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Dec. 11, 2002 - Art Bell

02:49:51

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Jon Beckwith - Microbiology and Ethics

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	♪♪ From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I
	bid you all good evening, good afternoon, good morning.
	Whatever time it may be, wherever you are in all of those time zones out there, I'm Art Bell and this...
	This is Coast to Coast AM.
	How y'all doing?
	I'm going to tell you right up front, it's been a very difficult week in the Bell household.
	Ramona, my wife, my beautiful wife, has had a really serious asthma attack over the last week, and so I've been kind of playing household person.
	And as a result, my back, uh, she's better now, she's better, but my back, he he he he, from the flying van into the bar, my back is kind of at the beginning of some spasms, so we'll see how it goes tonight.
	It should be, assuming that I can hang in there, a very, very interesting program.
	Professor John Beckwith.
	He's scheduled to be here and the reason he's scheduled to be here is because of that story that I just kept harping and harping and harping on because I think it is so important.
	You know that story about scientists creating life?
	One more time for you and then for the professor.
	Scientists in Rockville are to announce this morning, this was now November 21st, They plan to create a new form of life in a laboratory dish, a project that raises ethical and safety issues, but also promises to illustrate the fundamental mechanics of living organisms.
	J. Craig Vedder, the gene scientist with a history of pulling off very unlikely successes, successes, and Hamilton O. Smith, a Nobel laureate, are behind the plan.
	Tonight's guest probably will know these people.
	Their intent is to create a single ...organism with the minimum number of genes necessary to sustain life.
	If the experiment works, the microscopic man-made cell will begin feeding and dividing to create a population of cells unlike any previously known to exist, i.e., we are creating life.
	To ensure safety, Smith and Benner said the cells will be deliberately hobbled.
	Remember this story now, to render it incapable of infecting people?
	It will also be strictly confined and designed to die if it does manage to escape into the environment.
	Well, tonight's guest is a Harvard man who was at the absolute zenith of genetic research and had himself a lot of breakthroughs at the beginning of all this and now has reservations about where it might all be going.
	That's Rebecca with, and so I think it's going to be a very, very interesting program.
	Oh, by the way, here's an interesting little ditty.
	Scientists have decoded the genome of the mouse using human stem cells.
	That's controversy on itself.
	Using human stem cells, it is now possible to create male mice that produce human sperm.
	Think about that.
	Male mice that can produce human sperm and female mice which carry human eggs.
	Breeding these mice will produce offspring too horrible to even contemplate.
	Our boy, we really are taking a giant leap into a brave new world.
	That's what we're going to talk about in the next hour.
	This hour, let me browse through a little news since I haven't had a chance to catch up with you on what's going on in the world.
	Oh, by the way, on the web, no, the website, we've got a very interesting photograph that was sent to me by Ray in Ojai, California.
	And it's an older photograph, but you know it's of a UFO 80 feet off the ground.
	And this gentleman came across a photo in an estate auction.
	Now, it seems like an awfully clear photograph of a UFO.
	People always complain, gee, they're always, you know, Fogged up and kind of blurry and well this one's pretty sharp folks you might want to take a look at Artbell.com up tonight as of now that's one item another item would be this man who and this is pretty weird stuff I I really don't know how to explain what I'm seeing unless it's a hoax or unless
	The laws of physics have recently gone through some change that I'm not aware of.
	At any rate, both here in the U.S.
	and now in Germany, he sent these photographs from Germany.
	This man puts ice in his freezer, but the ice jumps up to reveal these... I mean, short of anti-gravity, somebody would have to explain to me how Water could ever in a trillion years do this on its own.
	So either it's a hoax or something weird surrounds this man or the laws of physics have been modified in some way that I'm not aware of.
	Anyway, you might want to see the photographs of some of this ice in his freezer.
	It's really, really weird stuff.
	Don't ask me.
	Go take a look.
	It's all at Artbell.com.
	And again, I remind you that upon my retirement, December 31st, the website's going away forever, and there is an opportunity for you to get a copy of the website.
	It's out on CD, actually, and it's one hell of an offer, and that offer ends at the gong of the present year ending.
	So if you want to know about that, go to my website and that offer ends.
	Then, boom, over.
	So you need to take advantage of it now.
	I will sign some of those CDs.
	Keith Rowland has now agreed, remember I mentioned that, he'll agree, has agreed to sign some of them as well, and I think deservedly so.
	He has, along with me, through the years, I think we were actually the originators of the combination of websites with Uh with radio or radio with websites however you want to look at it obviously the things we talk about here are kind of strange and a lot of times visual aids when they're available particularly for things like ghosts and UFOs and all sorts of things we've talked about over the years here.
	It's been simply invaluable to the program as far as I'm concerned and I want to thank Keith for all the years he's put in in sticking with me every minute through the program at any
	rate uh since the website is going down and there will be a new one for the ongoing
	program with George and a very nice one I'm told uh this one will be history a little piece of
	history that you can have on a cd uh the offers uh wrapped up there on the website you can take
	a look we will be right back let's take a look at the news
	I Unbelievable.
	The United States, after stopping a ship and finding Scud missiles on their way to Yemen, is now deciding that they're going to let Yemen have the missiles!
	They were on the way from North Korea to Yemen, and we stopped, well the Spanish stopped the ship, we got on board, we found the Scud missiles, and I guess there was a whole lot of diplomatic Cross-talk that went on.
	Pulling and tugging.
	And in the end, the U.S.
	has decided to allow them to continue on to Yemen.
	Now, how many of you think those Scud missiles were really for Yemeni's defense?
	Or do you think those missiles were going to go on toward Iraq?
	Pretty good question, I'm sure one that we're asking, or were asking, but somehow we've decided to let them go, so scud missiles go to Yemen.
	North Korea to Yemen, we intercept, and then we say, whoops, well, Yemenis want them, so, you know, they sell us oil too, right?
	Intelligence agencies that were supposed to protect Americans from the September 11th hijackers failed to do so because they were poorly organized, poorly equipped, and slow to pursue clues that just might have prevented the whole thing from happening, according to lawmakers on Wednesday as they completed their investigation into the attacks.
	U.S.
	troops are going to get shots, smallpox vaccinations.
	It's all going to be voluntary.
	Some emergency workers and troops are gonna, if they want them.
	Now, see, I don't, I'm not so sure, over the years, I've interviewed a lot of people about vaccinations.
	So, I, I'm thinking, you know, if I was still in the Air Force, for example, would I volunteer to take a smallpox vaccination?
	Now, let's see.
	On the one hand, the danger of vaccinations in general.
	On the other hand, possible death due to smallpox.
	I don't know.
	I might.
	The U.S., as you know, is taking a declaration provided to the U.N.
	by the Iraqis, what, 12,000 pages or something about whether or not or what they've got, what the Iraqis have?
	I'm sure that as they look over that declaration, it'll say, yes, we have Four atomic bombs located at the following locations in the desert.
	Just go to the little X, pass the cactus, you can dig them up, and yes, we have biological weapons capable of killing millions at the following locations.
	I mean, come on, folks!
	What do you think their declaration is?
	I mean, how long did they have to hide all of this stuff before inviting the inspectors back?
	My God, they had forever!
	I mean, those things are going to be so far underground that one of our bunker busters probably couldn't get to them.
	But you know they're there, and yet we go through, we're going through this little political weird dance with the UN and the rest of the world, having them go in and inspect.
	My God, they were long gone.
	If they are there, certainly they're long gone.
	Unnormally stoic and silent during such arguments, our Supreme Court in the person of justice Clarence Thomas found his voice unusually on Wednesday condemning cross-burning as a symbol of oppression.
	100 years of lynching in the South by the Ku Klux Klan.
	So this is the second time in a decade that they've had this kind of case and we'll have to see where it goes.
	The Reverend Paul Shanley, a central figure in the clergy sex abuse scandal, was jeered by angry protesters Wednesday as he left a courthouse free on $300,000 cash bail.
	You know, this whole thing with the church, not this specific case, because of course it's court-bound and we'll have to see what happens, but the whole thing with the Catholic Church and what they're going through right now is horrendous.
	And I'm sure it is challenging some people's ability to remain within the church.
	Now, it would be tough, wouldn't it?
	If you're, I'm not Catholic, but if you were Catholic, my wife certainly is, watching what's happening with the church now and these incredible number of molestation cases is just about too much.
	The U.S.
	reminded Iraq and other countries, now this is a Reuters story you might not have heard or seen, the U.S.
	reminded Iraq and other countries on Tuesday that we are prepared to use nuclear weapons should it become necessary to respond to an attack from any country with weapons of mass destruction.
	So, we're saying, throw something at us.
	Anything that's massively destructive, and we will... Well, you can expect a mushroom cloud over one of your cities, or something on that order, and so... I think it's well we remind the world that we do have the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, and if somebody tries to kill hundreds of thousands or millions of us, we will use them.
	And we will turn your country into glass!
	So think really hard before you release anything.
	I am in agreement with that policy.
	The northernmost reaches of the Earth are warming, reducing the sea ice across the Arctic Ocean, melting the ice sheet in Greenland, and spreading shrubs into the Alaskan tundra.
	This is an Associated Press story.
	Taken individually, the changes only suggest the region's climate is undergoing a warming trend.
	Together, they provide dramatic evidence the change is real.
	This is all according to a panel of scientists and their report at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
	If you look at all the data sets together, they do provide compelling evidence something is changing over a great area, according to Larry Hisman.
	University of Alaska at Fairbanks where they see these changes going on.
	Natural variability may be behind the changes but human activity might also be to blame.
	A new five-year research plan presented this week by scientists and government officials meeting in Washington DC asserts that people clearly are agents of environmental change.
	You hear that?
	People are clearly agents of environmental change.
	Though it is still unclear how much human activity contributes.
	So they are no longer wondering whether man's hand is having an effect in our environmental changes.
	No longer wondering, they're sure.
	It's just they don't know how much.
	A new five-year research plan presented this week by scientists and government officials meeting in Washington D.C.
	asserts people are clearly agents of environmental change and the president Uh, wants industry to voluntarily cut back smokestack and tailpipe emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases.
	Evidence of the rise can be seen across the Arctic already.
	Greenland experiencing a warm spell unseen since the 1930s.
	Satellite data shows the greatest area of melt is across a mammoth ice sheet.
	In 24 years of measurement, that ice sheet has melted more this year than any other.
	Since 1979, the melt area has grown by 16%, is now affecting higher and higher elevations.
	So if you were wondering whether the change is real or all this is absolute bunk, the answer is The change is real, and I'm going to say what I've said for a long time.
	We should stop arguing about whether our climate is changing and begin taking steps to adapt to that change so that our economy doesn't crash and burn, so that we can continue to provide food for the people of our country and others who depend on us.
	For a variety of very important reasons, the politicians ought to get off the The controversial, is it or is it not happening, because baby, it's happening.
	And they should get on to the more practical aspect of, what do we do about it?
	One more brief story, new observations by a NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars show a planet rich in water.
	But now suggest that for billions of years, it has done little more than remain frozen within the soil.
	The finding challenges theories that Mars was once a warm, wet place, hospitable to life.
	Instead, the current Martian surface, a cold, dusty, overwhelmingly dry place, may have been the norm for much of the planet's history.
	We thought, right, that it was warm, wet, all the rest of it, and something came along, a big rock out of nowhere, and destroyed the Martian atmosphere.
	Maybe not.
	They're suggesting, yes, there's water everywhere on Mars, all over the place.
	But it's in the soil, it's below the ground, perhaps as little as 18 inches below the ground, so there's a lot of water.
	Now they all confirm What Richard C. Hoagland said a long time ago, yep, a lot of water everywhere on Mars.
	But they're saying, and we don't really think that there was once an atmosphere with Martians running around and life happily adapting and progressing on Mars.
	And then kaboom!
	We rather think now, it has been billions of years.
	And Mars has been in essentially the condition we find it in right now.
	Kind of interesting.
	It challenges a lot of the more recent theories that, you know, that Mars did have an atmosphere.
	Maybe not.
	Maybe it's always been that way.
	At least, always as far as we're concerned, billions and billions of years.
	I'm Art Bell, and of course, in the middle of the night, you're listening to Coast to Coast AM.
	lines coming right up.
	I'm taking time to get ready to realize just what I have found.
	I have been only half of what I am.
	It's all clear to me now.
	My heart is on fire.
	My soul's like a wheel that's turning.
	My love is alive.
	Where are those happy days they seem so hard to find?
	I try to reach for you but you have closed your mind.
	Whatever happened to our love?
	I wish I understood.
	It used to be so nice, it used to be so good.
	So nice, it used to be so good So when you hear me calling, can you hear me?
	Yes, I am The love you gave me, nothing else can save me
	Yes, I am When you're gone, how can I even try to go on?
	When you're gone, go ahead, walkin' on and carry on Call Art Bell in the Kingdom of Nye from west of the Rockies at 1-800-618-8255.
	East of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
	First time callers may reach Art at 1-775-727-1222.
	East of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
	First-time callers may reach out at 1-775-727-1222.
	And the wildcard line is open at 1-775-727-1295.
	To reach out on the toll-free international line, call your AT&T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903.
	So when you hear me darling, can you hear me?
	Top of the morning, everybody.
	We're about to go to open lines here in a moment.
	Just one brief note.
	This was really interesting, came in earlier today.
	A pact would allow U.S.
	troops into Canada during an emergency.
	U.S.
	troops could find themselves on Canadian territory helping police and firefighters deal with emergencies under a new pact signed by both countries.
	Listen to this.
	The new accord says soldiers from either country, either country, could cross a border But would then be under the command of the host country.
	Defense Minister John McCallum said the pact recognizes that threats such as those posed by terrorists or perhaps biological weapons don't recognize international borders and continues a long tradition of Canada-U.S.
	cooperation in dealing with common threats.
	So one way or the other, either Canadian troops here or American troops there, if conditions would warrant.
	That's kind of weird to think about.
	In a moment, we go to the line.
	Into the night we plunge with open lines.
	Here we go.
	First time caller on the line, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hello.
	Hello.
	My name is Burl.
	I'm in Santa Cruz area.
	Yes, sir.
	How you doing?
	I disagree with what you last said.
	About what?
	Bombing Iraq or whoever.
	Bombing Iraq or whoever.
	There was a report issued by the United States warning I know, I know, I heard you.
	I have two reasons.
	Well, I have two bits of information.
	You do? Okay, well, hold on. Which part do you disagree with?
	Well, I have two bits of information.
	Which part do you disagree with?
	I disagree that the use of, let's say, bombing, a threats tool, is a viable solution.
	In other words, retaliation is not a viable solution, is what you're saying.
	If they hit us with, let's say, some super bug that kills 3 million Americans... No, no, no.
	The whole approach is ridiculous.
	Well, what do you think is a good alternative approach?
	Well, let me give you some information that people may not know of.
	Um, a guy named Wheeler, a pastor of Kansas, years ago, now dead, discovered that warring behavior occurs in regular cycles.
	War occurs in regular cycles.
	And it has been so for 2,500 years.
	Yes, so it would seem, yes.
	Okay, then a guy named Dewey came along and he said, oh yeah, that's really true, and here's the numbers, analysis of it.
	Yeah, but how does that Fact that that war does occur in cycles. I think we all
	recognize it has for all of human history. How does that?
	Suggests that you don't protect yourself If war comes in cycles, yes, it can be predicted
	Yeah, I found that the a mechanism is solar cycle solar activity. Yeah, the players
	Yes, yes, yes.
	Of which triggers human activity.
	Okay, so what?
	Okay.
	So what?
	If we're, so what?
	Wait a minute.
	So what three times?
	So I can predict it.
	So what?
	Anybody can.
	So, what?
	So, we can create solutions.
	Uh, like what?
	Well, in the last century, some people found the way to enhance creativity, one of the
	greatest discoveries of the last hundred years.
	Okay, well, you know, I quit.
	Look, here's what it comes down to, Green, to enhance creativity.
	Listen, if somebody attacks us with a biological agent that kills millions, a chemical agent
	that causes many to die horribly, or, God forbid, with a nuclear weapon, then screw
	them and the proper response is to light them up.
	Melt them.
	And I'll tell you something else history proves with regard to Cycle, sir.
	It proves that those who are weak and do not protect themselves.
	I'm not talking about going adventuring in a war here.
	I'm talking about protection.
	You know, like it's provided for in the Second Amendment.
	Individually, if somebody comes into your house, gonna harm you or your family, try to kill you, you have the right to shoot them first.
	Same thing goes for countries.
	If somebody wants to demolish our country, and they attack us with some sort of weapon of mass destruction, then I think we should melt them.
	I'm trying to put it as bluntly as I can to you, but melt them.
	End of story.
	Period.
	Now, whether it comes in cycles and can or cannot be predicted or is tied into sun cycles, Or the way a mouse runs across the floor, I don't care.
	It's called protecting yourself and those you love.
	And that's the end of that story for me.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Good evening, Art.
	Hello.
	George Cohen from WABC in New York.
	Ah, WABC.
	Yes, George.
	Yes.
	I'd like to talk about the new forms of life that are attempting to be created.
	I think it is a very good question. I think it is a very good question. I think it is
	a very good question. I think it is a very good question. I think it is a very good question.
	I think it is a very good question. I think it is a very good question. I think it is
	a very good question. I think it is a very good question. I think it is a very good question.
	I think it is a very good question. I think it is a very good question. I think it is
	that it can reproduce, etc. etc.
	Yes.
	The thing that looks like it's obvious that they're missing is the chance for mutation.
	And mutation, we know, can You're dead on, sir.
	I mean, of course, that's what life does.
	It struggles and clings to life, whether it's us, you know, human beings we're talking about, or microorganisms.
	which they intended to start out with.
	You're dead on, sir. I mean, of course, that's what life does.
	It struggles and clings to life, whether it's us, you know, human beings we're talking about,
	or microorganisms. And if clinging to life means that it must morph into something else,
	That's exactly what it will do.
	That's how it all works.
	You change or you die.
	And so you're right.
	This new life will probably try to cling to what we give it.
	And, uh, then God knows what might occur.
	I think we're stepping off onto a very slippery slope.
	Yes, indeed.
	I agree with you wholeheartedly that there should be, perhaps even these colleges should be put into question before they continue their work and try to finish it up.
	There's a lot, sir, of what science has done in recent years that I really think the public has a right not only to know about, but in essence to debate.
	And, you know, these are such big questions.
	The wrong move, and we all could die.
	And so, why not let everybody know what they're gonna do, and we could all judge the relative merits of going ahead.
	But I think the creation of life, you know, the God-like creation of life, Is no small matter.
	It's a big thing, man.
	It's, you know, really a big thing.
	Yeah, all they're concerned about is making the breakthroughs.
	They think they're carrying out science to another level.
	In the meantime, they probably haven't figured out all the ramifications of what they're doing.
	Yeah, and one is that it may, whatever it is they produce, may grow up and eat them.
	Exactly.
	You have a good night, sir.
	You take care.
	Take care.
	That's basically what we're going to be talking about tonight, with somebody who has been there, done that.
	You know, much like the scientists who created the nuclear bomb, many of them had second thoughts.
	And when they realized the consequences of their creation, they changed.
	And many of them petitioned presidents not to go forward, not to drop the bomb, not to continue research into this area.
	Like we ever really stop anything.
	So... Yeah, this whole thing makes me very nervous, and that's why the professor is going to be on tonight.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hello!
	Good morning, Mark.
	Good morning, sir.
	It's an honor to speak to you, sir.
	I'm gonna miss you, and George Norrie is a welcome replacement in your stead.
	I'm confused, not a skeptic, but the reports that we received down through the years of UFOs landing in the Carolinas, or Georgia, Missouri, I often but wonder how do these craft break out strategic air command coastal units, and we don't know, perhaps, of having to scramble aircraft, and I'm concerned that something like CNN, or NBC, or CBS, would be on these locations like Graveyard Life.
	I don't know.
	I'm not a skeptic, but I'm confused, perhaps, with the fact that, you know... Are you asking, in essence, why we don't see them, or why we don't see them on radar, or why we don't respond?
	I'm not quite sure what you're asking.
	Yeah, a little bit of all of the above.
	All right.
	I don't know.
	I don't have an answer.
	How would you secure your...
	Well, alright, number one, many have been seen on radar.
	Okay.
	In fact, about a week ago, they chased unknown comm trails.
	They saw comm trails moving from the Caribbean out across the US mainland, and they scrambled
	jets and chased those.
	There are many other reports of US planes chasing UFOs, many reports.
	So the answer is a lot of times we do know about it.
	I think the real answer is the military just doesn't like to admit, for the most part,
	anything they can't do anything about.
	That could very well be true.
	I was at D-Day Normandy, Southern France, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa on an unrelated note, and I saw the rise and fall of Adolf Hitler, and the world leaders would be wise to recognize that in the antics of Saddam Hussein, this is how Adolf Hitler got his start, and he must be stopped at any cost.
	I appreciate your call, sir.
	Memories are very short.
	We have very short memories.
	Relatively.
	I mean, we have very short lives, relatively, but our memories within those lives are also short, and we tend to forget things like the rise of the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler.
	And so, yes, indeed, Saddam Hussein fits right into that, perhaps into that same category.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Good morning.
	Hello?
	Oh, West.
	Hi!
	Yes, that's you, West.
	This is Kathy over in Mount Fermion Henderson.
	Hi, Kathy.
	Hi.
	Um, this morning, um, I'm with my husband, and he had a meeting, and I just waited in the car, and I was, uh, on Lake Mead, and close to Water Street, about one block up, and I kept seeing all these jets.
	Just, and I got out of the car, and I stood there.
	I was there.
	I watched them for over an hour.
	And I had never seen anything like this.
	They were just so many jets flying chemtrails back and forth, like over Black Mountain, back and forth.
	We're heading towards Pahrump.
	We are getting ready for something.
	Let me add to what you have just said.
	Not only have I seen the jets that you're talking about, but we have had, over the last week or so, here in Pahrump, Nevada, A constant stream of black, odd-looking, unmarked helicopters going directly over the house here and really weird stuff.
	Just jets all over.
	The United States is getting ready to go to war.
	That's what's going on.
	I wondered if that was because they were flying like two planes so close together.
	It looked close from where you are on the ground.
	And like the chemtrails just like absolutely just like went together and they were just flying just I saw so many of them just flying back and forth back and forth like in a grid pattern but a straight grid pattern and just laying down these trails.
	Yep.
	And they just all of a sudden just appear and you'd see the lines and the chemtrails and they just keep coming.
	Alright, well, whether they're chemtrails or not would take some sort of analysis.
	But what you did say about the number of jets and aircraft in the air right now in our area, dead on the money and thank you very much.
	I was born and raised here and I was just standing there going, my God, what is going on?
	Well, preparation for a war is what's going on.
	Thank you.
	I think there's no question about it.
	We know to some degree, or even a great degree, what they've got in Iraq.
	We know they've got the willingness to use it.
	And I rather think that we are preparing for the inevitable.
	Again, why we're doing this dance with the UN and the rest of the world, I suppose I understand it to some degree politically, but We might as well just get ready to end.
	We are getting ready to do business, so that's what you're seeing in our skies.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Hello, Art.
	Yes, sir.
	My name is Steve.
	Hi, Steve.
	And I'm in central Pennsylvania.
	Yes, sir.
	Appalachians.
	Right.
	I'm actually Canadian, but I live in the States now, legally.
	Okay.
	And I've talked to you a number of times from Montreal, which is where I'm from.
	When I was a younger guy, back in the 60s, the States was all involved in Vietnam, and We Canadians are very friendly towards the U.S., but we thought, what are you guys doing in that dumb, dumb war?
	And I'm really glad that you pulled out of it and got out of it, because it was a dumb, dumb war.
	Now I'm in my 50s, and I'm way more conservative than I was back then.
	And I'm watching what's happening out in the Middle East, and I'm, you know, just nauseated.
	And I completely agree with what you said a few minutes ago.
	Anybody who takes on the U.S., yeah, use what you got.
	Turn them into glass.
	I'm completely behind you on all of that.
	And I'm very, very pleased, actually, that our two governments, Canada and the U.S., have now signed a deal for, you know, you help us, we'll help you.
	And it wouldn't bother me a bit if the border came down between the two countries because the world's getting real small.
	We have this huge continent to look after, to protect and defend.
	And you're I mean, you're quite right.
	Our border with Canada is long and largely unguarded compared to the southern border, for example.
	And you've been our very good friends.
	And you're absolutely right.
	I mean, if something of that magnitude happened and there had to be a kind of a partial hemispheric Defense?
	Yeah.
	Then so be it.
	It wouldn't bother me at all.
	I mean, the United States of North America, you know?
	Yeah, I would find it a little strange to look down the corner and see a Canadian, you know, maple leaf guy there, but whatever it would have to be so that we might survive, so be it.
	Yeah, but Maple Leaf, it's a symbol of a friendly nation.
	I understand.
	Very friendly nation.
	I mean, we're all intermarried.
	You know, we got cousins, uncles, aunts on the other side of the line.
	Why the hell have we got two countries happening, you know?
	I'd really like to see us amalgamate.
	All right, sir.
	Thank you very much.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Hello, Art.
	Hello.
	How are you?
	Well, yes.
	Hi.
	Hi.
	Joe out of Arizona.
	Yes, sir.
	I have two questions.
	Sure.
	Okay.
	First one is, have you ever heard of 2003 to the third power?
	6009?
	No, it's as far as the date.
	Oh, I see, to the power.
	Okay, as far as the date.
	It came out of like a dream or something.
	It was really weird.
	I'm just asking that.
	What do you think it means?
	I think it actually means the third month of 2003.
	So you had a, you think, prophetic dream.
	What do you think might have happened then?
	I'm not really positive because it was just so, it was almost like, you know, religious as far as revelations, as far as like one of the horses.
	One of the horses?
	You mean one of the four horses?
	Correct.
	But only one?
	I think it's four.
	We need four, right?
	Understood.
	Okay, as far as Iraq, I think we should have contended with that a while ago.
	As far as like... Last time around would have suited me.
	My recollection of the last time that we had a war with Iraq was that President Bush at the time, Dad, said that we would stop for humanitarian reasons.
	Remember that?
	It was going so well, and we had so few casualties, and then we decided to stop, just like that.
	And I've never fully understood nor appreciated why we would stop for humanitarian reasons.
	I mean, here we are having to go back and, in essence, finish the job.
	And the humanity I would like to consider first is right here in this country.
	But when you have a war, W-A-R, the big war word, then you kill and you break things.
	That's what our military does.
	And so if we're facing our own possible extinction, then I say let us kill and break things.
	I know, very hawk-like, isn't it?
	But how else do you protect your country, your loved ones, all that we stand for?
	Hey, listen!
	Here are the girls to the top of the hour.
	We'll get serious again.
	Over here on the other side.
	Listen closely.
	Did you get that?
	Mira lo que se avecina a la vuelta de la esquina, viene Diego rumbeando.
	You get that?
	Con la luna en la fusilación, su traje aguamarina, va trepando en contra de la palma.
	This is the Spanish version by a group called Las Cachas.
	Por el ritmo ragatanga, el VJ que lo conoce toca el himno de las noches para Diego, la canción más deseada.
	Y la bailan, y la gozan, y la cantan.
	A e se leje, a leje, leje le tu leje le se le di un o a ma a mi a ne gubbi a ne gubbi li li.
	A se leje, a leje, leje le tu leje le se le di un o a ma a mi a ne gubbi a ne gubbi li li.
	A se leje, a leje, leje le tu leje le se le di un o a ma a mi a ne gubbi a ne gubbi li li.
	I'm happy and happy and happy.
	A se leje, a leje, leje leje le se le di un o a ma a mi a ne gubbi a ne gubbi li li.
	When I was young, though, I was part Russian.
	I tried to ask the Turks to greet my mother.
	I'd never met a blithey!
	A se leje, a leje, leje leje le se le di un o a ma a mi a ne gubbi a ne gubbi li li.
	There's an old New-York family, shut manufacturer.
	My mother's VIS numbers.
	I was married.
	God said, with the man's sexy glasses, I'd be a bride when I get married, straight straight
	All our times are gone.
	We're fucked down and gone.
	Seasons don't fear the reaper.
	telling him the problem was.
	And I was married.
	I was married.
	East of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
	1-800-825-5033.
	First time callers may reach out at 1-775-727-1222 or use the wildcard line at 1-775-727-1222.
	To reach out on the toll-free international line, call your AT&T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903.
	This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell on the Premier Radio Network.
	It certainly is, and I meant to acknowledge this.
	I've been receiving emails all night long tonight.
	This one comes from somebody who read the book.
	Hi, Art.
	I just finished reading the novelization of the upcoming Steven Spielberg miniseries, Taken, actually underway right now that's airing on SyFy Channel.
	Guess what?
	You're in it!
	The name of the radio host is William Jeffries, but it's definitely you.
	I won't spoil it for you, blah, blah, blah.
	Thank you very much, Sean.
	In, uh... Seattle, Washington.
	But I've had all these... Tonight was the episode in which, apparently, this mythical nighttime host was mentioned.
	And I think it was said that a very great deal of what you hear on that program is true.
	So, thank you, Steven Spielberg.
	Thank you very much.
	Coming up in a moment, Professor John Beckwith.
	He was born December 25th, 1935 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	He received his college and graduate PhD degrees in chemistry and biochemistry at Harvard University.
	In graduate school, he became interested in genetics, Thereafter spent five years of postdoctoral work in labs in the US, England, and France.
	He took an assistant professorship at Harvard Medical School in 1965.
	Has been there ever since, teaching and heading a research group.
	Right on the edge, folks.
	He is now an American Cancer Society professor in the microbiology department.
	He has always worked as a geneticist studying the bacteria E. coli, a rather common inhabitant of the human gut.
	He has studied such problems as how cells which are surrounded by a membrane are able to secrete some proteins across their membranes, how proteins that are made up of sequences of amino acids fold into their final structures, how cells manage to grow and eventually divide into two cells.
	In 1969, his lab was the first to find a way to isolate a pure gene from an organism.
	This is very important.
	While he was proud of his achievement, he was also worried that this accomplishment was an indication of how quickly we might be approaching the possibility of not only bacterial DNA, but also human DNA, human genes, and manipulating them.
	He called a press conference to announce the achievement.
	At the same time, to issue a warning that we had better start thinking about the consequences of the ability of scientists to manipulate genes.
	This press conference had the consequence of initiating Beckwith's lifelong involvement in promoting social responsibility in science, in working to prevent the potential abuses or misuses of genetics.
	He was involved, for example, in controversies around the claim that males with an extra Y chromosome
	were doomed to live lives of criminality.
	He was also critical of other genetic theories that claim that our lives are largely determined by our genes.
	In 1989, he was appointed to the Working Group on the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications
	of the Human Genome Project of the National Institutes of Health.
	He worked to anticipate any potential harmful consequences of the human genome sequence for the public and promote programs, laws, and so forth that would prevent these problems from occurring.
	Professor John Beckworth is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and received the Genetics Society of America Medal in 1993 both for his scientific achievements and for his Social activism.
	Coming up next.
	Mars is coming up.
	Oh boy, is Mars coming.
	It will be closer in August to the Earth than it has been in 50,000 years.
	And this will give you an opportunity, if you have a really good telescope, to see Mars as you will never again see it in your lifetime.
	And boy, do we have a really good telescope.
	Christmas?
	Well, it's right around the corner.
	And I can't think of any better gift for you and your family than a really good deep space telescope.
	This baby is gigantic.
	It's the newest one we've got.
	It comes with a, it comes on a tripod with equatorial mount.
	You will see And now it's a little more expensive than the one that we had before, and that's because it's bigger and better.
	It's $439 plus shipping and handling, but Harden Optical is dedicated to getting deep space telescopes, really good ones, to people at a reasonable price in America so that you all can do a little looking.
	Who knows?
	You might find something coming around the bend toward us.
	Anyway, once you've spent a little time looking through the eyepiece of a telescope, your worldview will change.
	That's no small matter.
	Now, you can go see it at ForTheNightSky.com.
	That's F-O-R, TheNightSky.com.
	Or you can call to order.
	Have it there for your Christmas tree.
	Not that it will fit under.
	At 1-800-394-3307.
	at 1-800-394-3307. That's 1-800-394-3307 now.
	Imagine feeling 10 years younger in 10 weeks.
	You cannot!
	Of course, because nobody ever has until Human Growth Hormone, HGH.
	Now, this is not the injectable sort that I'm sure you've seen on magazine shows because there have been many reports about it.
	It actually does move you toward youth!
	It seems to arrest the aging process and move you toward youth.
	Now, they've got synthetic HGH that I'm sure you've seen that's injected into the stomach.
	No, thank you.
	Not for me.
	And ultimate HGH that we've got that causes your own body to make more of your own safe HGH.
	The results are spectacular.
	Beginning at about six months, you will have physical documentable changes in your body.
	Stronger bones, mood elevation, You'll have a better cholesterol profile.
	You can measure that.
	A 14.4% loss of fat on average with no dieting.
	An 8.8% increase in your muscle mass on average.
	No exercising.
	All of these things are a sharper vision.
	You can go to the eye doctor and you'll find out your eyes are now going the other way.
	They're becoming sharper.
	And so many other things that we associate with youth.
	I call it younger and younger.
	It's about $33 a month if you'd like to try it.
	That compares quite favorably with any competitive product anywhere.
	It comes from, naturally, Great American Products.
	And their number, if you'd like to try this and you've got to stick with it for about six months to see those physical changes, so do that, is 1-800-557-4627.
	is 1-800-557-4627. That's 1-800-557-4627.
	Professor Beckwith, I am honored to have you join me this evening.
	How are you?
	Good, I'm happy to be on your show.
	Well, thank you.
	Where are you, by the way?
	I'm in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I was born.
	You are in Cambridge, all right.
	Been there all your life, huh?
	Well, I've been away off and on to other countries.
	I want to read you a story, and I'll get to that in a moment.
	You've been, then, for all of your adult life, your professional life, in the world of genetic research, study, and I guess the ethical aspects of all of this.
	Is that correct?
	Pretty much so, yes.
	What do you consider to be the implications of the unraveling of the human genome?
	I mean, they got done ahead of schedule, did they not?
	And why?
	Why did they get done ahead of schedule?
	That's right.
	Everybody thought it was going to be a lot more complicated than it apparently turned out to be.
	Well, that's a danger of prediction in science, that there are often breakthroughs that make things happen much faster than one expects, and that's where one has to be particularly concerned about the social and ethical consequences of research, because you can't assume that things aren't going to happen.
	They can happen much faster than we anticipate.
	Um, so, um, it was just a mistaken prediction, and it simply did not take as long as I thought it was going to.
	Yeah, it was basically that people developed better and better approaches to doing it, and the technical, the development of better and better computer programs for interpreting the data, et cetera, just helped it move very, very quickly.
	All right.
	I'm not frightened easily, but I want to read you this story.
	It comes from the Washington Post.
	Thursday, November 21st, and this one hit me squarely between the eyes.
	Here it is.
	Scientists at Rockville are to announce this morning, that date, that they plan to create a new form of life in a laboratory dish, a project that raises ethical and safety issues, but also promises to illustrate fundamental mechanics of living organisms.
	J. Craig Vintner, The gene scientist with a history of pulling off unlikely successes and Hamilton O. Smith, a Nobel laureate, are behind the plan.
	Their intent is to create a single-celled, partially man-made organism with the minimum number of genes necessary to sustain life.
	If the experiment works, the microscopic man-made cell will begin feeding and dividing to create a population of cells unlike any previously known to exist.
	To ensure safety, Smith and Venter said the cell will be deliberately hobbled, interesting word, to render it incapable of infecting people.
	It will also be strictly confined and designed, in fact, to die if it does manage to escape into the environment.
	More worrisome than the risk of escape, they acknowledge, is that the project could lay the scientific groundwork for a new generation of biological weapons, a risk that may force them to be selective about publishing technical details.
	But they said the project could also help advance the nation's ability to detect and counter existing biological weapons.
	Put another way, Professor, they are creating life, are they not?
	They haven't done it yet, and I think there's a lot of publicity stunt, it seems to me, in this presentation.
	Particularly the picking up on biological weapons.
	Clearly they're trying to latch on to the current concern in the country, and arouse interest in their project.
	I think one interesting thing is, Venter, who was head of one of the two groups that did decipher the human genome, Once they had the genome information, he called a press conference and said the amazing statement, and I'll paraphrase because there's one word in there I don't want to use exactly, but he said, we really don't know squat.
	Even though we have all this information, in a sense, we really don't know what we're doing.
	We still have a lot to learn.
	Gee, that builds a lot of confidence in me personally.
	This story actually scared me for a number of reasons.
	One is, They say it would be, let's just sort of go with it for a second and say they actually do this and they create this thing and somehow it finds a way not to die, gets loose and finds a way not to die.
	You know, life sort of clings to life, doesn't it?
	And so, who knows, it might, as one caller said in the last hour, it might change.
	So that it doesn't respond to being hobbled and die quickly when it hits the atmosphere out of the Petri dish or something awful.
	I mean, it just seems we're taking leaps that we perhaps ought not be taking, or at least not without public debate of some sort.
	There are a lot of issues where I think we need public debate over whether and how to proceed, or at least with what kind of cautions to proceed with this kind of research.
	However, In a sense, we've been doing this, creating new organisms all the time since the beginning of the field of genetics.
	We've isolated mutants, combined mutants, made new organisms that have different properties.
	We made fruit flies that grow wings out of their eyes.
	all sorts of interesting organisms that's been going on for over a century.
	Why would we wish to create a fruit fly with a wing growing out of its eye?
	Well, actually, it tells you a lot about how, in this case, how wings develop.
	And this has been one of the major tools of studying how organisms develop,
	how their bones and structure and limbs develop.
	So, in fact, it turns out to be quite useful.
	And it wasn't even done on purpose.
	It was an accident of the product of doing this kind of genetic research.
	An accident?
	But the other issue is that a fly that has wings growing out of its eyes is not a very successful organism.
	It's got a lot of problems and doesn't survive very well.
	So I think there's a little bit of, I'll call it hubris or pride, Uh, that the scientists have to imagine that they can create something that will be as successful as nature has created.
	I don't think there are really any good examples of that so far.
	When you had your breakthrough, Professor, I wonder if there was a moment in time when, no doubt like a lot of the scientists who were working on the atomic bomb, Once they understood what they had created, many had second thoughts.
	Many had very reflective moments about what they had just done.
	It must have been kind of a moment like that for you, was it?
	Very much so, and also I was very much influenced by that experience because I went to, I was in high school in the late 40s and early 50s and then went to college. It was shortly
	after World War II when atomic weapons had been used. I was very aware of scientists like
	the most famous of them, I think, being J. Robert Oppenheimer and also Einstein at
	some point, were very upset about what had been done with their science, even though they
	might have anticipated it. It just made me feel that one should really anticipate and
	think ahead and try to understand where we're going with scientific developments and make sure that
	they benefit people and aren't used in destructive ways.
	Was there ever a flash of a moment when you thought, you know, perhaps I ought not release this information because I'm beginning to see clearly where it could lead?
	I think that really came later.
	It didn't happen at that point, although I have to say one of my colleagues on the project quit science, although he eventually returned saying
	exactly what you are saying, that he didn't want to contribute any more in a way that might lead
	to dangers in the future.
	I have to say, through the 1970s, as other techniques, better techniques than our own
	became available to pull out genes from organisms, including humans, I really, for several years,
	felt that I did not want to participate in this research and made public statements to
	that effect.
	Some gentleman sent me the following story.
	I don't know if this is true or not.
	It's just a note from this man.
	It says, scientists have decoded the genome in the mouse.
	I didn't know that.
	Using human stem cells, it is now possible to create male mice that produce human sperm and female mice that carry human eggs.
	Could that be true?
	Uh, I doubt it very much, although that certainly is something that's on the drawing board of some scientists.
	Is it really?
	Yeah, well, I mean, they've already done things, for instance, like, um, alter mice so that they produce antibodies that are really
	basically human antibodies and it might be useful for treatment of disease and
	I think for the most part. I don't know about the eggs and sperm story, but for the most part
	The orientation of the people who are doing it is for medical purposes
	Well, here's here's my concern and I'm not a scientist But is it may is it not possible that in in in the process
	of doing that?
	You might not get exactly what what you wish to get and what you might get is some horrid little combination of let's
	say Some some virus that a mouse has always carried and and it
	has never you know never had anything to do with human beings in in until we
	got in there with our genetic shovel and And then all of a sudden we've got some sort of combination
	mouse human thing that now jumps Quite happily to human beings and isn't good at all
	Yeah, that's a great insight.
	I think that's a constant problem with these advances, that people perhaps innocently trying to advance medical knowledge and medical techniques are doing things, sometimes driven by money, which becomes a problem, that have potential dangers.
	I think one of the examples is Moving too quickly with what's known as gene therapy, where you try to cure people with genetic diseases by introducing new genes into their chromosomes, and we've had a lot of problems with that.
	Some people have died, some people have got other diseases as a result of those approaches.
	In other words, you're never exactly, precisely sure what you're injecting this person with.
	Right, and the question is, should you be cautious To the point where you wait until you're absolutely sure that that's not going to happen.
	All right.
	You just proceed.
	There was this very unfortunate gentleman, maybe this is a good time to mention this, in the San Francisco area who had AIDS.
	And they decided to destroy what little was left of his immune system completely.
	And then take a simian immune system and put it in The man you know to see if perhaps and that's fine you know I think it was noble and certainly is very ill and deserving of whatever we could do but you know that sounds dangerous to me you take an animal immune system and put it into a human being and the scientists at the time they did it acknowledged there was perhaps a danger they said at the time even to all of mankind but they went ahead anyway and I thought you know gee whiz shouldn't there have been a little public debate before we did this
	I certainly agree that there should be public debate, but I also think that one of the problems with our scientific education is that we focus entirely on the science.
	I never got anything in any way in my education telling me that one should also worry about the consequences of science.
	Science has tremendous benefits for society, but there also can be problems.
	There's this long history which we will repeat unless we as scientists are educated to understand that this is something we have to be concerned about.
	With your knowledge, the knowledge you have, Professor, of genetics, if you wanted to, would you be able to create, for example, a biological weapon that would target Oh, I don't know.
	A certain race, for example.
	And it would kill people of one race and not another.
	Is that within the realm?
	I would say no.
	First of all, I would say, first of all, that it's not a thought that has escaped some military researchers in the past.
	And I've seen articles suggesting that this is a possible direction that research might take.
	The problem is that when you look at what are called races and look at their Genes, they're really not very much different than the genes from other groups that are defined as races.
	White race, black race, yellow race, whatever.
	Although there are certainly diseases that affect certain races to a very much greater degree than others, right?
	To a greater extent, but it still represents only a fraction of that population.
	So if you designed a weapon that would somehow target individuals carrying a particular gene that was more prevalent in one group What you'd find is that it would affect some fraction of that group, probably not a large enough fraction to be of any military value.
	And at the same time, it would attack a fraction, although a smaller fraction, of your own group.
	And that's because, basically, we're really all one species.
	We share the same overall... So we might design a suicidal weapon.
	Oh, exactly.
	Okay, Professor.
	Hold tight.
	We're at the bottom of the hour.
	We'll be right back.
	Professor John Beckwith is my guest, and we're talking about genetics.
	From the high desert, I'm Art Bell, and this, of course, is Coast to Coast AM.
	Thank you, Mr. Spielberg.
	Spielberg.
	The following is a video of the music video for the song, which is called, The End of Time.
	The music video is called, The End of Time.
	Well, the night is heavy on his guilty mind Let's fall from the borderline
	When the headman comes He knows damn well he hasn't cheated
	Haven't you, babe?
	Have my baby as good as my life, so Call Art Bell in the Kingdom of Nye from west of the Rockies at 1-800-618-8255, east of the Rockies 1-800-825-5033.
	618-8255, east of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
	First-time callers may rechart at 1-775-727-1222.
	And the wildcard line is open at 1-775-727-1295.
	To recharge on the toll-free international line, call your AT&T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903.
	This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell from the Kingdom of Nine.
	Our honored guest is Professor John Beckwith, a Harvard professor.
	Who has made genetic breakthroughs himself.
	Very serious ones.
	And that's what we're talking about, where all of this is going.
	It's the little things, folks.
	You might want to stick around and listen.
	We were discussing, just going into the bottom of the hour, the possibility that some weapon might be developed that would essentially be a, you know, a suicidal device or organism.
	And so, I want to follow up on that a little bit.
	Professor, do you believe that it would be technically, either is technically possible now, or will be within a few short years, to create, in effect, a biological doomsday organism?
	Something that, if released, Would virtually be doomsday.
	I mean, would race around the earth like a wildfire, killing as it went.
	Would such a technical feat... Is it either possible now, or will it be?
	I'm somewhat skeptical about that possibility, in that I think one can probably develop, for example, super virulent bacteria that might, for a short space of time, have some really destructive effects.
	But I think In fact, we have, or countries have, maybe Iraq has, weapons right now that are known organisms that are not genetically engineered, that are perfectly capable of wreaking as much havoc as they might want to wreak.
	For example, what kind of organisms?
	Well, ones that are very much in the news, like Bacillus anthracis, the organism that causes anthrax.
	We certainly know about from what happened earlier.
	Of course.
	Within the last year in this country.
	And in the wrong hands and with the right delivery system that can be incredibly destructive and there's not too much that can be done about it.
	Nevertheless I think one can generate organisms that are destructive but I think nature has selected organisms to be as destructive as they want them to be and ones that are genetically engineered I think are Maybe able to wreak some havoc, but I don't think they're going to last very long.
	Uh-huh.
	In other words, like a wildfire, they would burn themselves out very quickly and there wouldn't be any way to... That's a good analogy.
	There wouldn't be any way to biologically engineer them to be more persistent.
	Not at this stage of our knowledge, I don't think.
	That's not to say that people aren't trying to do it and that they come up with some organisms that can cause severe problems.
	Well, I ask this because The world has now proven to us again and again that we have lots of people out there and organizations willing to commit suicide to cause mass death.
	I mean, you see it in Israel almost every day.
	So if there should be such a thing, I don't think there would be any shortage of hands willing to release it.
	Do you?
	No, I don't.
	Going back for a second, you mentioned the anthrax mess that we had right after 9-11.
	There's been an ongoing investigation in this country, which now has become suspiciously quiet, in my opinion, as to where this anthrax may have come from.
	Have you been contacted by anybody in that regard?
	No, I have not been contacted, and I don't claim to have any deep knowledge.
	From what I read, pretty much the general impression is that it was somebody from a
	laboratory somewhere in the United States who was involved in it.
	I can't say any more than that.
	Why that has not been solved is a bit of a puzzle.
	It shouldn't be that difficult to track down.
	You wouldn't think so, would you, after all this time?
	The ability to look at the genetic signature of it, that sort of thing, right?
	You have been quite critical of...
	Of some areas of scientific research.
	And I wonder how that's affected your career.
	I mean, sounding a large cautionary note is probably not a real popular thing among your colleagues, some of them.
	Well, in the course of my career, particularly in the early days, it was a problem.
	It could be a problem at times for me.
	at the extreme at one point uh... there is an an effort at uh... my institution
	where i had ten years a professor to have that tenure removed
	all they want to have you yeah they actually
	told me a group actually told me after the particular controversy with over
	that they have been meeting to uh... consider going to the dean of the
	medical school to have been removed from tenure people my criticism of the study
	there Over what issue?
	This was over a program that was going on in a hospital in Boston connected with Harvard Medical School where they were screening newborn baby boys to see whether they carried an extra Y chromosome.
	And this was at the time considered among at least some scientists to be an indication, that is the extra Y chromosome of a baby, male baby, that would grow up to have super aggressive tendencies and perhaps criminal tendencies.
	Really?
	And there were a lot of dangers associated with that study and we tried to raise it in terms of the ethical propriety of doing this kind of screening and what the impact on the young boys would be, particularly when if you looked at the Science behind it, the previous studies, they were really extremely weak and at that point were not considered likely to be true.
	What did you consider the negative consequences to potentially be?
	Well, what happened was that the parents, the newborn baby boys would be screened and the researchers would go to the parents and said, we want to study your kids.
	And the parents would generally find out that their children were XYY males.
	Since there's been so much publicity about the XYY male as super criminals, it caused enormous anxiety for the parents and potentially, and I spoke, actually one of the parents called me up when our criticisms were made public and supported what I said.
	She said that they had been so worried about their child that any little move the child
	made that seemed a little bit off, they would react to with the child.
	So these researchers were intervening in this family life in such a way as to perhaps cause
	downstream lots of problems for the children and the way the parents were raising the children.
	In other words, it might turn into a sort of a big brother list of monitoring these
	children.
	Well, that's also was part of it that the information available to some other sources
	could be real problems for those children.
	They could be labeled in various ways.
	Ah, but that's on the way, is it not?
	Whether we like it or not.
	I mean, that would be the outside edge of it.
	But as we discover more about the specifics of the human genome, we are going to begin to see traits that Can be followed, aren't we?
	Right, and this is where I wanted to follow up on your question about the problems I ran into.
	In those days, to raise the kinds of questions we did were considered sort of almost like betraying my role as a scientist.
	But now that that kind of information is becoming much more available than it was then, scientists are worried that it will have some consequences and that we'll If anything, you know, bad happens to people because of their genes that they're screened for, that it will redound back to science and hurt scientists themselves.
	How many years away, Professor, are we, for example, from the ability to say, you know, this baby has a very high likelihood of having a stroke or a heart attack or contracting cancer prior to, say, age 40?
	That statistically we can now say that's probably going to happen to this child.
	Now I ask that because that child just might have a really hard time going to get life insurance or even health insurance.
	Right, exactly.
	Let me say first of all that you talked about, I think, probability of having a stroke or heart attack or whatever.
	That's right.
	And that's a very important qualification to almost any kind of genetic characteristic or characteristic that has a genetic component and that is It's only a matter of probability, not a matter of certainty.
	Yeah, but Jim, that's what insurance companies deal with, is probabilities.
	Exactly.
	But I just wanted to make that point clear, that nothing is predetermined, and if somebody's screened and found to carry a particular altered gene, you can talk about risks and probabilities, and quite often we can't be very accurate about that even.
	But the information can be misused, or at least used if you want to call it misuse, to prevent people from
	getting insurance or used in deciding on employment in some cases and in various other
	realms of society.
	Yes, well the question is how close to that are we? Are we right on the edge of it or?
	Well we're progressing into it. I think we already can screen for
	a fairly large number of genetic conditions and in particular for
	susceptibility to heart attacks at an early age.
	For some of the people who have that problem, we can actually detect that now.
	The availability of the human genome sequence that came out a few years ago is just picking up the pace of that development very rapidly.
	One of the interesting things is when the Human Genome Project started, there was at least enough awareness among scientists at the time that this kind of problem was going to arise, that they did start a program To look into the ethical and social and legal consequences of...
	of having all this information.
	Not that we've solved it, not that we've come up with ways of controlling it, but some things have happened that have added some protection to people.
	So if a genetic testing van rolls into Pahrump, Nevada and I have the opportunity to go down and find out if I have a propensity for this or that or whatever and a free test, should I jump right on it and take the test or should I avoid it like the plague?
	One should be very careful about it.
	Problem with this is, of course, that genetic test and the information you get from it could turn out to be very helpful to you.
	It may convince you to alter your lifestyle so that you have a better chance of surviving for a longer time.
	So the genetic information, at least in some cases, can be useful to you.
	In other cases, it can't.
	Present time, because we don't have treatments or ways of avoiding problems.
	Well, at present levels of technology, should such a van roll in, would I be wiser to take that test or to say no thank you?
	I think if you can take the test, you should take it if there is some reason to think that they, first of all, that the information would be useful to you.
	But in addition, I think one should look very carefully into What kind of privacy is associated with that information?
	Therein lies a big problem, because a lot of times when you're assured privacy regarding a matter, for example, people got tested for AIDS and that sort of thing, and then somehow it just doesn't work out, doggone it, and the list or whatever it is gets out.
	Yeah, you're exactly right.
	There are more, there have been efforts in a number of states to pass legislation that would restrict the use of that information.
	And that legislation exists, I believe there's a law in California, I'm not sure, but in most states, in fact, there's now legislation which has some restrictions on the use of genetic information.
	The problem is that if that information gets used, it's often hard to find out that that's what happened.
	You don't even know that your information was used against you.
	Right.
	But we have to deal with that in a much better way than we are now.
	Ultimately... And so I think what happens sometimes is people actually can contact doctors who will agree not to include that information in their medical records.
	And unfortunately, sometimes people just avoid getting the information because of those dangers associated with it.
	Ultimately, Professor, with a good sample of my blood or whatever, Um, how much do you think will be able to be determined about me?
	Well, an awful lot of, um, physical diseases, uh, they're just increasing number of them that we can now offer some suggestions to what the likelihood that people will suffer from them.
	Um, it has been claimed that soon we'll understand also the genetics of things like intelligence or behavior or, sexual orientation or whatever, I think that's at best much
	further off.
	What has been one of the big disappointments for the genome researchers is that it has
	been extremely difficult to find genes associated with human behaviors.
	What differentiates people in terms of their aptitudes or their behavior or even things
	like mental illness which involves brain functioning.
	Researchers are realizing that these conditions are much more complex, probably involving
	many genes which makes it very difficult to predict if many genes are involved and also
	the strong influence of the environment.
	But eventually, we will begin to decode those combinations, won't we?
	Yeah, I think we will find genes that contribute to these behaviors, but I still think the The problem of predictability becomes even more severe in those cases where some particular trait of yours is due to a combination of many genes interacting with each other and interacting with the environment.
	Nevertheless, if it were discovered that a certain combination will in fact, with a high degree of probability, predict criminal behavior, there would be, or even worse yet, something society really can't tolerate, pedophilia or something like that.
	Then, is it not going to be irresistible for society to act on that information?
	Well, certainly if you had that, that would be the case.
	My own impression is, from what I know of this field, that the proportion of people where that predictability would be so strong as to warrant intervention is going to be a small fraction.
	That's not to say it would not be Helpful to have that information, but I think it's going to represent a small fraction of the population of criminals, for instance.
	Would you think that genetic information would squarely fall within the Fourth Amendment, what's left of it, the bounds of the Fourth Amendment?
	The Fourth Amendment is which?
	I'm sorry.
	Well, it's privacy, Professor.
	Oh, privacy.
	Privacy.
	Oh, absolutely.
	So, hopefully it'll continue our body I guess genetic information, if I understand correctly,
	it could come from underneath your fingernail, or it could come from a scraping of skin,
	or saliva, or hair, anything literally.
	Right.
	Yep.
	We really do face a rapidly changing world, don't we?
	Yeah, that's the problem.
	I think it's all well and good for me to talk about.
	We're aware of the problems.
	We're trying to do something about them, but the pace of progress is incredibly fast.
	To deal with them and to set up the laws or the privacy regulations that will control it is difficult.
	For example, a lot of interesting research could be done with Knowing the genomes of a large proportion of the population in terms of finding disease genes, etc., but at the same time, you have to worry about the privacy of that information.
	So research, there's a sort of tension going on between people who are concerned about privacy and researchers who would like to see the research move as fast as possible.
	And I hope that, you know, the privacy side of it wins out.
	When I say the difficulties for researchers pursuing this research, it means Much more care taken computer encoded files etc that can't be broken into and and you know all kinds of expensive equipment and and maybe tedious approaches to collecting this information that researchers are not too happy with because they would like to move as fast as possible.
	Is it possible to for our military through people in science like yourself To research defenses against biological warfare without developing biological warfare.
	Not really.
	I didn't think so.
	But I think, as I said earlier, that, you know, A lot of those things have already been done in that we already have the organisms that are the weapons of choice of the moment for doing this kind of biological warfare research.
	Yes, but in researching the latest, greatest, and who knows where they are now.
	I mean, I'm sure you have a sense perhaps of where they are now, but they're probably way ahead of whatever they're publicly admitting to at the moment.
	And so when they say they're researching all these biological defenses and so forth, I always think, yeah, right.
	And stuff.
	There's no question that that is exactly the concern that's always been the case with this kind of research.
	Back when I think we knew much more about that kind of research and when probably much more of what was going on This is exactly what was going on.
	They were at Fort Detrick in Maryland.
	They were trying to develop new weapons Hold it right there.
	We're at the top of the hour and so it's good break for you And when we get back, we'll talk a little more about that and oh Yes the subject of cloning now there's an Italian doctor and his competitor who are both claiming that they've got a Clones in the cooker.
	They've got pregnant women with clones.
	Clones that they've created.
	Also, part of our new world.
	We'll talk a little bit about cloning.
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	This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell on the Premier Radio Networks.
	It is.
	Our guest is, uh, honored guest is Professor John Beckwith from Harvard, and we're talking about genetics and really the state of the world right now.
	In a moment, we'll talk for a second about smallpox.
	That's an interesting subject.
	Alright, as recently as the newscast, this hour, professor, we're hearing that the United
	States is beginning to give vaccine shots to the U.S.
	military for smallpox, smallpox vaccine shots, and that health workers, I guess, also can voluntarily decide to take it or not.
	There's a lot of arguments about vaccines in general, and I guess if you were in the military, Professor, and they offered you a smallpox vaccine shot.
	Would you take it?
	Wow.
	I would have some reservations.
	Oh, you would?
	Yeah, no, I mean, first of all, I'm not certain of the worth of it at this point in terms of the dangers, but also, I mean, that is the dangers of some kind of smallpox biological warfare attack.
	And at the other end of it, you know, there are some small fraction of people who take that vaccine who are going to perhaps die or certainly suffer some physical consequences from it.
	It could be fairly serious.
	It's kind of a risk benefit kind of ratio.
	And I knew the history of smallpox is that once it had been effectively eliminated as a disease in the world, There is a big debate as to whether one should destroy all stocks of the virus, the smallpox virus, because of the potential that if it ever got out again or if it got into the wrong hands, that it could be terribly dangerous.
	Well, gee whiz, the people arguing on that side seem to be right.
	It could well be, and that's the problem now.
	And interestingly, the former chairman of my department, who was a wonderful person and a very socially conscious, Scientist was one of the people who argued for maintaining that stock because some day some day we might need it to Develop better treatments for it, and I'm not exactly sure I can't really repeat his reasoning well Let me try and tear it apart a little bit and maybe perhaps I shouldn't but it seems to me if we ever needed it again
	Uh, we would only need it because it had popped up somewhere, right?
	Right.
	So then why would we need to hold on to it frozen or whatever, um, against the possibility that it would come back?
	Because if it came back, we'd have samples.
	Uh, I guess because it could be around someplace.
	Um, it could be, you know, in a reservoir, some animal reservoir someplace that we hadn't really expected.
	I see.
	Uh, I, I really can't repeat the reasoning, but now in retrospect, The question rises again, should we have agreed to an international treaty to destroy all stocks of smallpox, which didn't happen.
	I know one of the things people are worried about is that, particularly since the Russians hold or did hold stocks, whether, given the condition of that country, whether smallpox has got out to other sources now.
	But we certainly don't, at least as far as I know, we don't know for sure that that's happened.
	Uh, well, you know, I was thinking, I mean, it costs a lot of money to produce all this vaccine that they're producing and to then distribute it and all the rest of what they're doing right now, and why would they do that if they don't know something?
	Uh...
	Well, I never necessarily trust our government to know everything.
	You do?
	Or even to, if they present themselves as knowing something that in fact might reflect other motivations.
	I mean, it seems to me we're in a war readiness mood in this country and the government is trying to promote that to some extent and I'm not sure whether the fear factor doesn't come into this to help to Rally the people behind the government to indicate how many threats there are to us and we really have to do something about it.
	I'm not saying that that's the explanation.
	I mean, do you really think we would do this without some, I don't misuse the word intelligence, but without some intelligence to indicate there's a real threat, would we really begin vaccinating people?
	Oh, I'm sure there must be some information.
	I simply obviously don't have it in my hands and don't know how valid that information is.
	It must be beyond the rumor point, I guess is what I'm saying.
	Oh yeah, sure.
	If smallpox were successfully released in a nation that had not been vaccinated, what would the likely consequences be?
	Well, that depends upon how quickly we were able to move to quarantine people, because it can spread pretty rapidly.
	Pretty rapidly.
	I simply don't know what the procedures in place are at the moment to do that, but it's serious.
	I remember a movie, and I can't recall the name of it, it really doesn't matter, but some sort of horrible doomsday, something got started in some little town.
	Do you remember that movie?
	And then they were going to drop a nuclear weapon to cauterize the whole thing.
	I wonder if something like that is actually Uh, somewhere deeply, uh, uh, perhaps five levels under the White House, you know, in a library somewhere, is a plan that we might have to take.
	I mean, if you were scientifically consulted and you were facing some sort of horrible organism and asked for your opinion on what best to do in a situation like that.
	I think I'll pass on that one.
	I'm not really an infectious disease expert, so I'm not sure whether we need to drop atomic weapons.
	I would have passed too.
	Um, cloning.
	Now, I've been reading stories to my audience recently about this Italian doctor, uh, who claims that, um, he has successfully cloned and has a pregnant woman, uh, in the Middle East somewhere, is going to give birth in the spring.
	And then there's his partner, scientific partner, ex-scientific partner, I guess they had a falling out of some sort, who said, you know, he's full of it.
	But, we are on the edge.
	We're about to clone.
	Human clone.
	We're going to have a human clone.
	So, a lot of competition going on out there right now.
	And it seems like, if we don't already have one in the cooker, it's on the horizon pretty soon.
	What's the deal on cloning?
	Well, I think we've certainly cloned animals that, you know, are getting, in terms of species, getting closer and closer to humans.
	So that, technically, it seems That those kinds of experiments ultimately will be, if you want to call them experiments, or cloning procedures, could potentially be carried out in humans.
	And something I learned back when we first isolated the gene was never to say, oh, that can't be done, or it's so far off we shouldn't worry about it, because as we talked about earlier in terms of the DNA sequencing, things can move much faster than expected.
	Nevertheless, I think there are some severe technical problems, at least at the moment, and for the
	foreseeable future, with the qualification I've offered, to doing cloning and what the consequences
	will be. Not that the things that were done in sheep couldn't be done in humans, but
	that the product may have serious problems. A lot of scientists from studies they've done
	have raised this issue that, as opposed to something like in vitro fertilization where a
	human sperm and a human egg are put together and the egg is fertilized in a test tube and re-implanted,
	here you're doing something very unnatural.
	You're taking a cell, removing its DNA, putting in the DNA from another cell, and then hoping that it will develop properly.
	It's clear from the sheep cloning and it's clear from many other studies that You may be creating a lot of problems for that individual that you've cloned.
	They may be born and it may, you know, grow up and even behave and physically be very normal for a while, but you may create some real downstream problems for that individual.
	I've heard some loose talk that Dolly the Sheep, though young, may in fact be very old because the genetic age of the of the real parent is carried forth somehow or another, mistakenly, to poor Dolly, who is now, you know, like a 80-year-old sheep, even though Dolly's young.
	Is that...?
	Yeah, I haven't particularly heard that, although that's certainly a major concern about it.
	I've heard about various problems from various cloning experiments.
	I believe, in the case of Dolly, that they've noticed obesity, unusual obesity, in the sheep that have been cloned.
	uh... so and that could be related to what you're just suggesting it's not
	clear but uh... it's exactly the sort of problem that the people
	worried about and
	as opposed to many other things in this case i think there's a a lot of uh...
	even scientific opposition to to proceeding with the net that's for technical reasons now
	of course there are other
	things to be concerned about it to whether it was the party or is there a good species we
	want to go ahead and start calling ourselves
	well it seems like it's uh... it's it's coming whether we like it
	And if it's not done here, it's going to be done in Italy or the Middle East or China or somewhere.
	There are some pretty serious consequences.
	Put plainly, we could, before we get a perfect human, which would be way down the line, we'd get an awful lot of monsters, wouldn't we?
	Yeah, if you want to call them that.
	I mean, yeah, I think that's a significant possibility or probability.
	And that's what makes the whole area so strange.
	I mean, even if one accepted the idea that cloning was morally and ethically acceptable, in order to find out what to do cloning, you have to do experiments that I think are morally and ethically unacceptable, because you may be creating monsters or individuals who Uh, really have severe deformities or serious problems as a result of the cloning.
	Well, of course, I'm sure the scientists would terminate any such, in quotes, monsters very early.
	But, you know, there would be a lot of people would say, gee whiz, ethically and morally, I have a big problem with that because you're creating and destroying life in the name of science.
	Well, it's interesting when when In vitro fertilization was first done with women who had, or couples who had fertility problems, where they fertilized sperm outside of the womb in the test tube, fertilized with sperm of the egg from the woman.
	There was a lot of societal opposition to it at the time.
	And what stunned me is how rapidly that became an accepted procedure.
	People, once they got used to the idea, somehow accepted it.
	I don't know whether the same thing will happen if cloning ever really is successful.
	That is... Has it become acceptable to you, Professor?
	No, not at all.
	Not at all?
	I think there are lots of... And I don't want to stop at the technical problems and say, well, I think it's bad because...
	You may be creating people with severe problems either right away or downstream in their lives.
	I think there are also problems with it because the individuals who would be going ahead with it and doing it are doing it because they anticipate that they're creating somebody in the image of someone else.
	And that that individual would basically have all the same qualities and characteristics of the individual whose DNA was used to clone the individual from.
	And that is extremely unlikely, in fact.
	And the concern about bringing an individual into the world, whom is loaded with the baggage of having all these expectations of whatever the person who chose to do the cloning lays on them, I think it's a serious burden for a child to grow up with.
	So I think that it could create all sorts of psychological problems and all sorts of disappointments
	in the people who are doing the cloning when the clone doesn't live up to expectations.
	But in the real world, it's not gonna stop it because I mean there's enough egotistical people
	in the world with more money than they know what to do with who are going to pay somebody who, you know,
	there's always somebody with their hand out who wants to do the scientific work anyway.
	And so, you know, somewhere around the world, they're probably doing it right now.
	Yeah, I mean, if it's happening on a very small scale in a few places, it's not something,
	I'm not happy with it, but it's not something I'd worry about.
	And in fact, as you may know, I think in Europe, cloning, which is a much stronger feeling about... That is, the whole United Europe now has a much stronger feeling about genetic issues.
	There is a strong, I believe, ban against cloning.
	But as you said, there are countries where there is no such ban, and it could be a problem.
	I mean, I think ultimately the other thing that people worry about, which I hope isn't a worry, and I sort of doubt that in this day and age it won't happen, is that at a political level governments might decide to create clones for their own purposes.
	And I, both for technical reasons and for other reasons, I think that would be a failure, but I think it would also be a very frightening thing to happen.
	But I guess I'm optimistic enough to think that The world is becoming a smaller and smaller place in certain ways in terms of interactions between different countries that those kinds of things won't happen.
	You mean if a country, for example, could develop the perfect soldier, stronger, more violent in every way, a perfect killing machine, you don't think they would do that?
	I don't think they do it and I don't think it could be done anyway because I think earlier when I talked about the predictability of genetics, I think there's a mistaken feeling certainly among many in the public that we can predict and we can know what a person is going to develop into just from looking at their genes and that's simply not the case.
	I get these little messages called fast blasts as we do the show on my computer and here's a pretty good one from Bruce in Clovis, New Mexico.
	This is Art.
	Your guess answer about genetic targeting of race as not really being feasible seems to be at variance with the observation, he quoted somebody else, that we don't know squat about the human genome.
	Yeah, I worried about making that statement because I didn't follow it up with what I meant.
	First of all, what happened when the Human Genome Project was started, in order to raise money for it, the scientists who were doing it said, once we have the sequence of the human genome, We will know what it means to be human, and all sorts of promises about all the cures for disease that would come out of it.
	But of course, the human genome was sequenced at just the beginning.
	It didn't tell you much of anything.
	I mean, it told you some things, but it really didn't give you the information you needed.
	It required much more research.
	And immediately when the genome sequence was completed, people like Venter realized that If they kept saying that they knew everything now, then why should they be funded anymore for doing research?
	So they came up with, I mean, and they're right.
	I mean, in that sense, we don't, we haven't learned that much from the genome.
	We are learning more and more as we begin to study it, but we don't know that much.
	But certain things we did know from comparing the genome and one of the levels at which we did know something and really been able to find out a lot.
	It's by looking at the DNA sequences, the genome chromosome sequences of different groups of people that people are much more similar than would be expected if there were really significant differences in races.
	And in some senses, we've known that all along.
	But for instance, one of the pieces of information which violates the we don't know squat statement
	is that we've been able to find out much more about human migrations throughout history
	by looking at the DNAs of different people in different places and seeing which genes were carried
	to which regions, et cetera.
	And again, it's not that you look at pure populations that all carry one set of genes
	and that distinguish them from other populations, but that certain genes are more frequent
	in one population than another.
	All right.
	Professor, hold on.
	We're at the bottom of the hour.
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	line, call your AT&T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903.
	This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell from the Kingdom of Nine.
	Harvard professor Dr. John Beckwith is my guest.
	We're talking about genetics because that's where That's where his research is.
	And he's got some reservations about some areas of this research, and for very good reasons, I think.
	But he's one of the men who made the original discoveries about us.
	We'll be right back.
	Once again, Professor Beckwith.
	Professor, would it be possible to create Perhaps a clone, a human being that was brain-challenged.
	In other words, through genetic manipulation, could you create a human that essentially was a vegetable but otherwise progressed along just fine, bringing with it these wonderful collection of organs that would be so suitable for transplant I suppose you could.
	We talked earlier about the question of whether it will be done and to what extent it will be done.
	I know you wouldn't do it at Harvard, but I'm asking whether it's possible, and you're sort of saying yes.
	Well, I don't know that it's possible right now, but given the progress it's made, it seems feasible in the future.
	Well, I mean, if you had a lot of money, and you were 85 years old, and your heart and your lungs were failing, and gee, there was this shiny new pair that were a perfect genetic match for you, that sort of transplant would have a high degree of success probability, wouldn't it?
	Sure.
	I guess the question again is at what stage this will happen and how society will deal with it.
	Not well.
	When you say not well, do you mean it won't be able to handle it?
	Yeah, that's what I mean.
	It's not going to deal with it well.
	Not too hopeful.
	I mean, I would not be active around these issues if I didn't have some optimism and hope that that as a species we will ultimately arrive at the right,
	and we may go through some problems, but that we'll arrive at the right answers
	to many of these problems.
	Well, there's this public service announcement, you know, for organ donation that,
	it's kind of interesting, it has this fellow lying there,
	apparently dying of something or another, and they come to him and they tell him,
	well, you know, by golly, we just, you know, got a new liver in, or whatever it was,
	he was about to die from not having it, he said, oh, wonderful, let's go,
	and they say, oh, and by the way, it's from, Hispanic man and then he says no well then you're gonna die
	and well, okay, then let's go I was so you cling to life and you do at the end whatever
	you have to do and if you've got the money I suppose why you would you know do this I
	Think that certainly will happen and I think you know the cloning there are people who would love to be cloned and I
	guess there Are doctors who are claiming that they're doing it now
	but whether that first of all becomes a widespread practice is questionable and secondly whether as
	societies Approach these problems and and certainly they're
	discussing them in at least many of many of the societies of the world
	There's international bioethics groups that are discussing them
	They may just discuss and discuss and nothing may happen, but it's not as though nothing is being done to confront these issues.
	Something similar to cloning apparently has already been done.
	Years ago in Southern California, there was an entrepreneur who collected sperm from Nobel Prize winners, and then for a price, offered to fertilize women with the money, with the sperm, so they could have really bright children.
	Is there basic underlying common sense to that?
	Would it work or have a good probability of working?
	We have no idea whether it would work.
	I would love to know what became of those children.
	One never hears anything about them.
	Did it work?
	Do they still do this?
	Do they advertise great success rates, etc.?
	What do the success rates mean?
	It is quite conceivable that if a woman bears a child by this process, whom she knows carries genes from a Nobel Prize winner, that the way she deals with the child may help ensure that that child develops super skills, etc.
	Or it may be, again, a problem of expectations that if she expects too much from the child, the child may develop problems.
	I've never seen a study that followed up on any of these children, so I have no idea whether the, let's call it experiment, worked or not.
	And we have no basis at the present time for knowing that it will work.
	I noticed you mentioned, since I read the article, you've mentioned Ventner a few times here.
	And he is doing something.
	I mean, it is very, very interesting what he's doing.
	It looks to me like he's Creating life and and and that does get into the sort of in the God business a little bit If we if we actually create if we put together a unique Genetic sequence then have we not?
	Have we not created life or do I have that wrong?
	Well one can argue that in a sense We've been doing it since the beginning of time in breeding breeding cows and breeding plants, breeding animals, where we mix genes from different
	animals. We're doing it, we're not de novo creating our own specific sequences for these
	individuals. But in fact, I don't think that's what, in fact, Zenter is talking about. What
	they're talking about is trying to understand what are the minimal number of genes that an
	organism needs in order to survive on its own.
	Yes.
	They're talking about creating that organism in order to find out.
	And that does seem like the creation business to me.
	Uh, I don't know.
	It doesn't bother me.
	It doesn't bother you?
	I mean, it can bother me.
	One can worry about the safety issues, etc.
	But the very creation itself, I'm not sure.
	I mean, we move along in time and things that seem strange and maybe some things we shouldn't do at some point later on, we have different ideas.
	I talked already about in vitro fertilization.
	Sure.
	Where people were saying exactly the same thing about that, that that's, you know, it's unreal.
	It's not the normal means of procreation.
	We shouldn't be doing it.
	And somehow we've come to accept it.
	And I'm not saying that we should accept everything, but I think And I think cloning is a case where one can have serious
	reservations about pursuing that line.
	But in this case, particularly, it's not humans we're talking about anyway.
	It's the kind of smallest of possible bacteria that probably, in fact, can't survive very
	well on their own.
	Why haven't we cured cancer, Professor?
	I mean, through genetics or some aspect of genetics, you would think that cancer would
	be probably the number one positive development to come from the unraveling of the genome
	and then going a little further and understanding the combinations.
	You would think cancer would be right there at the head of the list.
	Well, one of the problems is that cancer is a vast array of different diseases with different causes.
	One can find certain cancers, for example, that are known to be caused by mutations in genes that people inherit.
	One can find other cancers that occur either because of exposure to environmental pollutants or just the natural processes.
	One accumulates mutations in one's cells and cancer develops.
	These mutations can be in many, many different genes and cause very different kinds of cancers in very different places.
	So what has happened over the years is that a certain number of cancers have been at least treatable or people are able to survive them pretty well by various procedures including surgery but also by various treatments.
	But we're dealing with multiple diseases and our success rate at curing a large number of diseases is still very limited and partly I think What has come out of the human genome is a humbling recognition of how complex we are and how complex many diseases and many human traits are, and that it's not going to be as simple as people thought when they started this project.
	I mean, it has been, I would say, a disappointment for scientists to recognize the complexity of human life.
	That's why medicine is not a precise science.
	A doctor once told me that We'll be able to cure AIDS and cancer when we can change the color of your eyes.
	Too much of a generalization or generally?
	Yeah, I would think so.
	I mean, I think there have been some, you know, interesting successes where, not cures, but there are treatments for AIDS with this multiple drug use, which really is, to me, one of the best, you know, although I've raised many problems about genetics, It's one of the best examples of how sort of the rapid progress and knowledge has allowed one to develop drugs that one couldn't have imagined, say, 20 years ago or so, that one couldn't imagine ways of developing them.
	But that actually isn't curing AIDS, though, is it?
	No, it isn't curing it.
	It's keeping it beaten down for a period of time.
	Right.
	But it's the quality of life for people who've developed the disease that are now as you know, are able to live much longer and have a higher
	quality of life.
	I think the concept behind that perhaps flippant statement is though that when we can manipulate genetics to the
	degree that we could change our eye color with a shot or something, then we will be in the business
	of manipulation to the level necessary to attack AIDS or cancer or something like that.
	Well, that's possible.
	I mean, there are different approaches to dealing with AIDS.
	One of them is vaccines, and basically that's been a failure so far.
	That doesn't mean it's always going to be a failure.
	There may be some new breakthrough in understanding how you make vaccines, how antibodies are made, that will suddenly open up prospects that we couldn't imagine before.
	Are you generally quite cautionary when it comes to vaccines?
	You mean the use of vaccines?
	Yes, sir.
	I wouldn't say quite cautionary.
	Somewhat cautionary.
	Yeah.
	I mean, we've already talked about the smallpox effects and the side effects there, but I don't have any overall concern.
	Anything to say to us about prions?
	This is a very interesting thing called prions, mad cow disease.
	Prions just sort of began to show up.
	I mean, I've never heard of prions before, mad cow disease.
	You seem to have very interesting qualities.
	It's a very serious problem, of course, in Europe.
	Well, they really... Actually, a friend of mine has published a book on the history of prions.
	It's called... It's French, but it's been translated to English.
	It's called something like, Why Cows Go Mad, which has to do with the prion disease in cows, the mad cow disease.
	And the history of this disease goes way, way back in terms of animals.
	Suffering from this disease.
	And in fact the human version of it has been known also.
	But I think what we're finding is as the world gets more and more crowded that diseases that were rare in the past for various reasons are spreading much faster and occurring more frequently.
	But it's certainly always been with us.
	why it's picking up now may have to do with the way animals are raised, for instance,
	which is very different from the way they used to be raised.
	But it did exist.
	As I said, my friend traces it by reports of the animal disease back many centuries.
	When we look at the human genome and we look at human evolution, is there any way to understand
	how the genetic structure of human beings may have been modified along the way?
	Is there any way to look back, as you would, with a test to determine the age of some sort
	In other words, do we have any idea whether we've always had the same genetic structure since day one for human beings or can you look
	back and say, aha, see how it's changed over the thousands of years or
	whatever?
	I think basically one can say we've had the same genetic structure.
	I think what one can learn as one accumulates information about genomes of other organisms,
	I think you mentioned that the mouse genome was just released within the last week, I think.
	Yes, right.
	as you get genomes of organisms, apes, monkeys, et cetera, that are closer to humans, I think
	you'll be able to see more and more what took place that actually resulted in changes that
	led to the very particular nature of human beings and human understanding and communication
	and culture.
	Well, that would certainly help put a stamp on the evolutionary process, perhaps even
	the final stamp on its validity, wouldn't it?
	Well, I'm sure people have said that at various stages and it's never happened.
	I was thinking about next year is actually the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the
	structure of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick.
	And in a way, that seemed to provide a lot of the basis for solidifying the idea of evolution,
	but I'm not sure we've come very far since then.
	I would agree on the faith of it.
	It would seem to sort of make a more and more rational explanation available for how we evolved.
	Do you think the day will come when man will have in his own hands his future evolution?
	That if we want to take quantum leaps, I don't want to say that something is never going to be possible, but I think we're talking about way off in the future if it is possible.
	I guess I can imagine anything is possible in the long run, but that could be a thousand years from now if we're still around, which I have some questions about.
	Oh, do you?
	I frequently interview some pretty brilliant theoretical physicists who have the same reservations about our being around for a particularly long period of time and think the odds are not exactly in our favor.
	I take it you share that.
	Well, my major concern is environmental changes and whether we're ever going to get those under control.
	I would say that's the first thing I think of.
	I'm not alone with issues of war and disease.
	We've already talked about the increasing spread of a number of diseases because of the changes in the world.
	We're not dealing with some of these problems in the way that I think we should.
	I worry about it.
	I have children and grandchildren and I do worry about it.
	Yes, I worry too.
	I also have been reading to my audience story after story recently about, oh boy, we're now starting to get some organisms that appear to be immune to our last psyllin of defense.
	So that would indicate to me that while we were winning for a while, You know, a very short while actually, and in the larger scheme of things, the little things seem to be getting a lead on us here.
	That has been a problem that many of us have been aware of for many decades, the increasing resistance of bacteria to the antibiotics that exist.
	And for a while there, we were able to come up with new ones, but that's not happening anymore, and it's a serious problem.
	There are a lot of people Uh, making researchers, making efforts to discover new antibiotics, but I know even some of the drug companies have kind of given up on it because it's involved a lot of money spent on research that so far hasn't paid off.
	Um, that's again, you know, not just a, a, um, research problem or a scientific problem.
	It's also a problem of enormous overuse of antibiotics throughout the world, both in feed of animals, but also, uh, Not only in this country, but more so maybe in other countries where a lot of antibiotics are sold over the counter.
	Well, and when they finally failed, Professor, then perhaps genetic manipulation will be the only defense we'll have left, or the one that we can look forward to as saving our butts?
	I guess that's a possibility, in that for any bacterial infection, there are some people who are going to be more resistant than others to that infection.
	It doesn't make it a genetic disease, it's simply that there's some fraction of the population that's resistant.
	There's an interesting argument, I don't know if you've followed this at all, that the plague, which killed off a lot of people in Europe, uses some of the same receptors as the AIDS virus.
	And in some communities where a large percentage of the population died off, those communities Not only were the people apparently in those families resistant to the plague, but today are resistant to AIDS virus.
	Oh yes, there's quite a bit of scientific evidence to indicate that a number of prostitutes in Africa, who just mystically have not come down with the AIDS virus and should have x100, simply have not, because they've developed some sort of immunity.
	Professor Oldon, we're at the top of the hour?
	Goes very quickly when the information flows this fast.
	We'll take a break and be right back.
	Harvard professor John Beckwith is my guest.
	I'm Art Bell and this is Coast to Coast AM.
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	Gee, what did he sing in the year 65?
	65, you'll be able to pick your sons and daughters from bottom to long back, too.
	They might have just Underestimated that year by a few or a lot.
	Stay right there.
	My guest, Harvard Professor John Beckwith, will be right back.
	My guest, Professor John Beckwith from Harvard, is all about genetics.
	If you have a question about genetics, And you'd like to get it in, we'll begin to take some calls this hour.
	So if you have a relevant question, by all means, get to a telephone, pick one of the numbers we just announced and proceed to attempt to contact us.
	Professor, the song was talking about 65-65 and picking your sons and daughters from the bottom of a long back.
	That's probably pretty soon now, huh?
	Somewhere before 65-65.
	If we get that far, as I said earlier.
	If we get that far, yeah.
	There are lots of ways in which you can do prenatal screening or in vitro fertilization and even screen the fertilized eggs to see if there are any particular genetic characteristics that you don't want.
	Not so much characteristics you do want because the positive ones are harder to screen, but
	to some extent that may be coming.
	But the amount of information coming out of the Human Genome Project's successes is spectacular
	in terms of being able to identify genetic mutations that are responsible for a whole
	range of different kinds of genetic diseases.
	Well, speaking of genetic mutations, what's your feeling with regard to the environment
	as it is right now probably being responsible for genetic mutations?
	I mean, you alluded to your concern for the environment.
	I certainly have it, too.
	There are some pretty weird things going on and changes going on.
	I mean, soon there won't be any ice, you know, up at the top of the world.
	They say we're going to have a new sea.
	Well, I mean, these are big changes, and you would think that they would perhaps produce genetic changes if they are produced that way.
	Well, we're still speaking from a bit of, not a bit, but a lot of ignorance about exactly what the effect of the environment is, but we do know, for example, that as the ozone layer has decreased, that more people are being exposed to more ultraviolet radiation, which itself is well known to cause mutations.
	What the actual increase in frequency of mutations might be and what its consequences are, we simply don't know.
	We also know that there are certain kinds of chemicals and radiation and other kinds of
	radiation that cause mutations and they're well documented in terms of particularly
	workers who've worked with radioactive materials or have worked in chemical factories where there's
	particularly strong exposure to chemicals.
	It's pretty hard to come up with figures on exactly how much of mutation is due to environmental
	exposure because mutation is something that occurs naturally.
	It's the fuel of evolution, in fact.
	Yes.
	So, in that sense, if you consider the fact that we're here is due to the fact that mutations occur, then mutation is certainly a good thing.
	Well, then aren't we stoking the fires?
	We may be to some extent.
	You mean with environmental factors?
	Yes.
	I certainly think so, and that's been an issue for quite a while.
	That, of course, is all sorts of regulations and industry in terms of exposure, etc., but as I said, we're still a bit ignorant about, for example, how much, how serious an effect pollution has on mutation rates.
	We don't know.
	There were surprising results, in fact, that after looking for mutational effects of the dropping of atomic bombs in Japan in World War II, where some scientists at least reported that it wasn't as severe as people might have thought.
	That's just to illustrate our lack of knowledge, partly because it hasn't been studied in enough detail.
	Just for fun, I potted up the newscast this last hour.
	I don't know whether you were listening on the phone or not, but call me cynical and suspicious, but gee whiz, they had the First Lady on there saying, well, first of all, they said they're going to now provide, I guess, enough smallpox vaccine for everybody in the country.
	And the First Lady was on the radio saying, I wouldn't even hesitate to have my children vaccinated for smallpox.
	You know, I guess I'm a little suspicious here that they really do know something.
	I mean, vaccinating the entire nation just seems like an expensive, risky thing to be undergoing unless you've got real hard information about a possible problem.
	You may be right.
	I really can't say.
	I have to keep harboring my suspicions about ulterior motives, etc.
	So I think Certainly the president wants to mobilize support for whatever is going to happen in the near future militarily and I think part of the support is Convincing people of the seriousness of the threat now We the problem is we aren't provided with any of that information As we're not provided any information that the government has on exactly what?
	What it is that Iraq has I think I?
	It would be nice to... I'm sure there are reasons they're not giving it to us, but I... There's been enough deception in the past that at least I keep an open mind about these questions.
	Yeah.
	So I tend to be skeptical about the need for the vaccination, but I could be wrong.
	Well, I am concerned.
	I just, you know, I mean, you look at what they do more than what they say, and what they're doing seems awfully...
	Mm-hmm.
	Out of proportion to the risk, as you sort of outlined.
	As we know of it, yeah.
	Yeah.
	Let's sort of intersperse a few calls here and see what is out there.
	A wildcard line, you're on the air with Professor Beckwith.
	Hello!
	Hello.
	Yes, hello.
	Hi.
	Well, um, I had, um, one, one little wry comment and then if I could ask a question, I'd, I'd be really grateful.
	All right.
	Well, the comment is that it strikes me that the fact that men on death row have been forced to contribute their DNA to when the likelihood of their ever getting out and committing any more crimes is practically zero.
	Um, I really think that their DNA is going to be used for some other purpose, and I'm thinking about, for instance, what I've read about the cyborg research at MIT, for instance.
	Well, that might be a little out there, but I mean, Professor, can you see a reason why people on death row would be required to give a sample of their DNA and what it might be used for?
	I was not aware of that.
	Let's just assume that it is true.
	What would you imagine it might be used for, Professor?
	Well, I can imagine things that might be useful.
	How realistic they are is another question.
	I don't know about cyborgs.
	The thing I would worry about is, and I can imagine scientists who would consider this
	as something to do, is to look at the DNA to see if they can detect mutations that might
	be some contributing factor to how these people ended up on death row.
	Although given the selectivity and who ends up on death row and who doesn't among those
	who commit capital crimes, I'm not sure what they're going to find.
	Well true, it's a safe assumption there's been some misbehavior though.
	Sure.
	Okay, you had a question ma'am?
	Right, well I would like to ask the professor what his knowledge is and what his reaction
	is, what his thinking is about experiments that are being conducted on our own population
	testing.
	Non-lethal weapons like electromagnetic pulse radiation and lasers.
	Well, you're probably out of this field a little bit here.
	What it might do to one's genetics.
	Oh, I see.
	However, there have been a number of tests, Professor, actually conducted on US population centers with regard to, they say, benign little bugs and the The Defense Department just wants to figure out how quickly something might spread, you know, that sort of thing.
	You aware of those?
	Yeah, no.
	In terms of biological weapons research, there certainly are, I think now, well-known and well-accepted, you know, evidence that these experiments were done in various places, including...
	Are you from California, your show?
	Well, I'm in Nevada.
	I'm 8.8 miles from California.
	Oh, you're near Biological Weapons Research there anyway, both in Utah and California, but there were experiments in San Francisco where, unbeknownst to the people there, there were bacteria released to see how much they'd spread, etc., with the potential dangers that people weren't aware of.
	And these have come out, I believe, because records were finally released under the Freedom of Information Act to discover this.
	So there certainly have been times, and it's not ancient history by any means, where at some level in our government and at some level of scientific experimentation, people went ahead and did things that, unbeknownst to the people, that had potential dangers.
	We also know about experimentation with LSD with what the impact on people was where people were given LSD and they didn't know they were being given LSD and sometimes serious consequences.
	There was a fairly recent, almost oops, I remember there was a 60 Minutes piece just a few years ago about the Reston, Virginia situation.
	I'm sure you Uh, recall that, uh, in, in, in which, um, uh, a bunch of monkeys, uh, started to die, uh, in, in, in Reston, um, Simeon anyway, and, uh, of AIDS, and, um, they, it was airborne.
	Uh, they determined it was airborne AIDS, which was scary as hell, and, uh, at the end of the piece on 60 Minutes, they had a scientist, perhaps like yourself, come on, and, and he said a very startling thing.
	He said, He said, you know, it was this close, and he held his fingers as close as you could get him.
	He said, one little tiny genetic switch, if it had been just the other way, we'd have had airborne AIDS for humans.
	That's how close it was.
	He said, was it contained?
	Well, in the report they showed, you know, a guy came out and threw up on the lawn.
	Now, that's not serious containment, from my point of view, or theirs.
	So, you know, you could get very close to something awful like that.
	Yeah, I can't really.
	I don't know the particular case, but I'm not sure about the genetic switch.
	It's certainly possible.
	I mean, AIDS has appeared suddenly as this widespread disease, whereas it wasn't a long time ago, and it's quite possible.
	The reason that's happened is evolution of the virus itself, which we know evolves very rapidly.
	It has a I talked before about how mutation is the fuel of evolution, and the HIV virus, the AIDS virus, is one that mutates with an extraordinary rate.
	That's one of the reasons it's been so hard to fight it.
	Yes, well, should it decide to evolve into a flying machine, that'd be bad for us, wouldn't it?
	Absolutely.
	All right.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Professor Beckwith.
	Good morning.
	Hi, Dr. Beckwith.
	I was wondering about the part of the genome that they know nothing about.
	I guess they've been calling it the junk DNA.
	And I wondered, are they working on it?
	Can they work on it?
	Well, the question is how to work on it.
	And I think they have the complete sequence of most of what they call junk DNA.
	Junk for want of a better word, I think, as you're putting it.
	Is that a bad word, junk DNA?
	I mean, is it really junk DNA?
	I think if you believe in evolution as firmly as most scientists do, you would not consider it junk DNA, but it's there for a purpose.
	What that purpose is, is really totally unclear at this point, and in terms of understanding what it does, I think part of it Part of the approach is to compare the genome of humans to the genome of other organisms and see what their proportion of junk DNA is.
	And is there somebody doing that now?
	Well, for instance, they've just come out.
	I don't think they're doing it entirely for that purpose.
	They're doing it for other reasons too, but the mouse genome has come out and more and more organisms are going to be sequenced.
	Again, the pace of The development of machines that will sequence DNA and the pace of development of computer programs that can digest the information and give you back interpretations of information is constantly increasing and it's making it easier and easier to do genomes.
	I mean, when this first started only like 13 or 14 years ago, people wondered whether they could really get it done in 15 years, whether it wasn't going to be more like 50 years.
	And they got it done much earlier than they thought.
	That is, they got the human genome sequence done much earlier.
	Now you can send a bacteria to like Craig Venter's old firm and get the bacteria, probably DNA sequence completely, the whole genome in a week.
	Wow.
	So it's moving very rapidly.
	And I think certainly for the evolutionists, it's going to be fascinating information.
	And what percentage?
	of this genome was unknown, I guess, or a different word.
	Or how much junk DNA is in it.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	You mean in the mouse?
	You mean?
	In the human genome.
	Yeah.
	Oh, the human genome.
	Well, it's the majority of the DNA, but I don't.
	Oh my.
	Yeah.
	Is it really?
	Yeah, it's a huge part of the DNA.
	Have we observed any of our DNA in modern science becoming junk DNA?
	Uh, well, it's interesting.
	There are things we don't understand, like genes that look like other genes.
	For instance, hemoglobin is part of our blood, and there are genes for hemoglobin, and there are other genes for hemoglobin that don't seem to function at all.
	But they've got the sequence, maybe with one mutation in them.
	What's going on there is not quite clear.
	Did they just recently pick up the mutation?
	Why haven't we lost it?
	You know, the idea of evolution is you get rid of things, in fact, that are real junk, that they would not be of use to you, and they'd in fact be a disadvantage because you're carrying along this extra DNA.
	Well, it's always a problem that evolutionists have had, and that's proving that evolution is an ongoing process.
	Right.
	You know, if we document junk DNA, it seems like we'd be on our way.
	On the international line, you're on the air with Professor Beckwith.
	Where are you, please?
	I have an explanation for you regarding why it would be necessary to keep DNA from people on death row.
	Okay.
	Okay, well, it goes basically like this.
	If you've got a killer, and he's been killed and buried, whatever, Uh, what happens if later on you then have a dead body somewhere?
	Well, not sort of then.
	Uh, somebody's been killed in the past.
	There's been ongoing investigations.
	They're not all going to be cleared up.
	They may need a DNA match to find out if this person, they're not going to be able to punish him once they've killed him.
	But they could eliminate other suspects if they've got his DNA.
	That's a very good point.
	That's a wonderful example.
	I was just thinking about this.
	I don't know if people everywhere are familiar with this case of the woman who is, the jogger who was raped and nearly beaten in New York.
	Central Park, yes, of course.
	And four other individuals were arrested.
	I think it was four or more.
	Arrested and sentenced and convicted and sent to prison for that that attack and recently someone else has confessed whose DNA was shown to be consistent with the rape of this woman and he confessed and there's evidence that in fact he was responsible for it and that person was actually in the meantime convicted of killing someone else and conceivably could have been put to death hasn't been put to death but could have been so I think that's a wonderful I don't know if it's wonderful, that's quite a nice word for it, but a suggestion as to how that might be useful.
	Now, I do believe, actually, there have been a number of people released from death row, a rather concerning thing, as a result of a DNA analysis.
	Yeah, it's rather, to me, rather extraordinary how many cases there are of that happening.
	Very concerning, yes.
	But that's only the beginning of the use of this technology.
	I mean, it's almost blunderbuss, isn't it?
	Even though it's fantastic that we're able to do that, it's blunderbuss stuff compared to what we're going to be able to do when we really decode how it all works.
	Not just the genome itself, but the combinations.
	Right.
	Well, you know, there are I mean, in some cases they're supposedly safeguards.
	I mean, people have really been very concerned about taking the DNA of everyone who's in the military or taking DNA of people such as people on death row or other places.
	And the military and the police argue that it's only going to be used for...
	Those would be safeguards in America, but you know the Chinese, they don't work things the same way.
	In fact, the Chinese line people up and shoot them for the organs.
	We'll be right back.
	Professor John Beckwith is my guest.
	Yeah.
	Do we have those kind of safeguards?
	Probably.
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	This is Coast to Coast AM, with Art Bell, from the Kingdom of Nine.
	That would be the place, and I'd be the one.
	Professor John Beckwith is my guest, Harvard University professor.
	We're talking about genetics.
	That would be all of us, actually, that we're talking about, and he'll be right back.
	All right, once again, Professor John Beckwith, Professor of Physics.
	Professor, welcome back.
	By the way, have you published anything our audience should know about?
	Well, I've just published a book, which is entitled, Genes Making Waves, A Social Activist in Science.
	I hope the book does a lot of things.
	In part, it's directed towards students of science.
	urging them to be socially responsible and to take more responsibility for the consequences of science, but I think it also describes a lot of how science works and how it works in different laboratories, what the environment is within science and also goes into some of the controversies I've been involved in that surround genetics, including the isolation of the gene back in the 1960s and some of the genetic screening programs that I was critical
	of and one of the major issues I focused on which is genes and human behavior and whether
	we really know enough about it and how the kind of information from that field has been
	used in what I would call destructive ways in the past.
	Your book, I take it, available on Amazon.com and all the usual?
	Yes.
	Wonderful.
	And the title again, please?
	It's Making Genes, Making Waves, a Social Activist in Science.
	What drives people like you to spend a lifetime in a laboratory?
	People like me may not be representative of everyone, but I'm certainly representative of some fraction of scientists.
	And I love science.
	I love being able to solve problems and solve problems that have some relationship to life.
	And basically, I think it's fundamental curiosity.
	I've stayed pretty much all my life a basic scientist even though basic science often
	gets translated into practical consequences. My true love is not necessarily the practical
	consequences, that's kind of a bonus, but rather understanding how a process works in
	cells. In the background always is the knowledge that the more you know about how life works,
	the more use that may be to society and also as we've talked about the more problems it
	may create. So it's a funny kind of mixed feeling I've had about science, but I feel
	that by involving myself in talking out in public about the consequences of genetic research
	as well as its benefits, that's enough to satisfy me.
	Professor, before you began to speak out, when you were involved purely in lab work, was there ever a moment that anybody within our government came to you suggesting that You could be of great assistance to our government.
	That's going way back.
	Yes.
	I don't offhand remember a case of that sort.
	You probably would, wouldn't you?
	That's happened, yeah.
	Okay, first time caller line, you're on the air with Professor Beckwith.
	Hello.
	Hi, this is Chuck calling from Monroe, Washington.
	Yes, Chuck.
	Listening on the wonderful Bluetorx KVI-570.
	Yes, sir.
	I have a question about the Genome at Home project, the distributing computer application.
	Oh, Genome at Home.
	You mean kind of like SETI at Home, where people use their personal computers processing power for the larger good?
	Exactly.
	It's not a kit that you can sequence your own DNA though, is it?
	No, what it does is it takes work units from Stanford University, processes them and adds them to what they believe to be the normal process for evolution.
	Are you familiar with that at all?
	No I'm not.
	What is your question about it?
	I can imagine some very interesting consequences of that.
	Exactly, that's what my point is.
	I've been running it for about 18 months now and Art Bell actually has a rather large group of folks.
	He has his own team of which I'm one of them.
	We just get work units from Stanford University and they process them and they make proteins.
	They design their own proteins.
	Well, I had an interesting discussion with people the other night where we'd come across an article that was suggesting that one of the consequences of having this information available in that way is that it will kind of reunite the scientific researcher from universities and institutes and companies with People at home actually discovering things also on their own.
	And it seems to me that's a real possibility.
	I don't know if that's the kind of thing you're thinking about, but... Yes, it is, I believe.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I think that's a fascinating possibility, and tying in the public much more closely with scientific research than anything that's happened in a very long time.
	Well, I guess it's a way people can feel part of it all, huh?
	I also think it's conceivable, given the nature of the beast that, I shouldn't have used the
	word beast, but given the nature of this area of science, that people, individuals at home
	using computers and analyzing data will come across things that scientists in their laboratories
	haven't come across.
	Ah, interesting that you would be familiar with the phrase beast and associate it with this work.
	Sorry about that.
	Well, make a comment.
	I mean, do you perhaps subliminally in some way associate the two?
	You mean with the genome science itself?
	Yes, yes.
	No, I don't.
	science itself? Yes, yes. No, I don't. No, I think it's, it's, I, you know, I have, as
	I've said, I have these very mixed feelings.
	On the one hand, I think the information that's coming out is fascinating.
	I point to things like understanding historical migrations of people throughout the world and our origins, and I think that's fascinating, as well as all the basic scientific information.
	But the information is coming out very fast.
	You know, there's one of my scientific colleagues over at Harvard who has publicly and repeatedly stated that eventually all of us will be able to carry around a compact disc in our purses or in our wallets or whatever, which will have our complete genome sequence on it, and with a list of all the potential diseases that we might have one or another degree of risk to, and who knows what other kind of information.
	Maybe that's, at least for a while, could be the beastly part of it because it's kind
	of information overload.
	It's a...
	Yeah, how long will the beastly part of it be with us before...
	I mean, there's this big gap between the unraveling of the human genome and that brings with it,
	of course, tests, for example, for all of these diseases or many diseases.
	More and more you hear about every day.
	It's in the news.
	And then, but this big gap between that and when we can begin to genetically treat these
	diseases, such a big gap.
	That's going to be a big beast, isn't it?
	Yeah, it's a pretty serious problem.
	And I think that it's not that we're not discussing it and the genome people aren't aware of this,
	but one of the issues, first of all, is that...
	These are one of the few kinds of products of the genome that really are potentially marketable by companies, and a lot of companies are developing these genetic tests for the market and pushing them, which is, you know, they want to make money on this new technology, but who's going to help the people understand what that knowledge means and how much will it be misrepresented?
	People are confronted today with, for example, you take, excuse me, Take the case of Huntington's disease, which is a relatively predictable disease from a genetic test.
	At some stage in your life you're going to come down with this and it's going to be a rather unpleasant degenerative disease.
	So you could take a test when you're 5 years old, 10 years old, 15 years old that will tell you that perhaps around the age of 40 or so you're going to start to develop this disease.
	Do you really want to know that?
	How do you handle that information?
	Sorry?
	I'm sorry, no, I didn't mean to interrupt you.
	I was about to ask if, aren't we pretty close to the same sort of thing for Alzheimer's, a devastating disease?
	Yeah, there are some instances of, it's not so clear cut, but there are at least one case of a marker where, on the chromosome, where you can say to somebody that you have an increased risk.
	It's not quite as, anywhere near as strongly predictable as Huntington's disease.
	But, you know, that kind of thing is coming.
	And, uh, you know, people who've been, even the woman who is a researcher who's largely responsible for the project that led to the mapping the Huntington gene announced when the test came out that she didn't want to be tested, her own family at Huntington.
	No, indeed.
	I mean, I understand that.
	Um, would you, if you had some history, um, and had the opportunity to take that test, Would you do so?
	Because, I mean, there really is a strong probability that if it comes back positive, you're going to modify your life to the extent that you're not going to be productive anymore.
	I mean, you're going to just go, I've had it, you know, and I'm going to, I don't know.
	Right.
	It depends upon the person and personality.
	I mean, I've seen documentaries where they've interviewed a lot of people, some of whom wouldn't be tested.
	Some would.
	They said they wanted to plan for their children and all this kind of thing.
	The ones who did It depends upon the people.
	I'll point out it's interesting.
	One of the things that's becoming clear and I've tried to talk a bit about the complexity of genetic disease is the genes were found by looking in families where there was a strong indication that it was a heritable trait.
	I'm talking about almost any disease.
	And then the assumption was made since in those families it was strongly heritable that it would be true in every family.
	And that turns out not to be the case.
	I mean, even in Huntington's disease, a small fraction of the people live basically into their 90s without ever suffering from the disease.
	But these are small, small fractions.
	And that's an extreme case.
	But Huntington's is always considered one of the most determinant of diseases.
	That is, if you have the gene, you've got it.
	A small fraction there don't get it.
	But the same thing has come up with screening for breast cancer.
	They started out looking in families where there was a high prevalence of the disease
	and found that in certain families the women who developed the breast cancer had this particular
	mutation and it was assumed at the time that therefore everyone who carried the mutation
	had the same risk, very high risk of getting breast cancer.
	But now they've gone out in the general population and found many women who carry this mutation
	who never get breast cancer.
	My God, you know a couple of years ago, maybe not even that long, I remember some women
	who based on a genetic test went out and had full mastectomies.
	Mastectomy, yeah.
	Incredible.
	Right.
	If you were given an opportunity to counsel such a woman, what would you have told her?
	Well, I think what is now the standard and that can change is that if you are a member
	of a family where there's a strong history of breast cancer.
	Then your risk is, and you carry that breast cancer mutation, then there's a very high probability that you would get breast cancer.
	And then you have the choice of knowing that you will have some degree of protection by having a mastectomy.
	You know, counseling and advising these days is supposed to be non-directive.
	You supposedly give information and then allow the patients themselves to make the choice.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Professor Beckwith.
	Good morning.
	Yes, this is Dr. Bishop in Omaha.
	Yes, sir.
	And I was... I had a question.
	Go ahead.
	First, I'd like to say that I've heard of a new neural net optical computer that the military has.
	It's one of those cases where the government has not put the technology out yet.
	Neural net optical computer.
	Optical neural net computer that can handle billions of variables at the speed of light.
	May well be.
	In any case, my question was primarily on the junk DNA, and going back to that, isn't about 90% of our DNA what they consider junk?
	I believe that's the figure.
	I said a majority.
	I couldn't remember the exact figure, but I believe it's around 90%.
	Wow.
	My question is, are we de-evolving here?
	Because we used to, as I understand it, live to be 900 years old.
	That's what the Bible said, yes.
	Well, I don't have the hard scientific evidence at hand on that, so I'd make a statement.
	I'm not sure I would make a statement.
	Well, about 900 year old men and a...
	Is the promise though of longevity fairly close in as we consider genetic science leaping forward?
	I would say that's up in the air.
	Really?
	Again, this is not a subject I'm deeply knowledgeable in, but from my readings in that area, it seems to me there are lots of questions raised about the feasibility of it.
	There are companies, like there's a company called Geron, G-E-R-O-N, like Gerontology, one of whose major goals has been to develop anti-aging genetic therapies of various sorts.
	Do you know whether we have discovered, or at least to some degree, the little switch
	or the fuse?
	I know there's the telomeres and I don't know a whole lot more about it, but I know somewhere
	in the genetic code there's probably something that says we will get older, we will, cells
	will begin to die faster than they regenerate.
	Well, I think there's more than one.
	I think telomeres was one of the first to be suggested to be the switch, and now I think other groups have suggested other components, so that's why I think it's still, you know, a questionable area.
	My question was also about longevity, possibly even eternal longevity.
	with Professor Beckwith, not a lot of time. Hello.
	Rocky in St. Paul. Yes sir.
	My question was also about longevity, possibly even eternal longevity. What if a guy could have his body,
	you know, cloned as it were, and then recently haven't...
	Haven't they switched heads on monkeys and they survived that?
	So could I have a 19-year-old body whipped up maybe 10 years from now and switch my head
	onto that fresh body?
	You're really getting outside my expertise in terms of switching bodies.
	The cloning thing, I would argue that the expectation that cloning yourself is going
	to be yourself certainly and have the same thoughts as you, etc.
	that are a very, very questionable prospect. We have just basically no reason to think
	that an individual who's cloned from another individual's DNA is going to have anywhere
	near the same life course that the original individual had.
	But we're going to find out pretty soon, aren't we?
	Probably. Would you, Professor, be shocked if in fact an exact clone was an exact clone? In other
	words, as the clone grew, it did have the same thoughts and life pattern and all the rest of
	it.
	Would that be shocking to you or not?
	Overall, I would say, if you're talking about the complete characteristics, I would be shocked.
	I can imagine there are certain things that could be similar or very much the same.
	But I still think that we are all a product of our genes and our environment.
	People who grow up at different times in the history of the world, grow up in the 30s or
	the 50s or the 70s or the 90s, I think are going to have very different experiences that
	influence...
	I mean for instance, I don't know why I think of this, but I grew up studying and doing
	all my work never listening to music, which everyone listens to today, doing everything.
	I don't understand how people even function listening to music.
	And I'm sure that has a very different influence on people than not having music.
	There are so many different aspects of our family life and our societal life that have
	changed that I...
	I'm sure there'll be changes.
	I mean, people, for instance, there may be a genetic basis for perfect pitch in music.
	That's one that's always pointed out.
	Well, I sure don't have it.
	And this music that you hear means that our program's over.
	It has been such a pleasure to have you on.
	Brilliant mind, and Professor, I don't know how to thank you for coming on the air tonight.
	Well, it was fun.
	It was fun.
	And I hope everybody will go grab your book and read more about it.
	OK, thank you very much.
	Good night.
	Good night.
	That's it, folks.
	That's Professor Beckwith, somebody I really wanted to have on the air.
	I'm very, very glad he came on.
	A great mind in genetics in this country from the high desert.
	I'm Art Bell.

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