relationship with God being somehow mirrored or even maybe in some ways developed in their relationships with other people because, again, these are all Our love relationships, we learn to love others, we learn to love God.
The idea behind the medicine and the genetic part of medicine is to try and make it as
possible as we can for people to have those interrelationships, to lead fulfilling lives
that they can experience the love of others and the love of God and not have some particular
physical malady or something get in the way of that and prevent them from really experiencing
that as fully as possible.
So in the sense of looking at this in the perspective of an afterlife, you don't want
to say that this is an absolute necessity.
I certainly want to say that if you don't live a certain length of time or have what
might be called a certain quality of life or something, you're not going to be able
to experience God's love.
God can get around most whatever we throw in the way.
So, but the point is, we are, at the same time, given that mandate to reach out to other people to try and make it as good for them as is possible.
To share that, you know, because we have received such wonderful gifts.
The idea is let's try and make that possible for as many people as we can.
Alright, Doctor, Father, if we could produce a clone uh... minus say a brain but with every other organ functioning or a brain with absolute minimal function in other words if you could genetically manipulate by the birth of a clone so that the brain had minimal function to keep the organs going uh... in some horrible little scenario uh... well first of all is such a such thing imaginable uh... well such a thing
In one sense, it sort of occurs.
You have a condition of anencephalic children who are born and of course die shortly after birth.
Once they are born, they are no longer on the mother's system to sustain them.
They cannot continue to live for long.
Those are incredible tragedies.
Yes, but if we could produce a tragedy of that sort, then we would, of course, have... we'd have a giant moral dilemma, but we would also have organs that could be taken when needed from... you don't want to say a soulless being, but I guess a... this gets very hard.
Right, right.
But I know that you know where I'm trying to go.
Right.
I see where you're going.
Maybe a place where we shouldn't be going.
I don't know.
And that's where the ethical question begins.
Right.
We can go there without necessarily having to use the science fiction to kind of make the point in the sense that a very big issue right now in the United States is when do we consider ourselves to be dead?
And is it brain death?
Is there more to the human being than just the brain?
Different states have passed different types of legislation, how you measure death and all that sort of thing.
So these are important and powerful questions because they reflect back on how we see ourselves, how we value ourselves, what we want to sort of do with ourselves.
And so the idea of what you were bringing up, that sort of science fiction thing, maybe The headless body with all the various organs that you would need.
The idea of where is the essential aspect or aspects of human life?
The soul.
We're talking about the soul.
Since we've come to that, let me bring this up.
I know we're out here on the edge.
Just live with me on the edge for a second.
In 1907, there was an article A medical study conducted by a physician named Duncan McDougall, M.D.
of Haverhill, Massachusetts, published in the Journal of Physical Research, in which this doctor, to cut it short, measured quite a number of people at the instant of death.
He measured their actual weight and was able to detect I believe three-quarters of an ounce of change at the exact instant of death and attributed that to what he called the soul substance.
Any comments?
Well, I mean, there's all kinds of problems with that sort of thing.
It's an interesting conceptual sort of experiment in the sense that the soul is not a scientific As it were, even if you want to talk about soul, it's not a scientific concept.
It comes from primarily a theological and philosophical concept.
Even today, I don't think in theology people would say soul as much as they might say human spirit, relationship with God, things like that, because soul has more of an ancient philosophy kind of ring to it.
The idea that science which measures, which measures, I mean that's the whole key right there.
It's quantities, it's quantification and that's what you're trying to do.
It's like trying to measure love.
You could easily, just as easily say what went out of the person at that time.
There was all the love that that person had built up in their life and at the moment of death they had to let go of that.
I mean you could just easily say he measured the love that was in that person.
Well of course we say, no you can't do that.
But in a similar sort of sense, the soul is not the kind of scientific concept that you
could quantify like that.
Well, maybe we should start measuring people when they break up with their girlfriends.
All right, let's go back to the line.
Wildcard line, you're on the air with Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald.
Hi there.
Hi, this is Steve from San Diego.
Yes, sir.
I've got two questions.
I guess they're probably one is in the ethical, medical emphasis.
The other one would be in the scientific emphasis.
All right.
The first one is like clones.
Like, if you have a clone that's a 30 year difference between the parent and the clone, and you were to do some exchange of blood, like transfusion, you know, from one host to the other, would that affect the de-aging or age reversal process?
Oh, I see.
You're saying there might be something in the blood that would help.
I'm talking about like vasopressin or growth hormone or... Yeah, I think we've got it.
In other words, some agent in the blood.
Right, right.
That's being secreted.
Does the blood control anything?
Right.
No, no.
But there are factors in the blood, as you just mentioned.
But you see, again, those factors have to be provided to go into the bloodstream.
I don't know, it's better than not having a brain, you know?
But on the other side, what about progeria?
What does progeria say?
and that was the slave or the subordinate and the host, then you know it gets pretty
heavy there.
It gets pretty horrible.
Well I don't know, it's better than not having a brain you know.
But on the other side, what about progeria?
What does progeria say?
Did you spell that for me?
Yeah, premature aging.
Oh, oh, oh.
Premature aging.
Oh, that's a good question.
Yeah.
Yes, what is that, Doctor?
Well, I'm trying to remember how many of these diseases there are.
There's one I know that's called Werner's Syndrome, and it's a disease of premature and accelerated aging.
What they have found is there's actually an area of the chromosome, a gene, but maybe more than just the gene region.
In which you have a defect in an enzyme that is used to get access to the DNA so the DNA can copy itself and so what you're doing actually is the body cannot multiply the cells as it should and you get in a sense the premature aging that way because you get worn out much faster.
Is there then in an eventual understanding of that also an application to slow or even stop the aging process?
If we understand why somebody ages prematurely and we can do something about that, can we go the other direction?
Again, this is the thing.
If you treated this disease genetically, the idea would be to return someone to normalcy.
If you were to try and go The other way with it, again, my guess would be, since this is an enzyme which is involved in replication of the cell, I mean the cell dividing and making a copy of itself and all, again, if you push that and try and get that to go faster or longer or something, again, you move more into the realm of cancer.
So you would run into all sorts of various cancers?
Exactly.
Remember now that this is a very complex mechanism we're talking about, which operates a great deal on balancing a lot of different forces and sort of dynamics within the body.
So if you push one way or the other too hard, something throws the balance out of whack.
And so this whole desire in a sense for sort of physical immortality or bodily immortality
from a genetic or physiological point of view is almost contrary to what the whole thing is about.
We're born, we live, we die. That's part of the process.
If you don't die, you don't get the mutations and the evolution of the species
and all that sort of thing.
So it goes against all of the movement that we have gotten to up to this point.
Alright, then if we achieved the technical capability for the sake of the discussion to stop the aging and or even dying process short of, you know, massive accidents, would we have gone, at that point, in your opinion, as a Jesuit priest, too far?
Or can we go too far?
Oh, well, we could most definitely go too far.
I mean, that's the tension that we lived with in the 60s and 70s, having these incredible weapons of destruction.
We could actually literally wipe ourselves out.
Oh, yes.
So, certainly, that's it.
But, I mean, genetically, is there a point where the religious person within you You know what?
I've got to ask this question after the top of the hour.
We're at the top of the hour, so relax.
You've got plenty of time.
We'll be back to you.
My guest from Loyola University is Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald.
You're listening to Arc Bell, somewhere in time, on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM, from February 28, 1997.
Coast to Coast is a production of the U.S. Department of State.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in the middle of the night.
Ever since the story broke, a lot of people have been in shock.
Absolute shock.
That's what we're talking about.
of Coast to Coast AM from February 28, 1997.
Have you been struggling to understand cloning?
Ever since the story broke, a lot of people have been in shock, absolute shock.
That's what we're talking about.
My guest is Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald from Loyola University.
He's in Maywood, Illinois, near Chicago.
He is a geneticist with a specialty in cancer, a Jesuit priest, and a bioethicist.
And we'll get back to him in a moment with your questions.
Thanks for watching.
here on Coast to Coast AM with George Norris.
You know, there is terrorism out there.
So, in an effort to try to fight it or combat it, we give up these rights.
I'm convinced that there are groups out there, sinister, horrible groups, That would create this terror to continue to control us.
I think you're absolutely correct.
But of course, anybody that's followed the process of government throughout history, once a government has been given a certain amount of power, it always seeks more.
And to suggest that our government is different because it's America, I guess that just shows how historically ignorant the American people have become.
Because in a real sense, these things are our fault.
Americans are, in fact, now trading liberty for security.
Every day, this is going to happen now in our future, that we're going to allow this.
It's just a matter of time.
now we take you back to the night of february twenty eight nineteen ninety
seven on our girls somewhere in time back now to dr kevin Fitzgerald
at lower lawyer all our university I'll learn to say that.
Doctor, from a graduate from Loyola, the following facts.
Wouldn't one of the obvious uses of cloning be the replacing of children who died?
Here's the scenario.
A young six-year-old son of a rich man dies tragically, say by drowning.
Since early Intellectual development is largely genetic and growing up in the same family would produce the same environment generally.
Wouldn't the obvious answer be to get a new copy of the Sun by cloning?
Indeed I can see a day when some agency might collect tissue samples instead of fingerprints of young children.
Right, well you asked me just before this too, is there a time when this thing can go too far?
And I think in one sense this may be An example of how that can happen.
And it's not to say that in a situation like that a terrible tragedy has not occurred and we want in some way to be able to fix it.
To make the pain go away.
To put something else in its place.
And I think that's the problem here because first of all as we know you can't replace the child genetically.
You might be able through cloning or whatever to make a child.
That looks a lot like the child that was lost.
But again, even though you may think it's a similar environment, imagine the pressures that this child is growing up under in the sense that you are there to replace someone.
You're not your own person.
So the pressure on you would be to be what was lost?
And not be who you are.
Imagine how all of us feel when we are under that sort of situation, how we chafe under And so, in a way, you've sort of objectified, or you've taken this person, this human being, and said, you're to be somebody else.
Which, of course, that person can never be.
Whoever that next child is can never be the one who was lost.
And so, in that sense, you haven't really mourned for and really felt the full scope of the tragedy of the child who was lost.
something you should do that child certainly is worthy of that
and if the other time the next child coming over is not getting what that child is worthy of so in a sense
you lose out on both ends. I can easily see
as a priest you would be very sensitive to if you were doing research
in an area very sensitive to the point where you
had gone too far and you would easily catch yourself
because of your discipline but can you imagine there would be a lot of
scientists out there uh...
without your religious background who would not so easily catch themselves and stop themselves
Thank you.
Well again, scientists do not work in a vacuum.
It's a community and most scientists are like most people we meet.
They're loving people.
The vast majority of people that I've met, I think of people who really are concerned.
and they bring all that too with them into the science.
So I can say there are no scientists out there that I would worry about.
It's a statement I would not make, but to say that the vast majority of people that
I have met, I think of people who really are concerned.
They may not have the same education and eye in order to articulate it or put the professional
ethical phrases on it or not, but I think they have the same good instincts that they
would look at what they do and say, I wouldn't do anything that I wouldn't do to myself or
my loved ones.
Well, all right.
Having said that, with respect to research going on in the private sector as a generalization, would you make the same statement with respect to research being done by And supported by the government?
In this country.
You mean, when you say that, I'm getting the impression that you mean something more secretive or whatever.
Oh well, indeed I do.
Our government's main interest is national security, and that of course means weapons applications.
Right, right.
And under that rubric, much has been done in the past, which of course, once it came out into the light, Something that, you know, I think we look at it and realize that this was wrong.
One of the big issues now, of course, in ethics, has been some of the use of soldiers in nuclear testing.
That was done somewhat in a way that they were not as informed as they should have been about what was going on.
Or even more horrifically, when Hazel O'Leary, the Energy Secretary, has come forward to admit that we fed plutonium to children and pregnant women, That sort of thing.
To imagine we did that then, and to project forward to what might be going on in government labs now, that's why I asked you, your statement as a generalization in the private sector, could you, if you project that into what might be going on within government now, are you comfortable?
Well, at present I would say I'm more comfortable because the reason given in the past for doing some of these What kind of crazy things?
Again, like you said, national security, we had a huge threat.
We had this enemy, and because we had to prepare ourselves for this onslaught, we thought we could use that as an excuse to do things that normally we wouldn't do.
At present, I don't believe that this country has that same sense of impending doom from some external force.
The Soviet Union or something like that.
And even in those cases, though, it does.
It always worries me.
And I think it should worry most of us that anybody would use a reason like that as an excuse to do something that we wouldn't agree to.
We wouldn't say that this is an ethical thing.
So in the sense of what price freedom?
I mean, if you're giving up your freedom for, quote unquote, freedom, you've already lost the battle.
You bet.
But if we don't have the freedom, To bring most of this out into the open.
Now of course you might want to have some, I can understand weapon systems and things that you keep secret from the enemy so you have a little advantage of surprise.
That's fine as long as you're not subjecting human beings in the process to sacrificing their freedom And their value as human beings in order to get that, because as I said, you've already lost the game.
Gotcha.
Alright.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Dr. Fitzgerald.
Where are you calling from, please?
Hello, Art.
This is Jack.
I'm from upstate New York.
Yes, sir.
I had two points when I first dialed up.
In the meantime, I've heard one other thing I could bring up about the Army testing.
Alright.
Go ahead, sir.
Well, when I was in basic training, we graduated.
We had an option to go to Fort Detrick, I believe it was, for an extra $55 a month for testing.
And several people took it, you know.
Yes.
They thought it was the greatest thing in the world.
You know, to be a guinea pig, actually, is what it amounts to.
Yes.
And, well, you know, it just happened to come along.
The other thing I was thinking about, as far as death goes, now if they can clone someone, you know, if they can take a single cell, Now, where does death come from?
You know, if you can take a cell, does that person still keep on living?
Well, yes.
The answer is an obvious yes.
Correct, Doctor?
In other words, the removal of one cell or even a number of cells for the purpose of cloning is going to be a rather insignificant event for the person making the donation.
Correct?
Right.
Is your question more along the line?
Are you thinking that the next person, then, is a continuation of the first person?
Well, he's gone now.
That's what he was thinking.
I mean, again, we have to express the point that, sure, taking a cell from one person is not going to be something that you're going to really even perhaps notice.
But the second person, of course, then, is not a continuation of the first.
The second is, like we say, the delayed identical twin, which, of course, is a person in and of his or her own right.
All right.
Ease to the Rockies.
You're on the air with Dr. Fitzgerald.
Where are you, please?
St.
Louis.
I have a question I want to get to but first I just wanted to ask Dr. Fitzgerald did he see the nightline thing on cloning a few nights ago?
You know actually I didn't get a chance to see that.
Okay well I just want to say that I agree 100% with you when you said that you know it would not be right if a child died to try to clone that child to replace that child because I don't think it takes a psychologist to know That that child would have extreme identity problems, etc., and you cannot replace a human being, in my opinion.
But, I don't know if you realize this, on the Nightline Program, they had a theologian.
He was the only one arguing that point.
There was a woman from the University of Wisconsin who was on Clinton's Bioethics Committee, and a woman from Albert Einstein College.
And they were saying, oh well, you know, that's the exact example they gave.
Well, you might want to clone a child if your child was dying.
Can you believe they were seriously discussing this?
Right.
Well, I think what happens in this day and age is with the emphasis in this country on sort of individual choice, the idea is you get a technology or something and someone says, well, what possible uses could this technology be put to?
And they think, well, you know, if someone had enough money, they could choose to do that.
That's why it's so important.
That we have a general discussion about these sorts of things.
That we have a national discussion where people say, no, wait a minute.
Individual choice, yes.
You can take it so far, but let's face it.
We have rules and regulations.
You can't just run a red light when you want to.
Well, I couldn't believe my ears when I heard that.
It is a common way of That people interpret these things.
And I think what happens is if you sat those people down and you might say, now, would you do this?
You know, they may say, well, of course not.
But I could see someone else choosing to.
And then you have to say, well, if you wouldn't do it, why should someone else choose to do it?
Oh, I'm sorry, but I can easily see somebody of means who has lost a son or a daughter in Unrelenting grief, making such a choice very easily, indeed.
Oh, in the grief, absolutely!
But you would say, then, that this is not a situation where they are necessarily at their best, and they are making the best decision that they would do in other circumstances.
These are people in grief.
These are people that are, you know, greatly affected by this tragedy.
And we have to take that into consideration.
All right.
High Art, I believe Dr. Fitzgerald said, That the maximum age a human being could reach with our genetic characteristics was 120 to 150.
Since he is a Jesuit priest as well, what does he have to say about the biblical figures who were said to have lived close to 900 years of age?
Right.
Well, I mean, the way that different cultures in all keep track of time, the way that time is expressed in different languages and this sort of thing, And also in the sense that when you write something down, even in the Bible, you can go to the texts that tell you and explain how this particular passage got there and what it means.
There's a message being given at this point, that the goodness All right.
Did you see the movie Jurassic Park, Doctor?
Oh, I did.
You did?
i mean it was one way in which people thought dot reporting you for being
good so i don't think you have to take
uh... at at literal in english you know nine hundred years for us
that that's what this meant that they actually lived as we reckoned nine
hundred years alright uh... did you see the movie jurassic park doctor all i did
you did good with the news of the cloning uh... inevitably the question
uh... is begged With regard to animals that are extinct, recent extinctions, last several decades perhaps, or even more interestingly, the scenario set up in Jurassic Park, and that was, if I can recall correctly, the DNA from dinosaurs, which was incomplete and filled in with
A frog DNA.
Are we a step closer to that possibility?
Well, we're a step closer to definitely with this.
I think it's the possibility of doing something in an attempt to preserve endangered species.
Now, again, the drawback of this particular technology, as I mentioned before, is you make a genetic copy, you know, like an identical twin.
The problem with that is, as I also said before, the fitness of a species is its diversity.
If you only have a few individuals left, cloning will keep you getting those individuals maybe for a time, and we don't know what kind of impact yet it has even to have cloned an animal on the next animal.
So I'm not sure how many times you're going to be able to clone the same genetic make up the same genome over and over and over again before
something would happen
but it could be used i can see in the short term to try and and uh...
if he's prolonged the existence of some of these endangered species but they're
going to have to work out
according for each species and that that could be problematic
in uh... in the follow-up uh... book only at this point i believe uh... to jurassic
park uh... it was contended by mister creighton
that the and i may be getting a little way from your disciplines here but i i
will ask that the process of evolution is
one of diversity in that evolution occurs at a a rapid clip with diversity and
And his contention in the book was that with the Internet, with the global telecommunications network that we have now in the world, there will be, instead of many ideas generated in separate places, A sort of a top ten list of ideas in America, Bangladesh, India, you name it, and that actually evolution will be slowed because of a lack of diversity.
Would you think there would be anything to that theory?
Right.
I read the book.
Oh, you read the book?
Oh, okay, great.
I read the book.
I love that science fiction stuff.
And that whole idea of the chaos theory and how it interacts with all this.
But I mean, it is interesting in one sense, because I think for the human species in particular, our evolution has, you know, our sort of natural evolution or our physiological evolution has in many ways been overtaken by our cultural evolution.
And so if you think about this, Yeah, they do.
We could be losing a richness as cultures disappear, as they interact.
On the other hand, we could also gain a richness through this kind of global communication if cultures are not lost but are shared and if diversity is something which is then made available for many people to uh... at least being exposed to so that people in japan are
much more exposed to the way of life here and we are much more exposed to the
way of life in ecuador and ecuadorians to people in
kenya and that sort of thing. I mean that may actually increase
our richness and increase our diversity. But we may not have the answer to that uh...
in our lifetime certainly. I would guess not but then again you gotta be careful the way things are
moving these days.
They're jumping like crazy.
Oh, they sure are.
I have a word for it.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald.
Where are you, please?
Hello, I'm over here in Idaho.
Idaho, yes, sir.
Yes, I have a... I was wondering, do you think that this technology will lead to the development of, like, a half-human, half-animal?
Well, there's an ugly question.
Could such a thing in your wildest imagination, Doctor, occur?
A half-human, a half-animal?
Well, I mean, you know, crossing species and things like that is, of course, you know, one of the ways it's prevented is to keep breeding from happening between species.
So, you know, that half-human, half-animal kind of thing, I find difficult to imagine.
Well, I would simply add, I hope not.
Yeah, well, I mean, I certainly hope not, right, even to talk about it as being possible and that sort of thing.
All right, Doctor, hold on.
We're at the bottom of the hour.
We'll be right back.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time, tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM
from February 28th, 1997.
♪♪♪ ♪♪♪
♪♪♪ Premier Radio Networks presents Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight's program originally aired February 28th, 1997.
How's that for a combo?
This is Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald from Loyola University, a geneticist, bioethicist, and Jesuit priest.
How's that for a combo?
Back to him in a moment.
Now we take you back to the night of February 28, 1997, on Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
www.artbell.com Back now to Dr. Fitzgerald.
A doctor from Diane in Los Angeles who says her aunt developed breast cancer and had to have a mastectomy.
Now, they told her after the tumors were tested that she had five separate kinds of cancer at the same time.
How is that possible?
Wow!
I mean, that's very rare.
Possible in the sense that If she had had at some point an exposure to some kind of carcinogenic agent, you know, it could have been a chemical, it could have been a radiation or something like that.
Obviously, a very powerful one, perhaps, could have done something like that.
Five separate tumors, all unique, I presume.
That is rare.
That's one way.
The other is some people who have a genetic predisposition to getting cancer will get multiple different types of cancer.
But this family doesn't sound like that's the situation because I gather that's...
It's a unique situation in their family that the mother got these five different types, so it's really amazing.
Really remarkable.
All right, we only have a limited amount of time, so let's concentrate on the phones.
West of the Rockies, you are on the air with Dr. Fitzgerald.
Hello.
Hi, my name is Pat from Burbank, California.
Hi, Pat.
Good morning, gentlemen and gentle clones around the world.
Everyone knows about the nucleus family, where you get a mother and a father and they produce a child together.
Well, what if I don't want to get married?
What if I want to be single and I want to have a child of my own, in my own image, and bring it up myself and carry on my name?
In other words, could you, when the technology becomes available, if it does, donate cells and off we go?
Right.
Have my own children for myself.
All right.
Doctor?
Well, at present, there's this thing called adoption.
Have your own children?
No, but that isn't what he was asking.
Well, I mean in the sense that, again, you know, the expectations that come from cloning yourself on the child, that the child is going to be some kind of Xerox copy or carbon copy of yourself.
As he sort of mentioned, what if I want to, you know, sort of have myself and what That happens when the child, though looking very similar to
the way you looked at that age, doesn't act exactly the same way.
So you're saying you could, but you shouldn't?
Well, I'm just saying, right.
I don't think it's, and they certainly can't, the technology isn't there.
And I don't think even psychologically, or I don't think ethically or theologically,
that you should go that way because I don't think it's really valuing the other person
for who he or she is.
So a revolting prospect on all fronts?
Just one that I think is right.
It's definitely a disvalue to everyone involved on all fronts, yes.
All right.
First time caller line, you're on the air with Dr. Fitzgerald.
Hi.
Hello.
Where are you, sir?
Bureau, Illinois.
Bureau, all right.
God bless you for what you're doing, doctor.
Thank you.
We really need as much help as we can with cancer.
My question is, I have a relative who developed lymph node cancer.
We've been battling that for about four years.
I read an article on almost like cloning, on cloning cancer cells to attack cancer cells.
Now are we still looking into that?
Or have we?
You know, since that is your field.
Yeah, it sounds like it's right down your alley, doctor.
Right.
Well, now again, cloning in this case is what you're doing is you are taking cells from the cancer, which have certain characteristics.
And we look at those characteristics.
We investigate those characteristics to see how those cancer cells are different than the other cells in your body.
And the idea being, if there are some specific differences, perhaps we can tailor a treatment.
We can look to those cells and say, if we attack it in this particular way, it will only kill those cells and it will not affect the other cells in your body.
At present, a lot of the treatments, chemotherapy, radiation, those sorts of things, generally attack the cells in the body.
It's specifically cells that multiply rapidly.
That's why people lose their hair.
That's why they get some kind of gastrointestinal distress and all that when they're undergoing these therapies because those are areas where you have rapidly producing cells.
The idea is if we can become much more specific and attack these tumor cells specifically by using their characteristics against themselves, we'll have a much more effective treatment.
And we are pursuing that.
And it's being pursued everywhere in cancer research.
It may be possible one day to affect the genetic structure of a person already, an adult person for example, in other words, could you, and I'm not sure I know what I'm talking about but I'll try, could you take a person's DNA, change it in some way, introduce it to a virus and vector it back into them again, and for example, Change the color of their eyes.
Oh, well, I was going to say, up to that point you were doing fine, because in one sense that's the gene therapy that is at present being used for certain very severe diseases, that you take the cells out, you put the healthy gene in a vector, a viral vector, you get that back into the cells and hopefully get it in and working and then you put that back in.
This works at present only for single gene sorts of conditions.
Right.
So if we take something a little more common.
It also works at present only in the kinds of cells that you can get to and replace.
So cells that are growing and regenerating and that kind of thing.
Otherwise it only lasts for a short amount of time.
Now, this is a little beyond my field, because I know very little about the structure of the eye and everything like that, but I don't think that you could at this point in time, you know, change the color of your eye that way.
I understand.
Well, the reason I said that is I was once told by a physician or a scientist that with regard to the AIDS virus, he said When we get to the point where we can genetically change the color of your eyes, we'll be able to cure AIDS, and probably not until then.
Well, I mean, the AIDS virus, what it does is gets into your cells and integrates itself in there, in these particular T-cells where it goes.
But it can also hide away from the immune system.
And so what he was talking about is the level of technology that would be needed to literally cure AIDS.
So in a general sense, you would agree with that, then?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, right now, I think that the combination drug, protease inhibitors and other drugs that they have are shown to be very effective in certainly suppressing... Making progress, yes.
Oh, absolutely.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Dr. Fitzgerald.
Where are you calling from, please?
Yes, Huntington Beach.
This is Randy.
Hi, Randy.
Hi.
Good radio art.
Thank you.
Just a thought and a response, if I could, by the doctor.
Dr. Fitzgerald, in the Bible, the lamb was always used kind of as a mediator between humans and God's power, and now we have man creating the lamb.
I wonder what your thoughts are on this, and I'll hang up and listen.
Thank you.
Theological question, all right?
Actually, you know, this is terrible, but all this week, with all this stuff going on, I hadn't thought of it in that way.
That's a very interesting juxtaposition of different things, that actually the first animal that they cloned was a lamb.
I mean, the lamb is often used as innocence and purity and all that, you know, the lion lying down with the lamb.
And in this case, it's the lamb, in a sense, that is the lion.
It's very interesting.
All right, East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald.
Hello.
How are you doing, Art?
I'm all right.
This is Mike from Dubuque, Iowa.
Hi, Mike.
Hey, I don't mean to kind of break up the train of thought that you've been running on, but a couple of things crossed my mind listening to you is, did you know that last year was the year marked in the Star Trek World as being the beginning of a eugenics war?
Meaning a genetically enhanced and cloned soldiers fighting in a war?
Well, there's a Trekkie for you, but again it goes back to the question of genetically engineered soldiers and your answer to that was that they would all share a common weakness.
And again, Doctor, if you bred for strength, if you bred for aggressiveness, and if you spent a lot of time, as they do with animals, breeding out various weaknesses, or as many weaknesses as you could, enhancing the strengths, and then cloned, I'm afraid if I was in the Defense Department, I'd be really interested in that.
Well, first of all, The people that you would go to to ask about this would be, of course, the people that did this kind of breakthrough.
What they could tell you, since they're an animal husbandry, look at some of the strains of dogs that have been bred for exactly the things that you have mentioned.
For strength, for intelligence, for aggressiveness.
Pit Bull.
The dog that comes right to mind, the German Shepherd.
Or the Pit Bull.
Or the Pit Bull.
German Shepherds more broadly apply.
Through military, police, those kinds of things.
One of the breeds that's suffering greatly from being so inbred is a German Shepherd.
In the fact of trying to fine-tune this so much and inbreed them so much and keep these traits, what happens is when you do this, when you are doing all this kind of breeding and trying to keep the same genetic constitution, Always in everyone, you, myself, all of us have certain combinations of genes in our makeup which are basically not good for us.
Okay?
To put it on a very basic level.
We all carry these.
Now we all carry different ones because we're all genetically different.
If you were to try and clone some kind of quote-unquote superhuman And clone that superhuman.
And they would still have, somewhere in their genetic constitution, these recessive traits, as we say recessive because in a sense you need both genes to have this weakness, okay?
It would be there.
You would not be able to get those out.
I mean, that's part of the shuffling of the genes and things.
So, somebody, some scientist could come along and say, well let's find out what those are.
Here's a horrible little question.
again against any kind of supposed superhuman that you could genetically get through breeding.
Here's a horrible little question. Would it ever be possible, could it ever be possible,
for a woman to be created from a man's DNA?
For a woman to be created from a man's DNA?
Yes, in other words we have the XY business.
Right, but actually it's becoming much more complicated than that.
As it always does in science.
It also turns out the fact that when you put sperm and egg together and get the fertilization and a new human being, when the Male and the female make their particular sex cells, whether they be sperm or egg.
There's a process that goes on where we leave an imprint on our genes.
Okay?
The process, in fact, is called imprinting.
And that process has to occur for the genetic material to be able to get together in fertilization and produce a new human being.
If for instance you took say a male genome, the genes from a man, the chromosomes, and
just duplicated it, in a sperm, just make two copies, and get rid of the Y chromosome
and double the X, you could not, it would not work because the female imprint would
not be there.
Now the way cloning gets around that is that you're not doing sexual reproduction, it's
asexual reproduction.
You're just taking a cell and growing it back up again.
So that the initial imprinting from the parent is still there.
The two parents, the male and the female parents.
But you can't just take one sex, duplicate the genetic material, and get a new human being.
Alright, here's... let me throw you a big curve then, since you're going down this road.
Much, much controversy going on now about homosexuality.
Genetically, do you believe that there is a genetic reason for homosexuality, or that that will eventually be proven, or that it is environmental, or a combination of the two?
Well, I think this is, you know, sexual orientation is similar to intelligence.
It's similar to other things.
It's a very complex trait.
And when we were talking about complex characteristics of human beings,
I think we're always talking about a mix of environment and genetics.
And so to ever say that someone is going to find a gene, I think that is... I would be extremely surprised at that.
I would say the odds of that happening are incredibly against you.
Better chance of hitting the lottery tomorrow.
But you admitted to being extremely surprised when you heard about the cloning of the sheep the other day, too.
That's true, but that's a technical breakthrough.
All right.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. Fitzgerald.
Hello.
Hello.
This is Greg in California.
Hi, Greg.
Hi.
I have a comment and a question.
All right.
Fire away.
My comment is along the Jurassic Park theme there.
I had heard that the geneticist that Creighton based a lot of his research on is planning on taking the DNA of a woolly mammoth and intersplicing it with a modern elephant because he said that the genetic difference is less than 1%.
And seeing what they might come up with, and I thought that was kind of interesting.
Well, I also believe the genetic difference between ape and man is somewhere down in that same narrow range, isn't it, Doctor?
That's correct.
Yeah, if you take, you know, you've got to consider the fact that we have a sequence, you know, as we say in genetics, that the bases that make up DNA, the A, the C, the G, and the T that you see in Time Magazine and everything like that, that make up the DNA, you have Uh, you know, 3 billion of these.
Now if you count out 3 billion and a chimpanzee had some similar number, you're going to find, in fact, that the vast majority of them, 97, 98, 99 percent of them, are the same.
Now, most of those are not necessarily used to do anything except make the structure of the DNA.
The ones that actually are used in genes and that sort of thing,
oftentimes the differences you will find, even though the difference may only be one, two, or three
percent, that's where the differences are in what's making the genes,
and so that you're going to see the obvious difference in the organism,
even though out of the three billion, there are so many that are the same.
I see.
My question is, I know we're talking about how the clone is basically an identical twin,
and if it was made, it would be a product of its environment and stuff.
And what I was wondering is, I don't know much about RNA, but if you had, say, at birth, you took out clone insurance or something, and it grew along with you, but it was kept in like a coma or something like that.
And then upon death, as long as you didn't have much brain trauma, Would it be possible to extract this RNA, the consciousness, the experiences, the memories, and somehow... Download it?
Yeah, download it.
I hear that they're doing amazing things with brain damage.
They're doing things where microcircuitry can reconnect.
This is all theoretical, but microcircuitry can start to reconnect past the damaged areas, making the connections once again in the process of these tears of the RNA.
Would you be able to download the consciousness from like a map?
Oh boy!
I love science fiction, it's so much fun.
No, the mRNA is a different type of nucleic acid, as we say.
DNA stands for deoxynucleic acid.
Deoxyribonucleic acid.
And RNA stands for ribonucleic acid.
So you don't have to worry about that.
It's just a different type of molecule in the body.
It performs certain tasks.
They have discovered in some experiments and things that sometimes this RNA is important in the memory process.
But the memory is by no means in the RNA.
The things that you're talking about with the rewiring of the brain As in many things in the body, there's a great deal of redundancy.
It's like backup systems, you know, to help in times of stress or failure or damage.
And what they're talking about is something that already occurs in the brain when there are strokes and things.
The brain attempts to rewire.
To find new pathways.
All right, Doctor.
Boy, what a pleasure it has been and how much I have learned.
It is a wild field that you're in, and with your disciplines, it must make for, you must have some interesting days and nights.
It is.
It's never dull, I'll tell you that.
I'm sure.
Doctor, I'm sure it's way past your bedtime, and I really want to thank you for sticking with us this long.
You're quite welcome, Mark.
Thank you, my friend.
We will do it again sometime.
When you move this to an afternoon show, I'll be more than happy to.
Take care, Doctor.
That's Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald from Loyola University.
A geneticist, a bioethnicist, and a Jesuit priest.
rare opportunity indeed.
I'm going to be doing a video on the first of many of the most popular games on the Nintendo
Switch.
I'm going to be doing a video on the first of many of the most popular games on the Nintendo
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM, from February 28, 1997.
Okie dokie, I'm getting a lot of questions about the interview I just did.
The interview with Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald.
At the same time, a Jesuit priest, a geneticist, and a bioethicist.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time, on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from February 28th, 1997.
January 28, 1997.
Just before we go to open lines, aside from the continuing clone story that we can discuss,
there was a story on CNN at 9 o'clock last night, Pacific, and it's probably still running,
and it just blew my mind.
Bye.
We live in the damnedest age, I'm telling you.
I will read to you essentially what CNN said and describe to you what they Showed.
You know about the Levitron?
Levitation, right?
The physicists don't fully understand the process that allows the Levitron to do what it does, but it works.
CNN last night said, quote, scientists in Finland using a strong magnetic field, very strong, Scientists are able to levitate flowers, a grasshopper, a worm, even a tadpole.
Scientists were surprised that animals could be suspended in a stable position, levitated, and that it was possible to do so at room temperature.
The scientist, Dr. Andre Geim, I guess, G-E-I-M, of the Catholic University in Finland, whether this process could be made to work with humans, and he said, without equivocation, yes!
Now, I know that a lot of you are going to think I'm making this up.
I'm not.
I don't pretend to understand the process that is at work here.
But folks, they showed of various plants and animals a spider hovering stably in mid-air.
Granted, the spider was moving around, as you would imagine it would, probably very upset to be hovering in mid-air.
But my God, how can this be so?
Now, we are biological creatures, not... I understand that we have water, and we have some minerals in our system, we're biological creatures, but I do not understand the process by which magnetism could levitate an animal, a plant, or a human being, and yet they showed it!
It was on CNN.
Now I hope that some of you that saw this will call up and confirm that it is true.
I am amazed at the age that we live in.
You recall the Finnish experiments, the anti-gravity experiments they were doing.
Now we have levitated biological mass living biological mass with with magnetism and I must say it blew me away and I guarantee it will blow you away as well and uh... speaking of being blown away Oklahoma City bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh has allegedly reportedly admitted to his defense team that he planted the bomb that leveled the federal building
The Dallas Morning News reports that McVeigh told his lawyers he planted the bomb during the day to get a, quote, high body count, end quote, send a strong message to the government.
I'm not surprised.
I would imagine his attorneys are mystified at such an admission.
President Clinton, speaking of mystification, has recertified Mexico as a great partner helping out with drugs.
This on the heels of the Mexican drug czar being arrested for protecting the shipments of drugs.
So I don't know what the hell they're doing back there.
I don't think they know what they're doing either.
I watched with horror earlier today A shootout in California.
I watched, I've got satellite here, of various sorts, and I watched KTLA's coverage of the shootout in California, in Hollywood.
Two bank robbers were killed by police in one of the wildest shootouts since the SLA incident.
In Los Angeles, it was unbelievable.
They had helicopters up, these gunmen were armed It is said, outgunned the police for a long time.
I mean, they were, they looked themselves like SWAT team members.
That AK-47s and more.
And it was unbelievable.
I mean, it was just, it was, it was like a movie but live on TV.
As many as six robbers uh... as a matter of fact with uh... automatic weapons and uh... there was a thirty minute period of firefight in in hollywood everything was locked down schools closed it was horrible and uh... ktla carried it all out as a matter of fact the gunmen were firing at police helicopters and press helicopters that were trying to cover all of this and i sat and watched it with my jaw open so
Somebody sent me this.
To Art Bell, last Saturday morning, the credit union my daughter works for was held up.
One of the robbers yanked her by the hair, shoved a gun to her head and told her he'd blow her effing head off if she pushed the alarm.
Well, while she was on the floor, with a gun to her head, she said she just kept praying to live.
She has two young daughters.
The paper said no one was injured, but One can't really say that when a gun is shoved at your head and your life hangs on the whim of a half-wit.
A few years ago, the bank she worked for was held up and the inside sprayed with bullets.
She said the noise from the guns is deafening the fear palpable.
So, with this on my mind, I watched the events unfold concerning the shootout in North Hollywood.
Listened to Raymond Fisher of the L.A.
Police Commission on CNN tonight when he was interviewed by the Winston Soles, guy who has a tan, he says here.
Mr. Fisher described one scene where shots were flying as being under control.
He also felt police should not be armed with heavy weapons like the robbers used, because these could get out of control on their side.
And he noted that decisions for heavy arms can't be made on the basis of this one incident.
On the Larry Elder program on KBC today, it was reported that a gun owner Uh, opened his store and made available to the police more sophisticated arms, an offer they're said to have accepted.
Yeah, Mr. Fisher, I say let's have lots more of them before we get our act together.
I then listened to some professor from Georgetown on MSNBC say that we need more gun control.
Lord, if we had gun control, the only ones with guns would be the government, the bad guys as well.
Sometimes, increasingly, they're getting hard to tell apart.
The news reported that of 6,200 bank robberies in the U.S.
last year twenty one hundred took place in los angeles
so uh... there was a big shootout and uh...
my take on it is actually the police performed very heroically and
And as I watched it, I thought, very professionally.
The LAPD, I think, did a good job.
Nice to be able to say, huh?
And then there's this continuing stupid topic of my being dead.
Again, look, here's the kind of email I'm getting.
Listen to this.
Mr. Bell, I've heard rumors that you are, in fact, dead.
Your show last night was blacked out in my area.
I will just assume that you have passed away if I don't hear from you.
Clark, P.S.
Ramona, if you're reading this email, I just want to tell you that Art has done great things in his lifetime.
I'm sorry you've lost such a great person.
I will keep you and your son in my prayers.
Touching Clark, but you know, I'm getting a little tired of this and it's not humoring me anymore.
I am not dead!
And I am tired of seeing reports of my death.
I am not dead, dammit!
And then there's this, to make me laugh.
Art thought you might be interested in starring in the starring role in my new movie, tentatively titled, Dead Man Talking.
Thanks, Dave.
Thank you, Dave.
that's very nice open lines balance of the show anything you all want to
talk about his fair game East of the Rockies, you're on the air, top of the morning.
Hello.
I had a couple of comments, maybe you'd like to comment on them.
Sure.
You know, the reason that they're saying we need to do this genetic research into cloning and everything is to cure diseases like AIDS and cancer, etc.
Yes.
You know, when you think about it, it's kind of interesting, because right now we have a doctor in Houston, Texas, named Dr. Brzezinski, who the FDA is trying to put in jail, who has cured some patients.
I'm very, very aware of his case, and he's been asking to come on the program, and so there's a good chance that next week I will contact him and get him on.
I'm very aware of his case.
I know the court case is coming down toward the end now, and It does seem like an interesting interview, and I know they're coming after him, and he's probably a pretty good test case.
Because the man, as far as I know, with all these thousands of patients that he has treated, has never had one bitch, one complaint from anybody, and allegedly has had a great deal of success, and the FDA is going after him like a freight train.
Yeah, you kind of have to ask yourself why.
Yeah, I am asking myself why, and I will ask him why next week.
So, how about that?
Okay, can I mention one other thing?
Yep.
And also, I know, haven't you had Dr. Leonard Horowitz on your program?
I have indeed.
And of course, Joyce Riley.
Of course.
They make a pretty good argument, especially Dr. Horowitz in his book, Emerging Viruses, AIDS and Ebola, Nature, Accident, or Intentional, that AIDS could have likely been intentionally created by our government.
So then you have to ask yourself, you know, the whole series of events.
So now we're having to do this cloning research and genetic research to cure AIDS.
Well, if we actually made AIDS, you know, You know what I mean?
What's the whole... I know exactly.
Also, have you seen the movie, The Island of Dr. Moreau?
I have not yet.
We're seeing it's running on pay-per-view now, so I could see it over the weekend.
Well, I would see it now that they're, as you mentioned, that they transferred a bamboo's immune system into an AIDS patient.
Yes.
And in this movie, there's like, they're half animal and half people.
Yes.
And also they were doing experiments where they had implants and they were shacking them to get them under control.
Right.
Alright, I'll check.
Is it worth seeing?
I would see it.
Alright, done deal.
I will see it and you look for the good doctor on the show next week, I think.
So many important people to interview in so little time.
Oh yeah, the interview we just did was a very rare one with Dr. Fitzgerald.
Rarely will you ever find an academic with the kind of background this man brought to us.
That of a serious genetic scientist.
A Jesuit priest and a bioethicist.
Somebody who must constantly be running into himself.
It was a fascinating interview.
And again, If you would like a copy, and that's one I really would archive.
First time caller line, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hi, Art.
Yes, sir.
Yes, I wanted to know, this is the first time I heard your program, and I just got a computer, and the information on the net is just unbelievable.
You mean on my website?
Yes, sir.
I found one other website, and when I went on to it, I wanted to see the ultimate UFO page.
UFO, something like that?
Too far.
And when I punched it up, it said you're unauthorized, forbidden.
What's up with that?
Well, I can't answer for somebody else's website.
It may be that you do need some sort of authorization, or it may be that you've got a browser problem, or, you know, who knows.
Where are you calling from, sir?
I'm calling from the Antelope Valley.
We're not far from you.
Okay.
Well, I can't answer your question.
Any better than I just did.
Either you've got a browser problem, or there is some sort of level of authorization required to get on the site.
Either one are possible.
But the odds are that if you've made it to my site, and by the way, I don't want to load the site down, folks, but we have a brand new setup on the web page.
If you want to take a look at it, you're welcome to.
I don't want to cause the page to crash.
So tentatively, I will just tell you, take a look sometime this weekend when you get an opportunity.
Go to my website and take a look.
You'll see a whole new look.
It's www.artbell.com.
And Keith Rowland has been working, sweating away, secretly over the last several days, redoing the website.
And so it's going to look very different to you, indeed.
But I don't want to send so many people up there all at once that I cause it to crash.
So when you get an opportunity over the weekend, just casually meander on up there and take a look.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hi.
Yes, sir.
This is John Emporia.
Hi, John.
I was wondering if you heard anything from the gentleman that called from Washington last week.
He was telling a story about the hole.
Mel's hole?
Well, yes.
We've got the final chapter of Mel's hole, and I read that fact several times.
He has leased or, well, actually leased his hole.
In other words, put another way, he's taken the money and has run.
He has?
Yep.
No word from him?
That's the word.
Huh.
Interesting.
You know, in a lot of ways, I don't blame him.
Whether or not you believe the whole story, faced with what he was, and possibly going to jail, charged with a drug lab, losing his property, and all the rest of it, as opposed to an offer, I might have done the same thing.
I know it's cowardly, people will say, but that's easy to say from an easy chair sitting by your radio, you know, who would a coward?
Right.
Well, it was a good story anyway.
Yeah, it was.
My wife is skeptic and I, you know, I go home every weekend and tell her what I, you know, listen to on Friday nights and, uh, she was interested in this one.
Well, good.
She's skeptical about everything, so.
Well, uh, that's healthy.
Yeah.
You know, I can't say that, thank you, that I know that it was a true story.
I have no way of knowing.
I asked every conceivable question I could think of to ask during the course of the, uh, interviews.
Not just one, but two.
And even to this moment, I have no way of knowing whether it was a true story or the whole story.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air.
Hi.
Art, a great pleasure.
And as well here.
Where are you?
Jim from L.A.
I haven't called you in, God, I don't know how long.
Yes, sir.
I want to talk about paramilitary types.
We had a skinhead in Georgia convicted of first degree murder this week, who is going to get life in prison without possibility of parole for killing two black people because he was trying to be initiated, or he's going to get the death penalty.
And I also understand that currently, this weekend in San Diego, there is a paramilitary convention.
Is that true?
Might be.
How do you link the two?
Well, skinheads and paramilitary... I don't necessarily link them.
You do?
Sure.
Well, don't you think that's a little unfair?
Not at all.
Not at all.
You think everybody involved in paramilitary activities is haters of the government and or skinheads or People who would go out and kill blacks or other racial minorities?
That's an incredibly unfair connection.
All right.
The only intelligent militia person I ever heard on your show, and I used to call him quite a bit, was some guy from the tri-state militia.
Again, you're mixing apples and oranges here, sir.
Why do you assume that anybody who is interested in gun rights or even paramilitary education is Uh, militia involved.
Apples and oranges.
Apples and oranges, and I think you're intentionally mixing them.
You're listening to Arc Bell, somewhere in time, on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from February 28, 1997.
We will last a long, long time. We'll have a good time, baby, don't you worry. And if we're still playing around,
boy, that's just fine. Let's get excited. Oh, yeah.
We just can't hide it, oh-oh-oh I'm about to lose control and I think I like it
I'm going prime and I just can't hide it, oh-oh I know I know I know I know I know I want to
I want to Premiere Radio Networks Presents Art Bell
in time. Tonight's program originally aired February 28, 1997.
Reverence for the piano.
Incredible.
Now we take you back to the night of February 28, 1997 on Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
Somewhere in Time you
you Back to the lines we go.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hi, Eric.
This is J.J.
from Austin.
Yes, sir.
Austin.
Yeah, sorry for calling twice last night.
That won't happen again.
I didn't know that was a rule of yours.
Absolute rule, yes.
Okay.
I know now.
The question that I was going to ask again last night was, do you happen to have the rancher's name in San Antonio?
No, I do not.
The television station is not to be named.
I promise not to do that.
Okay.
Sorry about that.
So, the answer is no.
I don't know his name.
Okay.
But I will have the videotape either Saturday or Monday, probably Monday.
Okay.
And then we'll get the photograph up and everybody can go, oh wow, what a choopy or what a fake or whatever it is you're going to say.
We'll see what we get.
Well, I am looking forward to getting that information.
One last quick question.
Do you have any plans in the nearby future to do anything with the Stephen Gibbs saga?
Well, I don't know what.
I may do a follow-up.
In other words, thank you.
In other words, Stephen Gibbs is the fellow who claims to have the time machine.
I've got his copy of his catalogue, by the way.
So that part certainly exists, and I will, yeah, I'll probably do a follow-up with Mr. Gibbs, given enough time for, you know, he manufactured time machines, and I don't know if anybody out there got one.
I presume some probably did.
Probably many got the catalog.
I said, what a cool, I mean, imagine how cool it would be to have a time travel catalog sitting on your coffee table.
You know, it's not like having a Radio Shack catalog or whatever else kind of catalog sitting on your table, or even a National Geographic, but it gets, it's like a conversation piece.
Oh, a time travel catalog.
You don't see those every day.
So we'll probably do some kind of follow-up with Stephen Gibbs.
I don't know what that would be, but sure, something.
First time caller line, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hi.
Hello.
Hi.
How are you?
I'm very well, thank you.
Well, I think I have your flu bug.
Yeah, it's going around.
We have, at our network in Oregon, about 40 employees, and I think that about 10 of them at any given moment lately have been down with the flu.
So, it's a horrible little bug going around and getting just about everybody.
Well, I'm glad to hear that That at least you survived it, so I have a feeling I have a chance of surviving this, too.
Oh, you'll survive it.
I survived it, not according to the Internet, but... Yeah, that's true, that's true.
But I mean, here I am.
Well, I'm glad to hear that, and I'm glad you're feeling better.
Well, you can tell when I do 30-minute monologues and stuff, you know I'm feeling better.
When I come on the air and go, All right, well, the lines are open.
How about some calls?
You know, I've got a problem.
Yep.
Okay, well, that's about all I wanted to say.
Good luck.
Okay, thank you.
See you later.
Yeah, I'm obviously getting over it here.
You know, it still, it lingers.
Little, little lingering bits of it remain, but I'm obviously much better.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hey, R, what's happening?
Well, um... Quite a bit, actually.
Yeah, it sounds that way.
Uh, it's Cole Coleman from, uh, Denver.
Yes, sir.
Uh, just got, uh, just got off the work course, and, uh, I had talked to you a while back, and, uh, it was about a picture that I had snapped.
Uh, I remember who you had talked to on the radio, of course.
Uh, it was about the Aurora aircraft.
Oh, the Aurora aircraft, yes.
Oh, yes, yes, yes.
And, uh, well, I don't know, I've just been kicking around a little bit, talking to over some friends and stuff, and, you know, I'd like to, uh, maybe get it on your web.
What do you say?
Well, you know me.
I'll put up a picture of an Aurora.
Well... I'll fight the guys in the suits, no problem.
You send me a picture, I'll put it up there.
Hey, that's what it's gonna do, I tell you what.
It's a good, clear picture of it, and, uh, oh, boy, you can just get split in the air in two, I tell you.
High-speed photography.
Hey, you send it, I'll get it up there.
Alright, sounds like a deal.
So you got over your cold, eh?
Um, yes.
Good to hear.
The rest of us do.
Hey, take it easier.
Take care, my friend.
Thank you.
And if he really has a picture of the Aurora, then we're all in for a treat.
I want to see it too.
I wonder what they'll do to me when I post that one.
Probably draw and quarter me.
Oh well.
My attitude is, you only live once.
So, live hard.
First time caller line, you're on the air.
Hello.
Yes, this is Chris from Monroe, Louisiana.
Yes, sir.
And I listen to you on 1440KMLB.
Yes, sir.
And I'm wondering if they will be carrying Dreamtime, I mean Dreamland.
Dreamland.
Um... I... I don't know.
You know, I have a pitiful little radio, and I strain, strain on Sunday nights trying to get you, and I can't ever do it.
Well, my advice is always the same.
It is pick up the phone on Monday morning, call the program director, and very politely request that he carry Dreamland.
And then you've got a pretty good chance, you know, and now that you've set it on the airwire, maybe more people in Monroe will call.
And before you know it, you'll have Dreamland, because they really do listen to their audience.
Yeah, I certainly hope so.
The only problem is that a lot of people, when they call stations, sort of have an attitude.
And, you know, they'll call up and it'll go like this.
Program director will say, programming!
You know, and the person on the other end will go, well, when are you going to carry Dreamland?
It's something we could consider.
Then the person will go, well you know, what you've got on the air is really a bunch of crap!
And the guy goes, excuse me?
And it's like, you're not going to get anywhere doing that.
So, be polite.
Oh, and also, when's the next time we're going to do a program on Bigfoot?
Any minute.
Any minute?
Yeah, I love programs on Bigfoot.
Oh, that's a fabulous subject.
And we've done several on Dreamland.
Yes.
That's why I hope to get it.
Okay.
Well, give him a call and be nice.
All right.
Take care, Art.
All right.
You too.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air.
Good morning.
Hello, Art.
Hi.
This is Wayne from Southern California.
Yes, sir.
Yeah, Art, I was listening last night.
You had some people that were torturers.
Is there a story about someone that hurt a dog or something like that?
Yeah, I think it was Minnesota or Wisconsin.
I can't recall.
There were skinning dogs.
Yeah, I was absolutely disgusted with that.
I'd like to read you a little something.
Jot it down.
It's kind of a good thing.
Sure.
Okay.
It's in a poem form.
Oh, I would prefer you don't do that.
You're going to love this, though, Art.
Well, no, I don't allow... I can't allow it, because if I do, then I'll get more of it.
Okay, can I fax it?
Yeah, you can fax it.
Okay, you've got to look for this.
I'm going to send it right now.
You got it.
Okay.
Bye.
I appreciate that.
There's a few things I don't allow on the show.
One is scripture, quoting Bible scripture.
You know, we reserve that for church on Sunday.
And another is poetry, and a third is singing.
And there are a few rare exceptions to the latter, but not many.
And I don't do that because when you begin, then there's no end to it, and when you do it for one, you've got to do it for more, and pretty soon you've got a show of poetry, and that's not what this is all about.
Or you've got what sounds like something that ought to be coming from a pulpit on Sunday, you know.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air, hi.
Yes, sir.
Do you recall the story of the guy who made a fortune selling the Brooklyn Bridge?
Well, I think I've heard about that.
And how about the guy who made a fortune soliciting donations to the widow of the unknown soldier?
Yes.
Do you think someday Melonis Hole may rank alongside those people in notoriety?
Well, he may already be there.
Yeah.
I mean, if what he said about the way this got resolved is true, then the taxpayers are sponsoring Mel's comfortable retirement to a small Australian town, probably unnamed.
Well, you know, I bet you P.T.
Barnum is smiling down from the great beyond someplace on the Art Bell Show and the story of Mel in his hole.
It could well be, sir, whether it is a P.T.
Barnum thing Well, it's absolutely true.
Either way, it was a whale of a tale.
You know, it's illegal in this country to even pour a cup of oil on the ground.
Yeah, it is.
You know, when you talk about a guy putting animals in refrigerators down in a hole, you think of the agencies and so on that would be crawling all over his property out there by now.
Well, if you buy the story of the hole, Then that would be a very minor matter compared to the possible benefits, whatever the hell they would be, from possessing such an endless hole.
I mean, the government would care a lot less about refrigerators and dead cows than it would whatever properties are contained in such a deep hole.
True?
Yep, all kinds of ways of looking at it.
Okay, take care, buh-bye.
I thought it was a very cool story.
I still have no idea whether to believe it or not.
I wave her back and forth.
This may be true.
You know why?
Because I've been receiving this series of faxes and emails from people who live in that particular area who don't doubt it and or who themselves have seen and heard of such a hole.
So, I don't know what to think of it.
As I said during the course of the interviews, too, that I did with him, I asked every question I could think of to ask to try and verify the story, and that was all I could do.
Other than that, it was a hell of a story.
No question.
Wes to the Rockies now.
You're on the air.
Hello.
Good morning, Art.
Hey, this is Renegade again, and I'm not going to let my thoughts scatter on me like I did the last time.
You were talking about, or I would like to say, an armed society is a polite society.
You're damn right.
And, you know, I was looking hypothetically.
Ted, can I, before you, I am going to interrupt you for a second, so keep your thought.
I want to reflect back on, just before the top of the hour, some dweeb called me up, and there's a preparedness conference, apparently, going on down in I guess San Diego.
Now whether that's true or not, I don't know.
I suppose there is.
But, you know, to call up and to try to equate those who would go to a preparedness conference and label all of them as salivating militia people who are ready to go out and blow things up and kill people really pisses me off.
And I really mean that.
It makes me almost as angry as somebody who said that I'm dead.
There's absolutely no reason to come on the air and make that kind of asinine, apples-oranges kind of comparison.
I started spewing about that during the news.
Because you're prepared, or because you exercise your Second Amendment right to own a weapon, or you go get food storage, or you Do the many... Get a radio, or, you know, flashlights, or a generator, or the many things that you can do and find at a preparedness conference, whatever it is, to suggest these are people who are going to go out and blow up things really, really, really makes me angry.
And so... I just wanted to say that.
All right, sir.
Well, it's true.
And you look at it again.
Well, what's true?
Well, look at us.
My wife and I, the way we lived, or the way we are now.
Call us a free man if you want, or a free man.
We've got generators.
We've got weapons.
We've got lights in case of an emergency.
This is the way you live.
But that doesn't mean you're some sort of... No, not a wacko.
Not a wacko at all.
That really made me angry.
There are a few things that get me going like that kind of a statement.
I thought it was ignorance on the march.
Well, I was talking to somebody the other day.
I said, you know, take a five mile or a five block, doesn't make any difference in a town and arm every family in that town or in that block.
I said, now you take the outside of that perimeter.
And I said, you take all the arms away from these people.
I said, all we've got is this little black dot in here and it's armed.
I says, now, which one, if you were a criminal, would you walk into?
Without the fear of having to look down the barrel of a howitzer.
Yeah, that's right.
Alright, thank you very much.
These are things you see that really don't even need to be said.
I mean, it should be just common sense.
And the trouble with the gun control people is they don't exhibit common sense at all.
Their arguments are twisted, and they're lies, and they're wrong.
They're just flat wrong.
And they're going to use this shootout in L.A.
yesterday, I'm sure, to promulgate more gun control.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air.
Hello.
Yes, this is Glenn on Camino Island.
Hello there, Glenn.
How are you doing this morning?
Okay.
Oh, listen, I got a wake-up call here the day after Christmas, actually two days after Christmas.
Living out on the island.
I'm just off the mainland here in the Seattle area.
And we had the big snow storm.
It cut the roads off across the mountain.
And my wife and I tried to go to the grocery store during this period of time.
And we found the grocery store out of potatoes, all vegetables.
Half the shelves were empty.
And we were kind of short of food.
Happens very quickly actually.
Actually it did.
And so we've been trying to prepare for that sort of thing ever since.
I just thought I'd throw that in for you.
Well, what sort of mad bomber are you?
Oh, I'm terrible.
I might even go to the preparedness expo when it comes here.
Yeah.
Good for you.
Good for you.
And that's it.
Good for you.
Well, thank you, Art.
That's all I had to say.
Thank you, my friend.
Take care.
I don't want to get angry all over again.
Hi, Art.
Perhaps you shouldn't take the rumors of your demise so hard.
Of course, you remember the same thing happened to Mark Twain.
Yeah, it did, huh?
Also, there was a rumor a couple years ago Russia passed away.
Oh, I remember that.
Said he had a heart attack or something.
Given these two examples, it seems you're in good company.
Well, you know, maybe in retrospect I can look at it that way.
But, you know, when it's happening, it's really I can't even describe the feeling, you know, when everybody's calling you up saying, we thought you were dead.
I mean, it's a really, really weird feeling.
First time caller line, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hello, this is Keith in Fairbanks, the golden heart city of the last frontier.
Hey, Keith.
Yeah.
A couple questions.
A couple things I'd like to ask and comment on.
Alright.
On the clones, you know, you've got these people that say they're going to come back Life and so forth.
That's one way to come back, right?
Have yourself cloned just before you die.
Well, no.
You wouldn't really come back.
It would be an exact copy of... Don't ask me questions like that!
I grew up in Washington, by the way.
We used to go hunting and fishing a lot around the hole.
We used to hear about it.
The whole thing is really intriguing, isn't it?
Yes, the whole thing is intriguing, yes.
But they used to tell us that there's a big hole that goes forever.
So I don't know.
I kind of wish I would have seen it so I could have told you I'd seen it.
I just heard about it when I was a kid.
The whole thing is really intriguing isn't it?
Yes, the hole is intriguing.
But when you come up here, if you want to go out in the middle of nowhere for a couple
days where you don't see anybody, don't hear nothing, I've got a cabin out in the middle
of the mountains.
of the mountains.
I'm going to go out in the summer and catch some big ones.
Hey, that's the real Alaska.
Mm-hmm.
It's beautiful.
I love it.
I know.
Thank you, my friend.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hey, Art.
This is Mary from Honolulu.
Hello there.
How's your lip?
Well, it's sore.
Oh.
I was just wondering.
When are you going to have Truth or Trash back on?
Well, pretty soon.
It's been a while since I've done it.
And I sort of feel an itch to do it, so pretty soon.
Also, one more thing.
I wasn't able to get on yesterday, but I have a little addition to the dictator thing.
if you were addicted if i were addicted to it if i was a dictator
i would make all men played to women
and any men who we don't like will be thrown into no-hold
Bye.
How old are you?
Nineteen.
You're nineteen?
Yep.
So you're squarely a Generation Xer?
Yep.
Do you really feel that way about men?
Some of them.
Some or most?
Just some.
Some.
So you would make them slaves?
Oh yeah.
Well, there'd be a lot of takers out there for that offer.
Well, look, this is as good a way as any to wind up this week, dear, from the... How's the island this morning, by the way?
Is it nice?
It's hot.
It's hot.
Very hot.
Well, that's better than some of the reports we've been getting recently.
All right, you get the honors this morning.
Do you know what to do?
Um, pretty much.
Do it.
From the...
From the Hawaiian coast of Honolulu to everywhere else in the world, goodbye America.
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