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May 2, 2004 - Art Bell

02:52:05

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Bryan Sykes - Male Extinction

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	From the high desert in the great American southwest, a man is on the hunt for a new home.
	He's a man who's been looking for a home for the last three years.
	All of them covered thoroughly indeed by this program, Coast to Coast AM.
	I'm Art Bell.
	It's great to be here.
	An honor to be with you on the weekend this night.
	We will interview somebody that I've been dying to interview for, I don't know, four or five months at least.
	It was about four or five months ago that a total bombshell of a story broke on the news wires.
	It was on all the networks.
	You may remember it said, a researcher has discovered that the Y chromosome, the male chromosome, It's deteriorating!
	It's... It's... It's falling apart!
	And in another 100,000 years or whatever, there'll be no more of us guys.
	That's it!
	We're gone!
	No more men in the world!
	That is one researcher's view.
	His name is, uh... Brian Sykes.
	And we're gonna have him on in the next hour.
	11 o'clock Pacific Time.
	And, uh...
	I've got his book here.
	It's called Adam's Curse.
	That's an appropriate name for a book like that.
	Adam's Curse, huh?
	It is like a curse.
	Eventually, you are no more.
	I think he's down in Australia or somewhere like that.
	Let's see.
	I don't know.
	Maybe Great Britain.
	I don't know.
	Anyway, he's far away somewhere, and we'll be calling him in the next hour.
	This hour, we'll have open lines and a few things that I've got that I want to run by you.
	News-wise, in a daring escape, an American hostage in Iraq, Thomas Hamill just pried open the doors of the house where he was being held and walked out virtually into the arms of U.S.
	troops.
	And, you know, I had seen some video of this guy, Thomas Hamill, and I thought when I saw him, they had a shot, you may have seen it, On CNN or something of him in a car, and I thought, you know, he looks like CIA or Special Forces or something, but they say he was just an American cop.
	Well, so, you know, I'm not saying he's CIA.
	I'm just saying he kind of had that look to him like he was one tough mama of a guy.
	Anyway, he walked right out and he's now free.
	Not a good day in Iraq.
	There aren't many of those lately at all.
	Matter of fact, make that 11 Americans died at the hands of insurgents again.
	And the numbers are going up at an extremely concerning rate for the administration.
	And of course there was a big hoo-ha over the nightline business the other night.
	And now the story about torture.
	Diya al-Shuhiri spent several stints in Baghdad's notorious prison, twice under Saddam Hussein's rule, once under American.
	He prefers Saddam's torture to ours, I guess.
	Says he was stripped naked by American guards, told the Associated Press all kinds of things were done to him.
	General Richard Myers said Sunday, on the other hand, there is no evidence of systematic abuse, and the actions of just a handful have unfairly tainted all American forces.
	Torture.
	You know, the Egyptians worshipped cats as great intellectual deities.
	As towers of intellectualism, the Egyptians really did think cats were very smart, very intelligent.
	And you know, there's really, there's only two mammals that torture humans and cats.
	You ever thought about that?
	Have you ever watched a cat with a mouse or anything else?
	I wonder if it is in our nature.
	There's a lot working on both sides.
	You know, they really hate us, the radical Islamists.
	They want us dead.
	They certainly proved that, didn't they?
	And a lot of Americans have a lot of very serious memories about September 11th.
	You know, nobody ever endorses torture.
	You might understand some of the emotions that the American captors may have gone through if there was some of that.
	Anyway, that's an interesting note and something for you to consider really hard, that only two mammals on earth really torture, and that would be humans and cats.
	I'm not sure if that says a lot for us, or a lot for cats, or less for the two groups.
	For financially oppressed consumers, it's coming down to a choice between spending on gasoline or groceries.
	What do you think they're choosing?
	Well, so far gasoline is winning.
	This is from a food industry analysis.
	Given the economic environment, it is not surprising that more shoppers are buying food today in discount stores And other low-priced venues than ever before, so they're spending their money where?
	On gasoline.
	But I guess that'll reach a balance at some point, won't it?
	We'll be right back.
	I thought this of possible interest to you.
	to you.
	It certainly was me.
	Two crashes in a row.
	Can you believe that?
	That happened last night.
	First time out of the shoot each time.
	That's very interesting.
	What do you think would happen if E.T.
	arrived?
	Well, there's something actually known about that.
	Let me read you a little bit of this.
	It's a wonderful article by Jim Wilson, who I think wrote it for Popular Mechanics.
	I can't be sure about that.
	I think, yes, yes, Popular Mechanics, probably the cover story.
	Within the scientific community, the question is no longer whether extraterrestrial life exists, but if E.T.
	is smart enough to do long division Scientists are of two minds regarding the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence.
	Skeptics acknowledge simple life forms might be found on other planets, but insist intelligent life is unique to Earth.
	Their belief is based on the assumption that Earth possesses unique physical attributes, including a magnetic field that deflects cosmic rays and a moon that absorbs asteroids together.
	These protective features make Earth a rare safe harbor.
	One that nurtured the evolution of primitive life forms into intelligent beings that... Well, I won't say it.
	The opposing camp sees the prospect for discovering alien life in more mathematical terms.
	It's touchstone, the Drake Equation, which links the probability of discovering extraterrestrial intelligence to factors such as the size of the universe, the number of stars, with Earth-like planets, with the discovery of each new planet beyond Earth's solar system, there are now more than 100.
	The odds of encountering intelligence, uh, increase.
	Governments and international organizations about the world have taken notice of the changing odds.
	No governmental official has gone on record yet claiming that UFOs are real, let alone a threat, yet with little public fanfare.
	Check this out, folks.
	They have, in fact, begun preparing for The single most important event in human history.
	First Contact.
	That is the moment Earthlings discover incontrovertible proof that they are not alone.
	Unless E.T.
	materializes from another dimension in the middle of the Super Bowl, humans most likely are going to have some advance warning of arrival.
	How much time we get to straighten up for extraterrestrial company depends on who spots E.T.
	first.
	The privately funded SETI Institute uses radio telescopes owned by observatories around the world to sweep the sky for signals broadcast by advanced civilizations.
	If E.T.
	has read Emily Post or her intergalactic equivalent and calls ahead, we could have years or decades or longer to prepare for first contact.
	Unfortunately, the current SETI Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Project can afford to look only at small swatches of the sky, so any extraterrestrial courtesy calls probably are going to be missed.
	In fact, a more likely scenario is that the U.S.
	Air Force would spot ET spacecraft as it traversed the void between Earth and the Moon using powerful radar and optical telescopes in Hawaii, Greenland, Florida, the Indian Ocean, The Air Force Space Command tracks satellites, monitors missile launches, and spots baseball and larger-sized bits of orbiting debris with the hope of preventing any accidents, of course.
	But in fact, if VT turns up on Space Command's radar, that would mean alien visitors are hours, or perhaps even just minutes, away.
	So, what would happen?
	The broad brush outline for Earth's response to the first alien encounter is set out in an international agreement called the Declaration of Principles Concerning Activities Following the Detection of Extraterrestrial Intelligence, written by a committee of scientists organized by the SETI Institute.
	The declaration spells out what astronomers should do and what they should avoid doing immediately after first contact.
	The most surprising, now you listen to me very carefully here, the most surprising aspect of the agreement is that astronomers who sign on to the declaration agree to keep the news of any imminent contact under their hat until the astronomy community and authorities have been notified.
	Now, how many times have you heard me interviewing Seth Shostak when he has said, It would get out, and sure enough, in this article, they actually do cover that aspect, that, you know, it might, uh, the publicity might, uh, it might break, somebody might leak it or something, but really, the fact of the matter is, and Seth has never told me this, they sign something that says, oh no, goes first to the other astronomers, then the authorities.
	Now, authorities would cover a whole lot of ground, wouldn't it?
	I'm not gonna... I obviously have time to read all of this, and you should pick up, you know, a copy of Popular Mechanics and read this very long article, but oh my, what would happen if they got here?
	The question of how humanity might react to its first contact with intelligent aliens was officially raised in the late 1950s by the then newly created National Aeronautics and Space Administration, our lovable NASA.
	Curious as to how discoveries about the origin of the universe might affect society as a whole, NASA contracted with, of course, the famous Brookings Institute.
	And I need not cover that because you know what Brookings has pretty much said, how it would upset the apple cart here on Earth and so forth.
	If E.T.
	turns up at NASA's doorstep bearing an invitation, you know, the one we sent out in a spacecraft, it's in for a bit of a surprise.
	Instead of getting a handshake from the head of NASA, Wouldn't that be nice?
	It will instead be handcuffed by an FBI agent, dressed in a biosafety level 4 suit!
	Instead of sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom, as you might expect at the White House, why, this alien will be whisked away to the Department of Agriculture's Animal Disease Center on Plum Island, off the coast of New York, Long Island, where it will be poked and probed by doctors from the National Institutes of Health.
	A Department of Energy, or DOE, a nuclear emergency search team, NEST, a NEST team they're called, will tow away its spacecraft like it had been parked by a hydrant.
	Unfriendly as this welcome may seem, it is the chain of events that would most likely follow any visitor's arrival, and there's so much more to this article, so I suggest you pick up a copy of Popular Mechanics, a kind of Squashes the, you know, the concept of the cheering, welcoming crowds.
	The handshake from, well, yeah, you know, the head of NASA, then the President of the United States, and other world leaders, and a cheery event.
	Oh, no, it's off to Plum Island and Needles.
	Hmm, yi yi.
	Oh, let's see.
	Oh, here's something else NASA's up to.
	Maybe.
	In the First World War, frontline troops who were away from their loved ones for long periods famously had bromide put into their tea, which does roughly the opposite of a lot of what your email suggests those little pills do.
	In other words, it reduces the distraction of any females around.
	You just aren't interested.
	But yesterday it was suggested such measures might We've taken a lot further, in fact, all the way to Mars.
	Dr. Rachel Armstrong, speaking yesterday at a British Interplanetary Society symposium on the, uh, on human future in space, said that the U.S.
	space agency, NASA, was considering how to deal with the natural urges of astronauts traveling on long journeys, such as a three-year trip to Mars, where the six-strong crew would likely be including two women.
	NASA's talking about the chemical sterilization of astronauts on longer journeys.
	I don't know.
	NASA was non-pulsed by the suggestion yesterday.
	I haven't heard anything about it, said a spokesman at NASA's Johnson Space Center, where the long-range trips announced by our president in January are now being planned.
	But the denial may hide a reluctance.
	In a nation like ours, where the showing of a nipple on national television... Oh, what that did.
	There was religious outcry.
	There was FCC action.
	I mean, we are... We're... I don't know.
	We're not exactly Victorian, but we're not exactly that far away from it either.
	So, NASA doesn't even like to talk about stuff like this.
	But I guess it could be an issue, right?
	I mean, you've got several men up there with the right stuff, and women, and they've got a long journey to make.
	I mean, what, 18 months possibly?
	Or even if it got down to six months there and six months back, that's still a long, long journey.
	Maybe this is our future.
	Florida.
	It's Manalapan or something like that, Florida Associated Press.
	One of the nation's wealthiest towns is soon going to have cameras and computers running background checks on every single car and driver that passes through.
	The police chief there, a fellow named Clay Walker, said cameras are going to take infrared photos recording a car's tag number Then, software will automatically run the numbers through law enforcement databases.
	A 9-11 dispatcher is alerted should car be stolen or is the subject of a be on the lookout for kind of warning.
	Next to the tag number, police will have a picture of the driver.
	Taken with another set of cameras.
	Upgraded versions of the standard surveillance cameras already in place, but this baby will nail your face.
	And if there's a robbery, police will be able to comb records to determine who drove through town on any given afternoon or evening.
	In other words, the courts have ruled that in a public area you have no expectation of privacy, said Walker.
	One of 11 sworn officers who protects that town's 321 residents still, Walker says, their data will be destroyed every three months.
	Hmm.
	The town council authorized $60,000 in security upgrades last week after three burglaries this winter robbed residents of $400,000 in jewelry.
	Oh, it is a rich town.
	The town averages two or three burglaries per year, and residents demanded something happen fast, and this is what they're doing.
	So, there's gonna be cameras literally everywhere.
	You would not be able to go through this town without them having a picture of your car.
	Your license plate and your face!
	And I remember, you know, just a couple years ago going to the Super Bowl and I was the unwitting guinea pig, along with everybody else who went to that Super Bowl, of the nation's first large mass attempt at taking everybody's picture!
	And they had computers there and they were looking for felons.
	Now, Nobody, as far as I know, was arrested.
	Nobody got arrested, actually, because of that.
	Even if the alarm bells went off and all the rest of it.
	It was merely an experiment to see if they could reasonably do it.
	And I think that what we're seeing here in this story is the perfection or the near perfection of this system.
	So, I guess Big Brother is just about here.
	It's just about Orwell time, folks.
	When they can point a camera at you in your car, and they can know everything about you in a couple of seconds flat, there's nowhere to run.
	Even though this would be a very large country.
	I suppose there was a day in America where, by golly, if you had to be on the lam, you could take off!
	But I think that day is ending.
	And I think now we can look forward to the probability, the certainty, the vast certainty that George is out there winking at us right now.
	And that privacy, such as we knew it, is no more.
	That's right.
	They're everywhere.
	And nobody's going to go on the lam.
	Not if somebody wants to find you.
	Very, very different America.
	Isn't it?
	From the high desert in the middle of the night, which is where we do our work and our play, this is Coast to Coast AM.
	I'm Art Bell.
	the storm.
	Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
	Riders on the storm.
	Into this house we're born.
	Into this world we're thrown.
	Hey light, look at me.
	I can see the real me.
	So gently, gently out of my world.
	I wanna fly.
	Suddenly I just wanna fly.
	And I see the real me, and I'm trying to be out of my world.
	I wanna fly, suddenly I just wanna fly.
	I'm flying, I'm flying, like a love that's meant to be. I'm flying, I'm flying, got to tell my lover.
	Take care of us, send me back to where I belong. I'm flying, I'm flying, I'm flying, won't get me wrong.
	You turn around, you find your world, you turn around, you happen to me, and it can happen to you.
	I was sure I'd get to go.
	I didn't know if it would work.
	It all ran out.
	Some of the work had happened.
	Suddenly it just happened.
	I sold my dreams for a pocket worth more.
	To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
	The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
	The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
	To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
	From west of the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
	International callers may reach Art by calling your in-country Sprint Access number,
	pressing option 5 and dialing toll free, 800-893-0903.
	From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
	That would be me.
	Good evening, good morning, whatever.
	It's great to be with you everybody.
	We're in open lines.
	Anything you want to talk about is fair game.
	Unscreened.
	Untouched.
	Unanswered until we get to them.
	That's what it is.
	No net.
	Coming right up.
	Stay right there.
	Look at this.
	I got a fast blast from Lex, who's the webmaster.
	Lex Lonehood.
	Hey, Art, I found that Popular Mechanics article you were reading from and have it posted first under the Hot Stories section, lower right side of the page.
	That's fast.
	All right.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	That didn't work too well.
	Let me try it again.
	East of the Rockies.
	Hello.
	You're on the air.
	This is Bob.
	Hello Bob.
	I believe that if your ice age descends on Europe, as you've predicted, that the Mediterranean could become a freshwater lake, Iraq could become the Eden, a garden, and North Africa would become the breadbasket of the whole portion of that world.
	That's how it might work, Bob.
	Can you imagine Iraqis having the remaining reservoir of oil and fresh water?
	They'd be the richest people in the world.
	Well, I don't know.
	We occupy it, so maybe we'd be.
	Maybe our people over there are smarter than I think they are.
	Maybe, Bob.
	You know, I want to say it again.
	Rush really just went off in a tangent about the movie, The Movie.
	I'm going to tell you a couple things about the movie.
	It's going to grab you, and it's going to grab you from the first second you sit down, and it's not going to let you go.
	It's called The Day After Tomorrow.
	It's coming up.
	You may have begun to see some trailers for it now.
	They're running on television and in movie theaters and that sort of thing.
	It's going to be a big movie.
	And a rush of, you know, Took off really hard on it.
	I mean, you know, he said basically it was an issue nobody cared about.
	That just isn't true.
	Of all the things he said, to have said that, you know, it's an issue people don't care about.
	Our climate, or climate change, or all the rest of that.
	People don't care about it?
	Oh, my goodness.
	That's just not true.
	Anyway, this movie is going to be quite something, ladies and gentlemen.
	It's going to grab you really, really hard.
	Roland Emmerich has done a lot of work, and it's going to be something.
	It's called The Day After Tomorrow, coming up May 28th, nationwide.
	It's from our book.
	I say our book, Whitley Strieber, myself, Art Bell.
	It's called The Coming Global Superstorm, and The Day After Tomorrow is based in part on that book.
	For those of you that have read both, you will see both books, or that book, of course, throughout the movie.
	I warn you, it's one of those movies that is going to leave you absolutely breathless.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Yeah, hi Art.
	Hi.
	How are you doing tonight?
	I'm just spiffy, thank you.
	Good to talk to you.
	I'm Dennis.
	I'm in Phoenix.
	Hey Dennis.
	What I called about is kind of related to that, except it has to do with catastrophic earth changes.
	By the way, I'm looking forward to the movie.
	I'm re-reading Coming Global Superstorm.
	But this evening I was watching part of, this was on cable, it's called 10.5 or 10.5.
	Ah, yes.
	Now, be careful what you tell me here, because I have it on hard drive.
	I detest having to wait.
	And so instead I taped, put on hard drive tonight and will tomorrow night and then watch it all together.
	Well, what I have to say won't I don't want to ruin anything for you.
	Okay.
	Who is it that, he's been a regular guest, the geologist from California who has learned to predict quakes, and he was actually even suspended.
	Oh, he was the county geologist, right, from up in the Bay Area.
	It'll hit me.
	Anyway, I know who you're talking about, yes?
	The movie kind of has to do with some kind of visionary or farsighted geologist there in California.
	They pretty much get treated the same way.
	Whoever wrote that must have been paying attention to your program or him.
	Because those with the foresight pretty much get treated the same way, same reaction.
	Yes.
	Well, messengers are always shot.
	Oh, and the politics and all that stuff, yeah.
	They're always shot.
	Messengers are always shoddy.
	If it's bad news, people don't want to hear bad news.
	Well, it's a funny thing.
	Actually, in a way they do, and in a way they don't.
	It's kind of like going to a horror movie.
	You know, why do you go to a horror movie?
	It's going to scare you.
	You know it's going to scare you, but you want that.
	The thing is to have to live through it, and I strongly believe, I have my reasons, I won't get into them.
	And I was talking to somebody from California today who's moved here.
	And actually, I don't think Phoenix is a safe place.
	I've got my reasons for that.
	I won't belabor this conversation.
	But he said, you know, we're due for a cleaning and, you know, the human race, or at least this country.
	And I says, well, you know, if the populace doesn't do it, I suspect actually Mother Nature will do it before the populace does.
	Well, here's the thing about Mother Nature.
	Mother Nature, kind of like with Justice, is, uh, you could think of her, you know, holding a couple of weights, right?
	And he's right about that.
	Mother Nature doesn't get angry.
	Mother Nature doesn't get mad.
	Mother Nature gets even, is a sort of a way to think about it.
	In other words, if something becomes too far out of balance, then inevitably there's something in nature that will act to correct that balance.
	Simple as that.
	A wild card line?
	You're on the air.
	Hello.
	Good evening, Art.
	Good evening to you.
	Well, this is Pat.
	I'm calling you from Pennsylvania.
	Okay.
	And, Art, do you know how the conventional wisdom is that if extraterrestrial life were proven to absolutely exist, that the The Christian community would be shaken the most?
	No, actually, that's not conventional wisdom, if you're drawing from what Brookings said.
	They suggested that, as unlikely as it might seem, the greatest disturbance would come to science.
	To the scientific community?
	Yes, indeed.
	But I just wanted to relate something that I heard several years ago.
	I was listening to an interview on public television with the Reverend Billy Graham, Ah, yes.
	And in the middle of the interview, out of the blue, he makes a reference to the inhabitants of other planets.
	And the interviewer now picks him up on this, and Art, I was astonished to hear Dr. Graham say that he believes absolutely that extraterrestrials are real and that there are many inhabited planets in our universe.
	That is very interesting.
	I wasn't aware he had said that, but that's fascinating.
	Fascinating.
	And what was his General consensus?
	If I can remember the context correctly, Art.
	They're all God's creatures?
	Yes, and that they might be human and some might not.
	But in any event, he believes that they exist.
	And he spoke it as an absolute, not as a theory.
	Fascinating.
	I would love to read a transcript of what the Riven Graham said.
	I really would.
	I'd love to read that.
	Somebody out there inevitably will have it.
	And by the way, if you want to get something to me, it's not that hard.
	I am reachable.
	And I will give you a little hint, because anybody who gets as many emails, and my emails number in the thousands, many days into the thousands, try and put something in the header That will suggest to me what it's about and how urgent it really is.
	Because I do a kind of, you know, when you get thousands of emails, it's kind of a system of triage.
	And without a header that would attract, then I'm liable to skip over it and regard it as, you know, another little blue pill advertisement.
	So, try and put something in there.
	You can reach me, artbell at minespring.com.
	That's A-R-T-B-E-L-L at Minespring.
	Either one of those will get me.
	First time caller on the line, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Hi, this is Fred calling from Portland, listening to you on WGAN.
	Yes, sir.
	I was just actually calling about, you had a few guests on there before, talking about the speed of gravity.
	Oh, yes.
	And some that thought it was instantaneous, and other ones had other speculation about it.
	Yes.
	I was actually just calling to say they did a study on that not too long ago, involving Jupiter and quasars and things along that line.
	And the scientists were actually able to determine that it works at the speed of light.
	They were?
	Yes.
	There are several studies.
	If you go to google.com, it says the exact thing that they did.
	That's fascinating.
	Absolutely fascinating.
	At the speed of light.
	Confirming again, then I suppose that nothing can exceed the speed of light.
	Or at least supporting that, huh?
	Yes.
	They said if the sun were to immediately just disappear, we'd still follow a trajectory for about 8.3 minutes.
	At which point we'd flap at the tangent.
	There were some studies on it, and they had all the exact information, but... So, we'd have a real hot eight minutes?
	Yes.
	So to speak.
	Alright, well I appreciate the information, and I'll do a little bit of research on it.
	Alright, have a good night.
	You do.
	The speed of gravity.
	Some guests thought it to be instantaneous, and I thought, well then, how would you ever Prove that it was not so, because all matter is presently in existence, and to measure the speed of gravity, which relates to the mass of an object, you would have to create a new mass and then measure its effect from point A to point B, right?
	So I still have questions.
	Wildcard Line, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Yeah, hi.
	Hi.
	Hi, Art.
	Hello.
	Hello.
	Are we on the air now?
	What's your best guess?
	Okay.
	Yeah, a few weeks ago you had a conversation with Sir Charles.
	Oh, yes.
	Regarding the use of satellites to project microwave energy to the Earth.
	Yes, sir.
	For, you know... For energy, yes.
	Right, right.
	Well, I was thinking that that system might be used to power up or to Work to help to power up a space plane as it were if you had two satellites Bracketing the plane on its line of flight Upwards and you had the receiver dishes on port and starboard side in the fuselage You know the SRBs from the in other words you're suggesting that a
	A satellite, collecting energy, instead of beaming it back toward Earth, could project it in a beam to a spacecraft that would then accelerate away from Earth, continuing to use this energy to build its acceleration.
	Right, exactly.
	The SRBs from the shuttle, the solid rocket boosters, they burn powdered aluminum, and the method of their ignition Yes.
	Well, that's fascinating.
	I appreciate the call, and I wonder if we might not look into that a little bit.
	I wonder if NASA's looked into it.
	I was reasoning that perhaps the more voltage you had at hand, the less powdered aluminum
	you would burn and consequently the greater distance you could cover.
	Well, that's fascinating.
	I appreciate the call and I wonder if we might not look into that a little bit.
	I wonder if NASA has looked into it.
	It's really an intriguing idea.
	He was talking first of the concept of beaming energy back to Earth, collecting it with large
	solar collectors in some sort of a fixed orbit and then beaming them back to Earth, you know,
	with collectors on the ground.
	Instead, he is suggesting this as a means of propulsion, virtually of propulsion, of pushing a craft away from Earth.
	An intriguing idea, and perhaps a way with enough energy to accelerate to very great speeds.
	Hmm.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hello, Art.
	Hello.
	This is Experiment 6260, and how you doing?
	Why would you call yourself an experiment?
	Well, like when I talked to you the last time with John Lear on the phone, about how we're all experiment and we're just vessels.
	Ah, yes.
	So anyway, did you see the latest headlines about the robots?
	That they're, uh, they want to build for the moon.
	And to fix the space shuttle.
	Or the space, uh... The telescope?
	Yeah.
	The Hubble?
	Yes.
	Oh, yes, I did see that.
	You know they used that, uh, they used, uh, the hip, the ginger, uh, the, you know, Segway?
	Yes.
	The bottom of the Segway for the part of the robot.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	They got it, showed a picture of it here, and it looks like, I don't know, looks like a, they call it a Robonaut.
	Robonaut, that's pretty good.
	Yeah, it looks pretty cool.
	Looks like a robot with a base like the Segway.
	Well, they've got a lot of work to do with robots to get them really Really, where are we?
	You know, robots by now, we're supposed to be doing everything for us.
	The dishes, everything, and this hasn't happened.
	It's very disappointing.
	Just like you, I've been waiting for that.
	Weren't we promised that back in 2000?
	We sure were.
	Well, we were promised that back in the 50s.
	Of course!
	You grew up in the same era I did.
	Come on, I want my jet pack, I want my flying car, and I want my robot.
	You got it.
	That's right.
	Where are the flying cars?
	Exactly.
	I'm going like, come on, it's supposed to be back to future time already.
	Extremely disappointing.
	Well, you have a good night, Art.
	You too, sir.
	Take care.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Hello, this is Olin in Culver City, California.
	Yes, Olin.
	Yes, the reason that Red China is underselling everybody since 1995 Is because Red China is giving away 8.27 Yuan per dollar, when the dollar is only worth about 5 Yuan.
	Red China is using slave labor to build up their military-industrial complex.
	You mean kind of like we did?
	Well, but they're in continuing violation of the Gap Treaty, which... Well, you know what though?
	I think a lot of nations in their uh... infancy have used what amounts to slave labor one way or the other you can think of it that way well don't you don't you think i mean really uh... that america did some of that we we we did have slavery didn't we well yeah and then that slavery bill a lot of early america didn't well they also had indentured servants from uh... great britain and europe so uh... yeah i mean i'm just saying it kind of
	It's one of those evolutionary things, that it's not laudable, but it seems to be just almost universally true.
	Well, selling low to get started is a good practice, but unfortunately we are under fascist economic attack to de-industrialize America and bankrupt the American government.
	Yeah, that was last night's guest, and he makes point that we're pretty much well on the way toward that now, huh?
	Well, that's right.
	When Red China sells out the treasury bonds and notes that they're holding, they'll bankrupt the American government.
	As a matter of fact, Red China is dumping cheap foreign goods made by slave labor and concentration camps all over the world.
	Dropping their goods all over the world.
	Yeah, I know.
	I know.
	And I don't know exactly what to do about it.
	I mean, jobs are being outsourced.
	A lot of times when you call for tech support or something these days, it's incredible.
	It's like you'll get some guy and you'll notice an accent and maybe halfway through the conversation that you're straining to have, you'll say, hey, where are you?
	Oh, Bangladesh?
	Pakistan?
	India?
	Yeah, I mean, it's amazing what's going on.
	Well, the problem here is that we're being de-industrialized by a fascist dictatorship with slave labor.
	And when they lower the boom by dropping that 8.27 wands per dollar and let the wand float, which they're supposed to do according to the GATT Treaty, Well, then the value of the dollar will drop and the prices of all our goods and services will go up because things won't be that cheap anymore.
	You're right.
	It's going to be a rough ride.
	We have a tough economic ride ahead of us.
	And if you listen carefully, again, you know messengers are shot, at least metaphorically.
	I mean, last night's guest kind of painted Fairly dismal picture of our current economic situation with regard to our place in the world right now and what's going on around us.
	Fairly dismal.
	And speaking of dismal pictures, just wait until you hear what's coming up next.
	Dr. Brian Sykes, who's one of the world's, and I really mean this, the world's The foremost geneticist is going to be with us.
	And he contends that it's... Well, it's later than you think, guys.
	Well, actually, it's later than you think for guys.
	In other words, eventually, there will be no more men.
	That's it.
	We're done.
	The Y chromosome is crumbling.
	And that's what makes men.
	From the high deserts, stay right where you are, because we'll be right back.
	Out on the street I was talking to a man, he said, so my brothers never mind.
	One interview changed the...
	I'm stepping into the twilight zone, this is a madhouse, feels like being blown. My wheels are getting pulled on the
	moon and star. Where's my home now that I've gone to the war?
	Now I'm stepping into the twilight zone, this is a madhouse, feels like being blown. My wheels are getting pulled on the
	moon and star. Where's my home now that I've gone to the war?
	I'm still a young girl, when the bullets are gone.
	Ow!
	To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
	The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
	To talk with Art Bell from East of the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
	line is area code 775-727-1222. To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll
	free at 800-825-5033. From west of the Rockies, call Art at 800-618-8255. International callers
	may reach Art Bell by calling your in-country Sprint Access number, pressing option 5, and
	dialing toll free 800-893-0903.
	From coast to coast and worldwide on the Internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
	What a title.
	The book is Adam's Curse, A Future Without Men.
	I'll tell you an interesting story about this in a moment.
	Professor Brian Sykes, Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Oxford, is one of the world's leading geneticists.
	After undertaking medical research into the causes of inherited bone disease, he discovered DNA could survive in ancient bones, and he was the first to report on the recovery of ancient DNA from archaeological bones in the journal Nature in 1989.
	Since then, Professor Sykes has been called in as the leading international authority to examine several high-profile cases, such as the Iceman, Shatterman, and the many individuals claiming to be members of the Russian royal family.
	Remember that controversy?
	Professor Sykes and his research team have, over the last decade, compiled the most Complete DNA family tree of our species, yet available.
	They are the founders of Oxford Ancestors Limited, the world's leading provider of DNA-based services for use in personal ancestry research.
	Now, Adam's Curse, of course, is, well, you may remember, it was several months ago, I absolutely went over the top when I read it.
	It was a newsflash that went around the world!
	That Professor Sykes had discovered that the Y-chromosome was deteriorating, and that a literal truth might be that in a hundred thousand years, or whatever the figure was, I can't recall now, in all the AP and UPI reports, a man would cease to exist.
	Cease to exist!
	There would be no more men.
	In the world.
	And it really caught my attention.
	I said, we have got to find Professor Sykes.
	Well, it was a long journey indeed.
	But we have found him.
	And in such an unlikely place.
	The phone number I called here a little while ago was 01144.
	And then the rest of the number, 44 is designated for England.
	So I was sure I was calling Great Britain.
	And sure enough, it rang.
	It was a long wait, and then it rang.
	And then I got a very cellular type Answer on the other end of the line, and there was Professor Sykes, and I said, oh, gosh, it's a bad connection, you know, transatlantic weight and all that.
	He said, well, why don't you call me here on the local number?
	And I said, OK, what's that?
	And he reels off an area code 206.
	So Professor Sykes is currently in the country.
	He's actually in the Seattle area somewhere, 206.
	And here I had called a transatlantic It was bounce there and bounce back and he was actually in Seattle.
	A wonderful surprise.
	so coming up from seattle in a moment professor brian site professor sites it is an honored to have you on the program
	Well, it's a great pleasure for me to be on that part.
	He's long.
	Well, I'm over here in America because the U.S.
	edition of Adam's Curse just published last week, so that's the fortunate reason that you're able to call me really just down the road, rather than across the Atlantic and Pacific or wherever it was.
	I see.
	Wonderful.
	I have a copy of the hardback book here.
	It is a beautiful book, by the way.
	Very well done.
	It's a nice color, isn't it?
	It is indeed, and so you should be very proud of it.
	Is this the first book of this magnitude that you have published?
	I wrote another book a couple of years ago called The Seven Daughters of Eve, and you can see there's a connection between the two, that one being mostly about the history of women, or at least What DNA tells us about the history of women, whereas this one, Adam's Curse, as well as being about the extinction of men, is about what my research has discovered about the history of men.
	Well, I'm sure we'll somehow get to all of that.
	I'm sure we will.
	We've got plenty of time.
	We sure do.
	That's the beauty of radio.
	It really is long-form radio.
	There's nothing in the world like it.
	It is a shocking claim, you know, that human males Are you sure when they talk to you about publishing and perishing, you didn't interpret it to mean publish about perish?
	No.
	This is a long time in the future.
	Well, how long?
	Well, I mean, if we start talking about that, we're going to be talking about the end of the book before we go through all the arguments.
	Okay, alright, alright.
	I'm sure we'll get to it before the program finishes, but just to... I mean, I think it's a process which For reasons we'll have loads time to go into is inevitable, but the timescale, whenever you say something will happen, you're going to be asked, well, when?
	So I've made various assumptions and come up with a figure about 5,000 generations from now.
	now, that's around about 100, 125,000, maybe 150,000 years, something like that.
	How is this going to happen, Professor, and through what means were you able to discern
	Well, why don't we talk about the rest of the book and we'll come to that, because it really is at the end of it.
	Oh, all right.
	Because if I answer that question straight away, it would take me about 20 minutes to get to the very end.
	No, that's just fine.
	So then why don't we ask you instead, then, you're saying that Basically, we're only genetically modified women anyway.
	What do you mean by that?
	Well, I think that there's not actually all that much dispute about that.
	The motive for writing Adam's Curse is because I wanted to try and sort of bring out the genetic reasons behind and the consequences of the fact that something that's perfectly, blindingly obvious to everybody and it actually affects every single day, which is that Our species, unlike every species actually, is divided into males and females.
	Well, you know, we could talk the entire program about the repercussions of that in our everyday social encounters.
	Professor, is the ratio roughly exactly 50-50?
	Not quite, actually.
	At birth, there's slightly more males born, but they're always rather a bit weaker.
	They don't live as long, of course.
	Men die before women.
	And I think there's a genetic reason underlying that.
	So, let me just start off with this genetically modified women business.
	Well, it is the case that there's a little chromosome which men have and women don't have.
	And on that chromosome is one particular gene.
	And what it does is to, it flips a genetic switch When we're, us boys, when we were only six weeks after fertilization, so very soon after we were conceived, this switch flicks and it ignites a whole relay of genetic reactions which take us away from what we otherwise would have become, which is girls.
	And it takes us away from that, bit by bit, and turns us into boys.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	And is it a matter of chance with regard to that switch?
	In other words, could it as easily not be thrown as thrown?
	Well, it's usually thrown.
	If people have a Y chromosome, if fetuses, I mean, have a Y chromosome, they almost always end up as males.
	But occasionally, and this is how we know about the fetuses, It works.
	Occasionally there's something wrong with this switch and it doesn't get thrown.
	And then?
	In that case the natural course of events continues and those children, those babies are born female even though they've actually got a Y chromosome.
	So that's how we know that the Y chromosome is right at the heart of the matter and that if it's not working then The natural progression.
	It's not that if the white chromosome isn't working, the fetus dies, or the embryo dies.
	It doesn't.
	It carries on and becomes female.
	Fully, functionally normal female.
	Is that true?
	Pretty much, but for a complicated chromosomal reason, they're usually sterile.
	But often very beautiful as a matter of fact.
	So these are XY females.
	A number of them actually made a career in modeling, believe it or not.
	How rare are they, Professor?
	How rare are they?
	There's about one in between one in five and one in ten thousand births, something like that.
	So, you know, not exceptionally rare.
	Really?
	Certainly more common than I. In fact, you're telling me something new altogether.
	This might be the right place for Arlene's question.
	She sent one in by email before you got here, and I thought it was pretty good.
	She asks, My theory is, maybe as the Y chromosome deteriorates, so do the actual resultant transitory human individuals.
	Therefore, we begin to see increasing numbers of homosexuals.
	Is it possible That homosexuality is merely an expression of the Y-chromosome being in an in-between stage?
	Well, it's a very good question, and I do have a chapter in Adam's Curse about homosexuality, but I think it's a bit more subtle than that, actually.
	Although the Y-chromosome is deteriorating slowly, and we can go into how slowly and what the reasons for that are, I'm not myself convinced that it's that which is the cause of at least male homosexuality.
	Now, I don't really know whether homosexuality is increasing or decreasing, but when I've talked about Adam's Curse, I've had many people say, well, in my experience, in my neighbourhood, then male homosexuality is increasing.
	But I can't say that it's due, in response to Arlene's question, that it's clearly due to some changes in the Y chromosome.
	But we may get on to, at some time, what I think may be behind, or may be a cause of male homosexuality.
	But it's a very subtle one.
	So you don't necessarily see a connection, is what you're saying?
	I don't necessarily see a connection between the Y-chromosome and male homosexuality.
	But, as I'm sure we'll get onto, the Y-chromosome is actually involved in a very bitter genetic war with the Y-chromosome being transmitted from father to son is If you like, a sort of proxy for the history of the male sex.
	And certainly, because it can only go from one generation to the next through the male sex and not through the female sex, because it's transmitted from father to son, it's completely opposed to another gene called mitochondrial DNA, I wrote about it in my first book, The Seven Daughters of Eve, which is passed from down the female line.
	So here you have two, if you like, warring genes that will never make peace.
	You actually describe a Y chromosome as a genetic ruin, a wasteland littered with molecular wreckage.
	Well, I mean, now we're able to look at detail in what the Y chromosome looks like.
	It certainly is in a bit of a mess.
	Is that a fair, really a fair description?
	Well, I mean, now we're able to look at detail in what the Y chromosome looks like.
	It certainly is in a bit of a mess.
	And it used to, you know, years ago, millions of years ago, in our mammalian ancestors,
	the Y chromosome started off as an X chromosome, almost certainly, with thousands of different
	And over a period of millions of years, most of those genes only has 27 left now.
	And in between those genes, which are... Oh, we're starting to pick up a little hum.
	Can you hear it there?
	I can, yes.
	It's not coming from mine as far as I can...
	You might just move that phone around or the wire around a little bit and see if it comes and goes.
	So the Y chromosome is under constant attack, you said, virtually at war and I guess the presumption is it is over time going to lose the war.
	It will lose the war, yes.
	It will lose the war because it is deteriorating and mutations are accumulating at quite a fast rate.
	And it is a common cause, these mutations on the Y-chromosome, a common cause of male infertility these days.
	And the calculations, the estimates if you like, of how long I think that the Y-chromosome had left is based on what we see now, the mutations in that chromosome that are causing male infertility.
	Professor, if it's 100 or 125 thousand years out, whatever that number turns out to be, there's going to be a time between now and then where there are increasing numbers of infertile men.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	I heard some sort of startling statistics about About that, not very long ago.
	It's already starting to happen now, isn't it?
	Sure, I mean it is.
	Seven percent of men are not completely infertile, but they're sub-fertile.
	That's a very high percentage.
	Did you say seven percent?
	Seven percent of men.
	And of those, between 1 and 2%, that's not of the 7%, but between 1 and 2% of men, their infertility, or sub-fertility if you like, is caused by mutations on the Y chromosome.
	So that's very, very high.
	And because, clearly, their fathers Could not have been infertile.
	These must be new mutations that are happening or many of them new mutations that are happening in these men themselves.
	So it's very startling.
	Well that is startling and is it going to be a linear deterioration or will the process at some point Yes, I think so.
	I think it will.
	Acceleration or between now and a hundred and or a hundred and twenty five thousand years. It's going to be linear
	More and more and more infertile men Yes, I think so. I think it will
	If Why chromosomes are completely?
	rendered completely infertile by mutation then they won't get further because they clearly
	won't have any sons, but There are mutations which reduce fertility and those are
	the ones that will get through the next generation, but will produce males
	that are less fertile and their fathers
	And that's the accumulated effect, which I believe will mean that, in that sort of time frame that we've been talking about, that fertility will decrease to a level of about 1% of what it is now.
	Those are going to be a very popular 1%.
	Aren't they?
	And there's going to be a lot of... I don't know.
	I mean, I don't know.
	There's going to be... There's going to be men around, but they're going to be very infertile.
	I'm just trying to find some little bright side of this somewhere.
	It's not necessarily, I mean, there are things we can do about it, I think.
	But this is a process that, this is one of the features of the Y chromosome, which, I mean, in the book, which is, again, we are really talking about the end of the book now, rather than the rest of it, but in the book, because my main research has been looking at what the Y chromosome can tell us about history, Our own human history and the history of men.
	It's clear from my research and those other people that some Y-chromosomes have done remarkably well.
	And those are Y-chromosomes that have been associated with extremely unsavory historical figures.
	Really?
	Oh yeah.
	So, the most extreme example which I've come across, work done by some other Oxford scientists, ...was to track down the Y-chromosome of Genghis Khan, the Mongol Emperor.
	Of course.
	Now, Genghis Khan lived in the 12th century, and work in Central Asia has shown that 16 million men are his direct descendants, so they have his Y-chromosome.
	And a great big, bold capital Y, right?
	Absolutely.
	Professor, hold on.
	We're already at the bottom of the hour.
	So we'll take a bit of a break here.
	Genghis Khan.
	I suppose, huh?
	And then even the bad guys.
	The Hitlers of the world.
	The ruthless dictators of the world.
	Great big capital wise.
	You're going to learn a lot tonight, so am I, I'm sure.
	Professor Brian Sykes, author of a brand new book that you're going to want to check out.
	It's called Adam's Curse.
	From the high desert, middle of the night, I'm Art Bell.
	I'm a baby, I'm a baby, I'm a baby, I'm a baby.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	I'll tell you what's wrong before I get off the floor.
	Don't bring me down.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	You're always talking about your crazy nights.
	What else is there you gonna give me?
	Don't bring me down.
	I don't know.
	Don't bring me down.
	I'll tell you what's wrong before I get off the floor.
	Don't bring me down.
	You're looking good, Chris. I just think it will crash.
	To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
	The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
	To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
	line is area code 775-727-1222. To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll-free
	at 800-825-5033. From west of the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
	International callers may reach Art by calling your in-country Sprint Access number,
	pressing option 5, and dialing toll-free 800-893-8253.
	From coast to coast, and worldwide on the Internet, this is Coast to Coast AM, with Art Bell.
	And what a guest we've got.
	Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Oxford, Professor Brian Sykes is our guest.
	He's saying that another hundred thousand years or so, there will be no more men, because the Y-chromosome is virtually... Well, it's tattering itself.
	It's falling apart.
	It's a genetic mess.
	We'll be right back.
	I believe we were last talking about Genghis Khan and so forth and they've got the big capital Y's.
	I guess that would apply to the Hitlers and the big, bad, rough, ruthless dictators in the world and generally violent people.
	Am I on the right track there?
	Well, what distinguishes, let me ask you a question, what distinguishes all those types of people?
	Testosterone, I guess?
	They're all men, aren't they?
	Testosterone, yeah.
	They're all men.
	And in Adam's Curse, I've developed the idea that, while I'm not necessarily causing it, the Y-chromosome, really, of these men, really benefits from their bad behavior.
	So it's a sort of moot point about which is driving Which was Genghis Khan driving his Y-chromosome to great success?
	Or look at it the other way, was it Genghis Khan's Y-chromosome that was actually driving him to do the things he did?
	And what did he do?
	Well, he started the largest land empire ever known, the Mongol Empire.
	He invaded adjoining countries, he invaded I mean, he had a fantastic army.
	He killed all the men, and he brought the women along, or had them brought along, and he inseminated all women one by one.
	And that's how his Y chromosome spread.
	That's why he has so many, has produced so many capital Ys.
	That's right.
	That's very interesting.
	And it's, I think, it's an obvious tendency of people, especially in Times gone by, maybe, and different parts of the world now, men who have a lot of power and wealth and status, not all of them, but more than most men, do tend, when they can, to accumulate large numbers of women.
	And there's fantastic numbers of tens of thousands of concubines, for example, that were kept for the exclusive use of some Well-attested historical despots or emperors.
	So, the two things are very much interlinked.
	But there would be another side to that, Professor, wouldn't there?
	And that would be that some of the greatest achievements were testosterone-driven as well.
	I mean, some of mankind's greatest achievements, indeed.
	Well, that's right.
	That's right.
	So, you're absolutely right.
	So, the fact that We exist as two sexes, male and female, has driven our evolution, particularly, I think, in the last 10,000 years, and we may go into the reason why it's in the last 10,000 years.
	And it has driven very many aspects of our evolution.
	And that works by a type of evolution, it's not natural selection, which is the one that Darwin is best known for, but another of his theories, which is sexual selection.
	And it's not usually been appreciated that sexual selection is going on in our own species, but well known in others.
	So, perhaps the most familiar example is the peacock's tail.
	Male peacocks have a huge and elaborate tail.
	Very colourful, very, to us, very beautiful.
	And the peahens, the female peacocks, are, by comparison, dull and well camouflaged.
	Now, what's driven the male peacock to become like that?
	It's been a slow evolution of male peacocks growing a tail, then one will have a slightly better tail and will attract more mates, and therefore his genes will pass on preferentially to the next generation.
	And then The tail gets bigger and bigger, but it's also driven not just by men, by male peacocks growing bigger tails, but by the male peacocks, their evolution, the evolution of their tail being driven by the choice of the peahens, because they must be able to appreciate these tails for that evolution to occur.
	So it's a cycle, a cycle of sexual selection that can happen and transform a species very, very quickly.
	Well that is a sort of natural selection though, isn't it?
	It's natural, yes, but Darwin was careful to distinguish the two.
	It's certainly natural, but it's not, it's not as if, you know, our evolution, the reason I'm talking about the peacock is because I see parallels there between What's happened in the peacock and the evolution of our own species?
	Over the last 10,000 years which has been extraordinarily rapid hugely rapid.
	I mean we don't Appreciate that necessarily because we live in you know we're actually in this modern world, but it's been extremely fast all right, and Why is that well?
	the idea that I advance in Adam's curse is that Men use wealth and power and status in the same way that peacocks use their tails.
	Involved in a parallel fashion.
	And why didn't they evolve before?
	It's because there were no such things as wealth and property and ownership before the invention of agriculture.
	Agriculture comes along, then land becomes owned, Flocks of domestic animals become owned, wealth begins to accumulate.
	Prior to that, we were really struggling to make a living anywhere, just wandering around as hunter-gatherers by and large, in small bands.
	We didn't have any property, we didn't have anything to own, so we couldn't, that couldn't be factored into the ever-present possibilities for sexual selection.
	Well, why then, given the state of the world today, aren't the Donald Trumps of the world just putting lots of capital Y's out there?
	Well, they probably are.
	They probably are.
	They certainly have been in the past, and that's how, because my research team has been looking at Y chromosomes distributed throughout the world, and we see very clearly Particular Y-chromosomes that have done really extraordinarily well, and they're by and large, or always so far, linked back to historical figures who have not necessarily been as cruel and unpleasant as Genghis Khan, but certainly associated very strongly with wealth and power.
	And the best example, I suppose, of those are the chiefs of Scottish clans, where we've done some work and linked back For example, amongst the McDonald's, 20% of people who are McDonald's are related directly to the founder of the Klan.
	Again, living about the same time as Genghis Khan.
	Isn't that something?
	Yep.
	And those chromosomes, those Y chromosomes, they're probably getting on for 400,000, half a million of these Y chromosomes.
	A lot of them, of course, in the United States and Canada, having come from this one man.
	So, over the course of 700, 800 years, they've increased in frequency from one, in the original man, to getting on for half a million, and that's an incredible increase in any kind of evolutionary sense.
	Well, then what's going wrong?
	I guess, what's going wrong here?
	The Wise, it seems like, should be prolific, and to some degree, you can look at the real Capital Wise out there, and they certainly seem to be doing their very best to proliferate.
	Well, that's the irony, because they clearly have a story to tell about great proliferations, great wealth, great power of these historical figures, the Scottish clan chiefs, Genghis Khan, and many other minor examples.
	And the irony is that the Y-chromosome, which indirectly causes this, I think, this evolution of this kind of behavior and the desire to accumulate wealth and property to, if you like, to parallel the peacock's tail, that actually the Y-chromosome, which is what tells me as a geneticist about this, is itself Far from being anything like.
	It's not macho.
	It's not all conquering.
	It's actually extremely fragile and extremely weak.
	And that's the irony.
	That is an irony, isn't it?
	So, weak and getting weaker, and you're suggesting it's under a constant assault.
	Yes.
	And so then, what are we going to see in fertility?
	Will it have any other measurable genetic effects on offspring as time goes on?
	That's big enough, isn't it?
	Well, it is, yes.
	Of course.
	Let me tell you, let me say something about why this is, not why, the reason.
	Not to confuse the terminology, the reason that the Y chromosome is so particularly fragile, well there are two reasons.
	The first is that unlike all our other chromosomes, and we have 23 other chromosomes in our bodies, unlike all of those, it doesn't actually exchange DNA with other chromosomes at each generation.
	And that's something that all the other chromosomes do, and the process of exchanging DNA, swapping it around, actually heals mutations.
	So the Y chromosome can't heal its mutations anywhere near as effectively as the other chromosomes.
	And also, it actually mutates at a faster rate than the other chromosomes for an interesting but actually logical reason.
	That's the following.
	Because the Y-chromosome is passed from father to son, it's passed, of course, through sperm.
	And the Y-chromosome, your Y-chromosome, you've got it from your father, you've got it from his father, and from his father, always in sperm.
	And therefore, it spends its entire life, from generation to generation, Over dozens, hundreds of generations, always in the germline of males, that's to say the cells that are going to produce sperm.
	Those are a very unhealthy place for DNA to be, because mutations happen when cells divide, and cells divide at a very, very fast rate in The testes, in order so that men can produce 100 million sperm a day.
	Sure.
	And it's an incredible fact that the DNA in a man of 60 has already been copied 1,000 times.
	And so the Y chromosome in a man of 60 has been copied 1,000 times.
	And although the other chromosomes have also been copied, over time they actually spend, it's a bit hard to So you're saying in a man of 60 years of age, it's like his Y has been copied on a bad copying machine a thousand times?
	cells that produce eggs because they sort of swap around from males to females as the
	generations pass.
	So you're saying in a man of 60 years of age it's like his Y has been copied on a bad copy
	machine a thousand times?
	It's a pretty good copying machine actually but yes a thousand times so that's of course
	not all men are 60 when they reproduce but you can see that over a thousand generations
	let's say, then that's.
	A million times it's been copied, and without the ability to repair those mutations, clearly it's an unstable system that will degenerate, and it is.
	Isn't that an evolutionary outrage, Professor?
	I mean, why would design be such?
	It would be... It's like a motor company designing a car to fall apart in 20 years.
	Well, now, what we're on to there is an interesting thing that actually Evolution, though it seems to us to have design, doesn't have design at all.
	It has no plan for the future.
	It has no plan for the future.
	It's been, without getting into the arguments of evolution by natural selection versus creationism, which we could spend the entire program talking about, without getting into that argument, It's always been very difficult for evolutionary biologists to understand what is going on with evolution, and it doesn't seem that it's sufficient to say.
	I mean, it's certainly not the case that there's any kind of design element.
	All that happens is that things change with time, and particularly good Yes, I've got that, but not in the case of the Y chromosome.
	Well, no, no, exactly so.
	There's nothing that nature can do to help really.
	get passed on preferentially to the next generation.
	Yes, I've got that, but not in the case of the Y chromosome.
	Well, no, no, exactly so.
	It's a, it's a, and it's, but there's nothing that, there's nothing that nature can do to help, really.
	It's just, it's just unfortunate that our ancient ancestors, when, in the, the ancestors of mammals, very early mammals,
	decided, well, they didn't decide, I mean, this happened, that the way of, if you like, producing males and females
	was put down to a chromosome, because in lots of other animals
	that's, it's not done by chromosomes at all.
	I mean, we're covering a lot of ground here, but for example, in your American alligators, the sex of the offspring there is not decided by a chromosome, it's decided instead by the temperature at which the egg is incubated.
	But once, in the early mammals' cases, a chromosome had been given that job of deciding whether an embryo would develop into a male or a female, That chromosome was doomed to the gradual decay that we've been talking about.
	But one imagines evolution, Professor, to be, by its very nature, a very efficient process.
	Well, it's efficient by killing off or not letting survive anything that doesn't really work.
	So it appears to be efficient because what's left, what's survived, It's still going.
	Logically, if we accept that the Y-chromosome is gradually deteriorating... Well, I don't know if I can accept that.
	We're slowly turning into an appendix.
	Sort of, yes.
	Sort of.
	But it does have an extremely high mutation rate.
	And it's not just going to affect us, of course, it'll affect other mammals.
	It's just in the long term, the very long term, a really, really bad way of trying to determine whether embryos turn out into males or females.
	And it might well see the end of mammals altogether.
	But that's, you know, hundreds of millions of years into the future.
	There's a design flaw in the way we In the way we and other mammals decide sex.
	Well, perhaps only we see it as a flaw, and evolution sees it just as the way it happens.
	Well, you know, it's done reasonably well for over the past hundred millions of years.
	And incidentally, I mean, there's a little-known theory going around.
	I mean, the mammals were getting nowhere while the dinosaurs were around.
	Right.
	Only when the dinosaurs died out did they really start to make their mark.
	Yes.
	And dinosaurs may have, we don't know this, but if they're anything like the alligator or the turtle, they may too have relied on the temperature at which their eggs were incubated to decide whether they were going to turn out to be males or females.
	So let's say for example that if the dinosaur eggs are incubated at a high temperature they turn out to be females and at a low temperature they turn out to be males.
	Now, I think most people I believe that the dinosaurs were finished off by a meteorite that lowered the temperature of the Earth.
	Professor, we're going to have... that's a good place to hang people up.
	Yeah, we can carry on with that.
	Good.
	Stay right there and we'll be right back.
	We have one of the world's greatest geneticists with us tonight, Professor Brian Sykes, who's written a brand new book.
	You're going to want to read this one.
	when it's called Adams curse.
	I'm going to show you how to do it.
	That's right.
	Don't bother asking for explanation.
	She will tell you that she came here.
	I'm going to show you how to do it.
	She doesn't give you time for questions As she looks up your eyes and hers
	And you follow to your sense Of which direction completely disappears
	By the blue tar walls, near the market stalls There's a hint that she'll eat you too
	These days, she says, I feel my life Just walk away before running through
	The air of the cat Do talk with Art Bell
	Call the wildcard line at area code 7 The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
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	internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
	And we are honored with one of the world's greatest geneticists, Professor Brian Sykes.
	He's written a book called Adam's Curse.
	Basically, Adam's Curse is that Adam, all of us men, in another 100,000 years or so, we're gonna be gone.
	No more men. No more men.
	No more men. It seems impossible.
	And I suppose we'll discuss some of the ramifications and what kind of world that'll be.
	Or the professor thinks it might be.
	We will get to that.
	We're back with the dinosaurs at the moment.
	We'll pick up there right after this.
	So the evolutionary future unfolding may not include men, eventually.
	Anyway, we were discussing dinosaurs, I believe, and you said man really didn't take off until the dinosaurs did.
	That's right, yeah.
	The mammals really didn't take off, but nobody's quite sure why the dinosaurs died out, but here's an idea.
	Alligators and turtles, they both They don't rely on chromosomes to decide which is going to be a male and female.
	The eggs decide on the basis of how cold or cool or warm the eggs are when they're being incubated.
	Right.
	So, let's take a turtle for example.
	If the eggs are incubated at 34 degrees Celsius, they all hatch as females.
	If they're all Incubated at 26 degrees, they all hatch as males.
	So usually, they're kind of in between.
	Some hatch as males, some as females.
	Now, for dinosaurs, it's the same system, of course.
	And suddenly, the temperature of the Earth went down dramatically by a few degrees.
	As a lot of people think, when this meteor hit 65 million years ago, blanketing the Earth in dust and reducing the temperature.
	Almost like a nuclear winter, really.
	Hmm.
	Then the dinosaurs and any other creatures that used temperature of eggs to determine sex would have ended up, in the case if they had that sort of hot, female, cool, male system, all the dinosaurs would have been male.
	And of course they'd have gone overnight.
	That'd be the end of it, yeah.
	Yeah.
	So if that were the case, and it's not proven or even much thought of actually, but it would be one way that what had up to then been extremely good way of deciding sex and evolution really you know perfectly
	in tune and it lasted for many hundreds of years, they'd have gone overnight.
	Professor wouldn't that mean that as perhaps an asteroid or whatever could have accomplished
	that perhaps even a rapid cyclical climate change would have done the same thing huh?
	Well it would have to be pretty rapid really.
	You know, an asteroid or a large meteor impact, which is thought by many, and there's evidence that this has happened, would reduce the temperature.
	Any organism that, or any animal that depends on temperature to decide sex would have the sex ratios, the ratios between males and females, drastically altered.
	But there are those troublesome woolly mammoths with the frozen greenery.
	That's right, I think they died rather recently.
	They were regular mammals, no doubt about that.
	The point I was trying to get at is that the way in which sex is decided is not necessarily going to save a species or save a whole order of animals.
	I think in the case of the mammals, relying as we have on chromosomes and Once we've done that, the chromosome that decides sex is doomed to ultimate decay.
	Well, nothing's going to help.
	Nothing will help?
	Well, the only thing that's going to help is if we, now realizing this danger, could actually do something about it.
	Manipulate?
	You know, Mike in Utah says not all genetic mutations are bad.
	It seems like Many could actually improve the viability of the Y-chromosome.
	How do you take that into account?
	It's quite right.
	Not all mutations are bad.
	And you'll probably find that some mutations on Y-chromosomes have helped to boost fertility.
	But most mutations are damaging.
	And I think the number of bad mutations, for the reasons My chromosome is always contained was restrained to the
	testes germline cells men will eventually will overtake the
	occasional occasional good mutation that results of
	because of that So this battle is ongoing the
	Deterioration is ongoing and you suggest it will be a linear
	Deterioration until finally the end out at 100 125,000 years, whatever
	Well, that's if the world lasts that long, of course.
	Yeah, not such a good bet to take.
	Quite right.
	And that, you know, and I develop a theme that that is the other side of Adam's curse.
	That the, if you like, the peacock's tail equivalent in our own species Is the accumulation of wealth and power and property and so on.
	And the thing about the peacock's tail is that it can only grow so large.
	If a peacock has... Peacocks would love to have tails a hundred feet long.
	Yeah.
	But of course, if they did, they couldn't even fly.
	So a leopard wandering along would soon finish him off.
	But with our sort of social equivalent of the Peacock's tail, wealth and power, property, status and those sorts of things.
	There is no limit to the amount that individuals can accumulate in the same way that there is to the size of the peacock's tail.
	The only limit really is the ability of our planet to sustain the production of sufficient Wealth and power and status and those kinds of things.
	So in that sense, whether the Earth lasts for 100,000 years to witness the eventual extinction of men through the Y-chromosome, if it doesn't last that long, it's because of the Y-chromosome's other effect.
	So, Adam's curse, in that sense, is a double whammy, a double blow.
	Yes.
	I suppose somebody with a great big colorful tail might one day push the wrong button and then we wouldn't make our 100,000 years anyway.
	No, we would not.
	Well, so let's for a second jump back because it's such a big question in society.
	I don't know, perhaps in your research you have made some determination about homosexuality and So many numbers are tossed about.
	Homosexuality, period.
	Is it on the increase?
	Do you have any statistics that would tell us whether it's actually increasing, or has it been static for as long as we know?
	Well, Art, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I'm not an expert on homosexuality.
	I have a chapter in the book on Adam's Curse about it, but as So, knowing the statistics which you're asking about, I won't say anything because I really don't know much about it and it's best to say that straight out, really.
	Clearly, homosexuality, the reason I was interested in writing about it was the following.
	About ten years ago, there were, a little over ten years ago, there were a couple of scientific papers which They said that they had found a gay gene.
	I don't know if you remember that.
	I vaguely do, yes.
	And it didn't really make any sense to me or a lot of other geneticists at the time, because if there were a gay gene, let's say that such a thing existed, then clearly, in the present day anyway, I think it's probably true that male homosexuals have less offspring, less children than straight men.
	So that gay gene, if a man had it, a gay man had it, he would not be passing it on to the next generation.
	And under those circumstances it's very, very difficult to see how gay genes would have Professor, do you believe there will ever be any discovery in genetics that ties itself to homosexuality?
	the sole cause of male homosexuality. Those genes would not have got through.
	Professor, do you believe there will ever be any discovery in genetics that ties itself
	to homosexuality?
	Well, that's what I was going to go on to. I've had a look back at the original papers
	that purported to find or reported the gay gene, and I've sort of come to the conclusion
	– I mean it's a very tentative and provocative proposal – that there is no such thing as
	a gay gene itself, but that there is, that male homosexuality – and don't ask me
	about female homosexuality because it doesn't apply – is actually the one...
	One consequence of a very fundamental genetic battle that's going on between the Y-chromosome on one hand and these other genetic entities called mitochondria on the other.
	So in a way, my emailer Arlene was sort of onto something.
	Yes, yes.
	I believe there is, that genetics is, that there is a genetic component to male homosexuality but it's not a gay gene as such.
	I understand.
	What you're suggesting is fascinating and what you're suggesting would mean that as this process continues generation after generation the numbers of homosexuals, if that's true, Would probably increase, wouldn't they?
	Well, I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying, actually.
	I guess I am.
	I'm not saying that it's got anything... It's not got anything intrinsically to do with the Y-chromosome decay that we've been talking about.
	It's to do with the battle between mitochondria on the one hand and Y-chromosomes on the other.
	Those two have entirely different genetic agendas.
	So, mitochondria, which are passed from mother to daughter, and so on through the generations, they have absolutely no interest.
	I mean, of course, we're kind of anthropomorphizing these genes, but it's helpful to look at them in that way.
	They have no interest.
	A woman's mitochondria has no interest in her ever having sons, because that mitochondria is not gonna get anywhere In the same way, Y-chromosomes, a man's Y-chromosome has no interest at all in him having daughters.
	So here you have two polar opposites.
	If you believe, as I do, and many others do, that genes actually are a very important determinant of evolution, then to have that real, completely different conflict of interest between two genes is going to play out in many ways.
	And looking, for example, taking the mitochondria, the one that, if you like, well the one that is going from female to female has no interest whatsoever in males.
	It's now emerging that males do inherit mitochondria but they don't pass it on because there's none in sperm to speak of.
	So, mitochondria have no interest in males And it's now emerging that quite a lot of diseases which men get including aging and many of these other things which men suffer earlier than women is actually caused by mitochondrial decay.
	So what I'm getting at here in a very roundabout way is that mitochondria are slowly killing men and preserving women and that's why People think that men get older quicker and die younger than women.
	So what's it got to do with homosexuality?
	Well, the other thing that mitochondria do, or women do, unconsciously of course, is that They do often abort unconsciously at a very early age, miscarry, and the first... there's an excess of male fetuses that are miscarried in the very first few weeks of pregnancy, often unknown.
	Women don't know they're even pregnant when this happens.
	And you could, and I do suggest in my book, that this is another aspect of...
	Wow, that's pretty controversial, R.I.
	Well, it's controversial, and the thing about being a geneticist is that you think about things sometimes, and you have to, in a rather impersonal way, but then, of course, naturally, Naturally, he did sort of say these things, interpreting them on a sort of very large evolutionary timescale.
	And of course, especially late miscarriages are absolute tragedies.
	Early ones, very early ones, often not known about.
	But I think the war between mitochondria and the Y chromosome is so bitter that it wouldn't stop at that.
	Now, what about the Y chromosome?
	How do they sort of fight back?
	Well, Y-chromosomes themselves are in rather a weak position because they're very vulnerable.
	If this war really is going on, which I believe it is, they're very vulnerable in those nine months that they spend when going from one generation to another in the body of a woman.
	And so they must fight back against this tendency to try and eliminate all male fetuses which mitochondria have.
	And here's where the male homosexuality comes in.
	Since there is a balance, there must be a balance between these two forces, otherwise one would have dominated already, then there's a There's a possibility, and there's evidence to suggest this, looking back at the original pedigrees of family studies where the gay gene was first found, that male homosexuals have fewer uncles than aunts.
	That's to say, their mothers have got fewer brothers and sisters.
	Which, if we meld this into this idea I've just been talking about, suggests that male homosexual mothers, their own mothers, have been actually very adept at eliminating male fetuses.
	I was going to say, winning the battle.
	Yep, they've won the battle.
	So what is the next stage if you can't kill a male fetus?
	What's the next best thing you can do?
	And that is, To make sure that white chromosomes don't succeed the next generation is to, if you can, to adjust their sexual preference so that they never breed.
	It's insidious.
	So that they become homosexual.
	Yes, it's insidious, isn't it?
	It's very insidious.
	It's one way, as a genesis, that I look at this battle.
	It's a very, very interesting, a very, very deadly battle that's going on between... Well, I think, Professor, what I was trying to ask is, is it a static standoff, or is the victory increasingly going to the women?
	Um, in the case of homosexuality, as I said, I don't know the statistics about whether or not male homosexuality is increasing.
	And I don't know the figures about that.
	And what I'm just suggesting, which is really sticking my neck out, is just patiently wait for thought.
	Oh, I certainly caught what you're suggesting.
	Professor, hold on a moment.
	We'll get right back to you.
	Within the women's body, There's a war going on.
	It's a war against males, actually.
	And the war is being won by the females.
	And the result of that, in one particular case, might be homosexuality.
	I'm Mark Bell.
	Don't leave me this way.
	I can't survive.
	I can't save a life without your love.
	Oh, but...
	When it's all right and it's coming home, They gotta get right back to where they started from.
	Love is good, love can be strong, They gotta get right back to where they started from.
	When you first came my way?
	I said no one could take your place And if you get hurt, if you get hurt
	By the little things I say I can put that smile back on your face
	When it's alright and it's coming up We gotta get right back to where we started from
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	Evolution takes us obviously along a lot of paths, but none of them are back where we started from.
	We will, however, be right back.
	Once again, you're listening to one of the world's greatest geneticists,
	Professor Brian Sykes.
	And here he is.
	We were...
	I guess I was asking you, and I'll try again, whether you think or even would like to take a guess about whether this process is a static process and whether it would continue to produce in the population as this war goes on against nails
	you know a similar number of those with an inclination to homosexuality or
	whether it's also part of the overall battle that's going to ultimately be
	lost I mean that I suppose
	thinking about it and I haven't predicted anything in the book but
	mitochondria which you know is according to this
	idea that I put forward in the book is at least partially responsible for male homosexuality
	If they get very good at it, they will succeed better than mitochondria that aren't quite so good at this.
	And so I guess the predicted outcome from that would be that male homosexuality Uh, would increase.
	Would increase.
	Uh, interestingly, Adam from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
	Adam, can you believe it?
	Says, uh, fascinating show, Art.
	I'm a gay male and I have now taken notice of the fact that my mom has four sisters, no brothers.
	My grandma on her side of the family had three sisters, no brothers.
	Interesting.
	Yep.
	I mean, um, You'd obviously have to have a lot more examples of that, but I suppose that's an interesting family.
	I think the studies which I quote in Adam's Curse involve hundreds of gay men.
	Actually, I'll quickly look it up while we're talking.
	You might want to hit the database on that one.
	Call it a book.
	Chapter 23.
	chapter 23 well that's alright
	I mean as you get to it you can get to it yeah well it's um
	I will get to it does this ultimately really mean
	Really, I've got it.
	A survey of nearly 500 gay men, their mothers had a total of 209 sisters, but only 132 brothers.
	Holy smokes!
	So that's, of course, they should have had equal numbers of brothers.
	Indeed, or very close.
	So that's an impressive figure.
	From where was he from?
	You might, um, Milwaukee.
	Milwaukee, okay.
	You might have another book here.
	But 209 against 132 is pretty skewed, isn't it?
	It is.
	It's still, I suppose, from a scientific point of view, a small sample, relatively, but yes, it's very... Well, I don't know.
	I mean, it's not that small, actually.
	209 to 132 is...
	It's very significant, even though, of course, it's not absolutely huge, but it's very significant.
	Well, shouldn't it be so significant as to cause more immediate research?
	Well, it's very odd, actually.
	Reading about the genetics of research into homosexuality from a journaling point of view, I mean, there was this, these papers that we've mentioned that came out about Just over ten years ago.
	And there was another paper that followed up to agree with the first one, or corroborate the findings, and then there was a third paper which disagreed.
	That's actually not uncommon in genetics.
	And then nothing.
	So it's been totally dropped from the Research agendas, as far as I can see.
	That alone is fascinating.
	As big of an issue, and it's a giant issue socially, so I'm really quite surprised that it's not being followed up on.
	Well, it did cause a lot of stir at the time.
	I think it's... Sure.
	I know a lot of gay men... I wasn't involved in this original research at all, but I've just, in my researching for Adam's Curse, read about their reactions to this, Well, a lot of gay men welcome this research, and many have said quite vehemently that research into the genetics of male homosexuality just should not be done at all.
	But certainly the fact is that nothing has been done.
	But I think maybe this new angle that I'm hinting at, that there's no gay gene, but it's That male homosexuality is a consequence of this deeply embedded war may stimulate a bit more research, I don't know.
	Would you think that if something were proven in this area, Professor, that society would then view that as a A disease or do you think society would be sold on the fact that it's just part of a unavoidable evolutionary change?
	It certainly wouldn't be a disease.
	It certainly isn't a disease.
	It's part of this deeply embedded and irreconcilable conflict, genetic conflict that goes on between Men and women, between male and female.
	I clearly have that.
	I just wonder if that would promote a general acceptance of that fact as opposed to what we have now.
	Well, there are reminiscences of this kind of thing in other animals.
	I mean, there are actually other animals in which...
	The war between the mitochondria and males goes on in many other animals.
	In fact, some insects, we're going a little off subject here, but some insects, for example, actually, the mitochondria and other associated genes in the cell cytoplasm, as it's called outside the nucleus, actually kill male embryos.
	I mean, stone dead.
	It's been observed as extremely well documented.
	The production of homosexual offspring has actually also been recorded in some other animals.
	Many argue that's not true, and they use that as a platform to launch... Anyway, you're saying that it is true.
	Yes, it's certainly true in other animals.
	Also, what the situation, as I'm proposing, worth at least some serious examination, is Very reminiscent of a type of genetic altruism.
	So, to cut a long story short, I don't think that male homosexuality in my plan, my idea, is a disease at all, but it's actually an example of genetic altruism.
	The reason is that if a mitochondria that had Well, if a man had produced a homosexual son, if that son did not marry but actually helped his mother bring up his sisters, that mitochondria would have a huge advantage and would spread.
	And that is a piece of genetic altruism whereby you're helping your own genes Get through the next generation, not through yourself, but through your relatives.
	It's seen a lot in other animals.
	So on the side of the ultimate winners?
	Yes, that's right.
	It's an altruism, it's certainly not a disease.
	Yes, fascinating.
	Oh, fascinating.
	Alright.
	You see what us geneticists get up to every day.
	I guess I do, yes.
	I guess I do.
	Is there any way that you see That, and I bet there are many for you, that man will survive this, that man will learn to manipulate ourselves, if we so desire, back to a capital Y. And I suppose you have mixed feelings about that.
	Right, okay, yes.
	Well, naturally, because I think this process of decay will carry on, I have thoughts on what can be done about it.
	Well, actually, it can be arrested by taking those genes which we know are necessary on the Y-chromosome and rescuing them, taking them off, and by genetic manipulation, putting them onto other chromosomes out of harm's way, if you like.
	Really messing with Mother Nature?
	Well, really messing with her, yeah.
	And could it be that the only ultimate survival, remember we were speculating about whether the world would even survive that long?
	Yes.
	Could it be that for the ultimate survival of the species, this deterioration and final collapse of the Y chromosome has to happen?
	And if it doesn't happen, then the world will end?
	Well, you've actually put your finger on it there, Alan.
	Yeah.
	Now, the question is, if the Y chromosome goes, or when the Y chromosome goes, and if there's no genetic manipulation solution, what will happen then?
	Well, as things stand, of course, as things stand, if males disappear, then women will also disappear as well.
	The whole species will become extinct.
	But, I propose in my book, which I finished writing about a year ago, that it wouldn't be long before it was possible to create an embryo, and eventually a human, by fertilizing an egg, not with a sperm, but with another egg.
	So, this would be where you took an egg from one woman, and you Mixed it, you injected essentially the egg from, or the chromosomes of an egg from another woman.
	Right.
	And to produce, re-implanted that, you'd have to use the sort of in vitro fertilization techniques that we now have.
	Implanted that into, back into one of the women, and that would produce a girl, and it would be a perfectly normal girl.
	With genetic characteristics of both parents?
	With genetic characteristics of both parents, the only difference would be that both parents would be women.
	Now, I thought this was going to take a long time, but believe it or not, the week before last, there was a report in the journal Nature of exactly this having been done with a mouse.
	Japanese and Korean scientists took the egg from one mouse and fused it with the egg from another and created a mouse, a female mouse, which was born from all appearances, was completely normal, in fact went on to have a litter of her own.
	So it looks as though that is a distinct possibility that The race, sorry, not the race, the species could survive by fusing one egg with another and reproducing in that way without males whatsoever.
	Because of this mouse, the Japanese mouse, had no father and had no genetic input from a male at all.
	But assuming an artificial womb, then men could do the same thing.
	Well, men could, if you had an artificial womb, yes, they could.
	Well, if we're going to look 100,000 years into the future... If they have artificial wombs, and they essentially are treating them as if they were an egg, they really are, for all intents and purposes, females anyway.
	It's so... It's complicated, isn't it?
	Yes, it is.
	But what you're saying is very apt as well.
	Well, we're actually talking about cloning here.
	Well, we're not talking about cloning.
	We'll come back to that.
	Would the world be more likely to survive if there were only women and no longer men?
	Clearly, most people would answer yes.
	Well, what do you think?
	You want honesty, right?
	Yes.
	I think The world would have a far better chance of survival if it were women that inherited.
	I agree.
	I agree.
	That's sort of embarrassing and, you know, hard to admit.
	But it might not be as magnificent a place, Professor, without all those wives.
	It certainly wouldn't be.
	Certainly not so much fun.
	Not so much, not so interesting, but probably more peaceful, I think.
	So, we were touching on what the Japanese have done and the Japanese who created this mouse.
	This mouse, importantly, would not be a clone.
	That's very important.
	It's the same kind of natural mixture of genes as any other normal girl, because it had two different biological parents.
	Cloning will never really work in the long term for any species, and the reason is, interestingly enough, that cloning of course produces genetically identical copies of an organism, of an animal, of a plant, and that's fine, it's actually a very efficient way of reproducing, except that you're very vulnerable to being wiped out by Parasites or pathogens and we can see exactly this happening in the banana crop of all things in South American Costa Rica What's happened there is that all the bananas in fact all the dollars in the world are clones.
	They're all Reproduced they don't reproduce sexually they reproduce by cloning just taken one sort of cutting is taken and then Transplants onto another route.
	Yes, so I What's happened in South America is that a fungus has unlocked the key to killing off one banana plant, if you like, and because all the other banana plants are genetically identical, it's now sweeping right across South America and it will eventually decimate, it's already doing it, decimate the banana.
	So, as one is vulnerable, all are vulnerable since they're cloned, and so you're telling me it's the end of bananas?
	Yeah.
	That was a yes?
	Yes.
	It's the end of the bananas unless something's done about it, unless they introduce non-cloning reproduction eventually.
	It is a serious threat.
	I mean, it's not me that's saying it's the end of bananas.
	Well, it's horrible.
	That's horrible!
	Yeah, but that's the danger of cloning.
	So any species that relies on reproduction without sex, without males and females, is taking that risk.
	We of course, and the reason is that you have genetic identity, and that's actually why sexual reproduction with males and females takes place at all.
	It's so that you mix up the genes of each generation and you protect the species against this kind of mass elimination by parasites or funguses or viruses or whatever.
	So in our case, there's been tremendous epidemics, pandemics even.
	There's one going on with AIDS of course now, but it won't kill everybody because of genetic variation.
	To make sure a few survive at the very least.
	Right.
	Um, since you're a geneticist, um, I have got a, I've really got a, what I think is a good question for you.
	Many times on this program we talk about aliens as in from another, you know, world, another planet, another whatever.
	And they're lovingly called greys.
	And I, you know, I've always wondered with all the, um, Interracial breeding that's going on, and boy, there's a lot of it going on in the world right now.
	Eventually, and it would be you that I'd have to ask, and I will after the break, won't we all be greys?
	Aren't we on the way to becoming the greys ourselves?
	Think about that.
	Aren't we well underway right now?
	Aren't we headed toward becoming what we talk about?
	The greys, right?
	Sweet dreams are made of these Who am I to disagree?
	I travel the world and the seven seas Everybody's looking for something
	Some of them want to use you Some of them want to get used by you
	Some of them want to abuse you You're losing us
	We were burning We were going the wrong way
	And we never had a doubt We were born with the light
	We were playing in the shadows We were coming to our lives
	Till the morning light We were ready for the night
	We were so alone, you and me Oh
	♪ One, two, one, two, three ♪ We're breaking all we've got, baby.
	Taking every shot, to the top.
	We're the ones that burn the night.
	Do trunk with Art Bell. Call the wild card line at area...
	The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
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	line is area code 775-727-1222. To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll-free
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	number, pressing Option 5, and dialing toll-free 800-825-5033.
	Oh yeah, just one more thing, folks.
	Have you ever noticed in every depiction of an alien grey, every single one of them, just one little thing?
	They're all female.
	It is interesting, isn't it?
	I mean, that what are depicted on the screen and in popular literature all over the world as the aliens, in quotes, they're the greys, right?
	And if you think about it, they're all females.
	I mean, just a thought, folks.
	Professor, since I have you here, I really would like to ask you a little bit about this.
	I mean, aren't we in the process of becoming the greys?
	You'll have to explain a bit more what you mean.
	Okay.
	What I mean by that is, in America now, why things have changed.
	Black people are no longer slaves.
	They're in our media.
	They have sex appeal.
	Asians are in our media.
	We have some of our biggest pop stars now.
	In other words, in our culture, We have really mixed.
	I mean, we have mixed marriages going on all over the place.
	A lot of people don't like it.
	That's fine for them, but it's happening.
	And the result of those mixed marriages, ultimately, is going to, is it not, erase the distinction between the variants?
	Well, if you sort of Supposing, just to paint a completely fanciful scenario, supposing you sealed the borders now, and within America, that everyone, that husbands and wives' marriages were totally random.
	That's to say, you wouldn't necessarily marry into someone in your ethnic group, which of course happens a lot.
	Eventually, You'd find that there would be a great sharing of characteristics, genetic characteristics, and more uniformity.
	Yes, you would.
	Yes, yes, exactly.
	And that process is, perhaps in its beginnings, from an evolutionary point of view, Gee, I wonder how many generations of mixture you'd have to look at before you finally got to pretty much of a constant.
	Or what appeared to be a constant, anyway.
	It would ultimately occur, would it not?
	The thing is, though, Art, that if you look back at the history of the history of the world, and you can sort of glimpse this through genetic spectacles or telescope, if you like, you soon realize that actually this kind of mixing That you're talking about happening in America has actually always been happening.
	It's been happening ever since we started to evolve.
	There's never been any such thing as a pure race or a pure ethnic group.
	No, it's not always... They themselves are mixtures.
	Yes, but it's not always been socially as acceptable as it is now, and so it's proliferating.
	Well, it's hard to say whether it was socially acceptable or not in the past, but it certainly has always gone on.
	I think what you're seeing, what we're seeing in America and other parts of the world of course is really a mixing of people that in not so long in the past were geographically separated by large distances.
	That's right, yes.
	It's a fallacy to think that mixing this kind of Has not been going on throughout the entire history of human evolution.
	Is it not genetically actually advantageous to have a very dissimilar mixture occur?
	Isn't the offspring frequently of these dissimilar mixtures advantaged in some manner because of the dissimilar nature of the genetic makeup?
	Is that true?
	Well, we're sort of going back to getting into dangerous territory here, I mean because... I live on dangerous territory.
	Right, OK, but there was a period, for example, if you, not talking about humans now, but crossing different Strains of plants, for example, there is a phenomenon called hybrid vigor.
	That actually describes exactly what it is.
	If you have hybrids, which in the plant sense means crossing different strains together, slightly genetically different, then you did get a very robust strain.
	What we probably don't realise in humans is that actually we're really, even though we may not think we are or even think we look like it, we actually are an extraordinarily recent species.
	So there hasn't been time for significant genetic differences to build up between people who live in different parts of the world.
	So that means that hybrid vigour called amongst the plants where you're actually taking quite genetically dissimilar strains and crossing those and seeing a more vigorous hybrid between than when you had looked at those separate strains.
	We just haven't really had enough time to develop sufficiently distinct genetic differences between different Different people in different parts of the world.
	We are an incredibly recent species.
	We originated in Africa, Homo sapiens, only an astonishingly short time ago, perhaps 150,000 years, which is nothing really compared to most other species that are around.
	And actually that's one of the sort of by-products of the kind of research I've been doing as well on mitochondria and on micro-enzymes.
	You can track Back through time to show that everyone on the planet is actually very closely related.
	And getting back to your question of hybrid vigor, if you like, because everyone is really so very genetically similar, you won't see any great improvements by any mixing of people who have lived in completely different parts of the world.
	So we're so basically similar that you're not going to get hybrid vigor, is what you're saying?
	That's right.
	Very interesting.
	All right, listen, this is a talk show, and we like to take calls.
	So I'm going to take a few, and let's see how we do.
	First time caller line, you're on the air with Professor Seitz.
	Hi.
	Hi there.
	Hello.
	Hello.
	Yes.
	First time caller line, you're on the air, now or never.
	Hello.
	I almost hung up on you, dear.
	You're slow on the draw there.
	All right.
	You're on the air.
	Maison from San Antonio.
	Yes.
	Men win the war on women every few minutes with well-documented rapes, beatings, and murders.
	For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
	Since women can't even get help with housework, the equal reaction is on a small scale.
	Female might in mitochondria.
	Men blaming women for own karmic boomerang is a typical Jungian and male pattern of projecting the shadow self, cause all their wars.
	Men who take all the power, profit, and pleasure from themselves just can't figure out why the third world and women, terrified continuously by violence and poverty, might reflect it back in desperate suicide terrorism.
	Also, male homosexuality to women is just another war front affront.
	The only men who dress well and do their own laundry and have charm and wit, these men are the answer to what do women want.
	Are you one of Professor Sykes' students?
	No, I'm nearly finished.
	But gay men withhold romance, which is women's obsession and orgasm, for other men.
	And straight men satisfy their desires with prostitution, computer porn, phone sex, and strippers.
	In this man's world, women's only other employment opportunities are as nurses and maids.
	Is it any wonder that Mother Nature, as a conscious gay-ia force, perhaps has an alternative evolution beyond male labs and E.T.? ?
	Yikes!
	So, the irresponsible drugs and bad diet and everything are part of the degeneration of the genes.
	Alright, well, while you're ahead... That wasn't a question, but I really think that was great.
	These are the kinds of things that happen when you open the phone line.
	It is, but I must say that it doesn't sound like that lady will miss men too much in the future.
	No, I got that sense.
	I definitely got that sense, and I guess, in a way, what she just said sort of underlines everything you've been saying, doesn't it?
	Well, I'm sure she'll enjoy reading Adam's curse.
	Okay.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Professor Sykes.
	Hello!
	Hello!
	Yes, hello.
	Hey, it's very much a privilege, and that young lady was Right on target.
	I hate to say it, and this month I'm a Taurus.
	Yeah, you're a sympathizer too.
	You're a sympathizer, aren't you?
	I'm a sympathizer with her, but my question is, the value of man and woman with stem cell research and cloning, they could eliminate us both very easily, and how much spiritual and Well, but wait a minute.
	Stop right there.
	First of all, I think that the professor destroyed your cloning thought.
	Okay.
	Well, okay.
	Yes.
	But anyway, the thing with the men in power and whatnot that can do what they want to with women, that pretty much is gone.
	That's out the window.
	Women have the power now to control a lot of things.
	All right.
	Professor, now he makes a very good point.
	If you look at the social...
	The way we are presently socially constructed in the United States, there certainly has been a sea change, hasn't there?
	Yes, there has.
	But it certainly hasn't occurred all over the world.
	In many other countries, women are just as badly treated as they ever were.
	That's true.
	So, yes, you're absolutely right.
	There's huge changes taking place now in America and in European countries.
	Yes, and where freedom rings, these changes are occurring.
	They are, that's right, and they're all to the good as far as I can see.
	But what can I say?
	I mean, it won't arrest the decline of the Y chromosome, but let's hope it arrests this Yeah, the other effects of Adam's curse that we've been talking about.
	You know, Professor, I'm really curious.
	When you released, when you had the news release that flashed around the world about all of this those months ago, what kind of reaction was there?
	Okay, well, it, um, all sorts of reactions, really, but, I mean, one, I've been accused Quite often of being a traitor to the male sex, if you like, to my own gender.
	And on that, actually, I think it would have been hard to write this book if I'd been a woman, actually, because I would have been then accused of having my own gender, actually.
	So there were some quite vicious letters and emails that I was somehow Letting men down, as it were.
	I don't really see it like that at all.
	Of course not.
	But they were, you said the word vicious.
	Yes.
	People don't understand how very difficult it is to be a messenger and how perilous, it's truly perilous to be a messenger, particularly with this kind of news.
	Well, I mean, in a way, They didn't amount to anything, I'm glad to say, but in a way they kind of proved the point, really.
	So in other words, you accepted most of those emails as evidence?
	And then there were, but then they were equally balanced, or balanced far more by people who, I mean of course the The press release and what happened, what went out around the wires and stuff.
	It was a very summary, really.
	But, I mean, they were balanced by many messages which, well, I'm not exactly looking forward to the end of men.
	Well, let's put it right after.
	How many sounded like that young lady?
	Well, not very many, actually, because what was interesting was that when I've asked people I've had responses to, well, even though a lot of women say, well, men are utterly useless and all the rest of it.
	We've heard that incantation for many, many years now.
	But actually, women have said, oh no, I mean, a world without women would be utterly awful.
	They're not like that lady from San Antonio, is it?
	I think, in a sense, of course, when it actually happened, of course, men would be completely forgotten.
	I mean, like the dodo or something like that would never have been known.
	But certainly, a world without men would be extremely difficult and different, and the world would be more boring, I guess.
	Oh, maybe so.
	But I'll tell you, that lady could have been their leader.
	Yes, she could.
	I mean, I hope she enjoys reading Adam's Curse, because she'll find a lot of things, even more ammunition for her poetry and prose.
	Well, all right.
	If she wants Adam's Curse, where would she go?
	I mean, would it probably be Amazon.com?
	I mean, get it from Amazon.
	But as I say, it was published last Monday, so in the United States.
	So it's in Barnes & Noble and all the good bookshops, as they say.
	Excellent.
	I'm sure many will be on their way.
	Here's to the Rockies.
	You're on air with Professor Sykes.
	Hello.
	Hi.
	I was wondering about pollution, especially those that mimic estrogen, called estrogenic compounds.
	I was listening to a terribly disturbing study by Dr. Steve Nugent, who was at one time the President of the American Naturopaths.
	He was saying that not only is male sterility on the rise of all species all over the world, but also some intersex births, or hermaphrodites, which is what the greys are supposed to be, not female, but hermaphrodites.
	So my question is, are you aware of any of this affecting maleness?
	Yes.
	In fact, in Adam's Curse, I've got a chapter on this, and it certainly seems to be true that male infertility, and particularly as judged by sperm count, for example, has been going down quite rapidly in the last 50 years all over the world.
	And although it's not absolutely certain what the cause for this is, Certainly the finger has been pointed at pollutants, as you say, that mimic oestrogens and things in our diet and in the environment that were not there before.
	And some even quite healthy sounding things actually do mimic oestrogens like soya beans, for example.
	There's an oestrogen-like compound in soya beans.
	Also some plasticizers have an oestrogen-like activity and that is That's, again, not entirely proven, but it is thought to be at least one of the major reasons why the sperm count in men is going down.
	Now, in Adam's Curse, I kind of treat that as another irony in the sense that the lady from San Antonio drew a parallel between The feminine and Gaia, the goddess of the world.
	Oh, she did.
	She did.
	And so, getting back to another argument, trying to get all these arguments together.
	All right, Professor, do get them together.
	I will after the break.
	There you go.
	Boy, it's getting good.
	So you're on the radio for a little while.
	You learn about these breaks very quickly.
	The Lady from San Antonio.
	she said it all, huh?
	I've had nothing but bad luck since the day I saw the cat at my door
	So I came in to you, sweet lady answering your mystical call
	So I came into you, sweet lady, answering your mystical call
	Crystal ball on the table showing the future, the past
	Crystal ball on the table, showing the future, the past Same cat with them evil eyes, and I knew it was a spell she
	same cat with them evil eyes I knew it was a spell she cast
	cast She's...
	She's...
	La la la la la Oh, la la la la la la la
	La la la...
	La la la la la la la la La la la la la la la la
	La la la...
	Valentine has gone Here for now they've gone
	Silent time is done, here for now they're gone Romeo and Juliet, on to death and eternity
	Romeo and Juliet are together in eternity
	40,000 men and women every day 40,000 men and women every day
	Forty thousand men and women every day Forty thousand men and women every day
	Forty thousand men and women every day Come on baby, don't be a reaper
	Baby take my hand, don't be a reaper We'll be able to fly, don't be a reaper
	Baby I'm gonna make it I wonder if Juliet and Juliet would rest as easily
	To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
	The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
	To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
	line is area code 775-727-1222. To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll-free
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	International callers may recharge by calling your in-country sprint access number
	pressing option five and i went to all three
	eight hundred eight nine three zero nine zero three from coast to coast
	and worldwide on the internet this is coast to coast a m
	without bell well uh... what a program this has been professor brian sites is
	my guest in yes professor and professor like that you've been listening
	very carefully this morning i hope you have because
	there have been some truly amazing
	controversial revelations laid out across this uh... program this morning
	I'm Art Bell and we'll be right back.
	Adam's Curse is the name of the book.
	It's a book you're really going to want.
	It's just out by Brian Sykes, author of the best-selling The Seven Daughters of Eve.
	Once again, Adam's Curse is the name of the book, and you absolutely are going to want to grab this as quickly as you can.
	I can tell you I'm going to be reading it quite quickly.
	Professor, you have, I just noticed, you have an entire chapter called Guy's Revenge.
	That's right, yes, and getting back to what we were talking about before the break.
	Yes.
	Putting a lot of arguments together and the way in which sexual selection has led to the accumulation of wealth and power and how that has shaped the modern world really.
	While at the same time, in its battle against the feminine, has polluted the modern world.
	And Gaia's Revenge is all about how the feminine, in two respects, first of all, well, let's talk about the pollution, that isn't it ironic that the world seen as a feminine entity, as Gaia, the earth goddess, is hitting back at males in just the place it hurts, that's to say by The pollutants dropping the sperm count.
	Now, just when I say that, just in the question of a couple of sentences, I sound like completely bananas.
	But in fact, I do develop that theme a little more carefully in that chapter, Guy's Revenge.
	Well, it may have a lot in common with bananas.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Professor Sykes.
	Hello.
	Hello?
	Hello, Mark?
	Yes.
	Well, I'd like to ask our guest, since he's already cited male homosexuality as a possible means by which the mitochondrion strikes back at the Y-chromosome, whether any studies have ever been done about female autism.
	How many uncles do autists who are female have versus aunts?
	Because I was wondering if this could not be yet another Uh, kink in this war, whether this could be the white chromosome striking back again at the mitochondria and saying, well, okay, I'll see that women are born, but that if they're, that when they're born, they aren't going to really, A, want to be, want to reproduce all that much, uh, be able to take care of their kids, be able to act in the ways that, well, nevermind detracting men, we'll be able to keep them around.
	We'll be able to keep a husband and father around.
	I ask this because I have it, and I am related to a woman who is absolutely crippled with the same condition.
	I have many more uncles, many more male relatives on my father's side than female, and I have somewhat more relatives on my mother's side than female.
	My mother's half-brother Okay, you don't have to go on.
	By extension, it's a wonderful question.
	It is a wonderful question, isn't it?
	The only thing is I don't have a wonderful answer, I'm afraid.
	It's an absolutely brilliant question and I'm ashamed to say I've never considered it.
	I know that there is a genetic input to autism and certain genes have been implicated in it, but I've never considered it as the opposite way around and if you like the Y chromosome Hi, is that me?
	wrestling against the minor chondron, but since that is such a deeply embedded war,
	it's certainly something as soon as I get back to Oxford I will have a look at.
	So thank you very much, and I'm really sorry that I haven't got an answer to the question.
	That's quite all right. First time caller line, you're on the air with Professor Sykes. Hello.
	Hi, is that me?
	That's you.
	Oh, good. Okay, I guess this relates a little bit to the former caller,
	but I remember when I was in university and we studied double Y individuals,
	and these are men with the XYY, with a double Y gene, and they were very aggressive,
	and there were studies done that showed that many prisoners have this double Y.
	I actually think that it has been proffered as a defense, a legal defense.
	So, I was wondering if it's still happening?
	How it happens?
	Can I answer that question?
	Yes.
	Well, it's certainly true that amongst inmates in prisons that there's a higher proportion of men with 2Y chromosomes than among the normal population.
	But there's plenty of men in the normal population with 2Y chromosomes who are not in the least bit criminally inclined.
	And when those results were first produced, probably 20 years ago now, then clearly the explanation that, well, they've got double dose of this dangerous chromosome was accepted and it all seemed to fit in very well.
	What since happened is that there's now, it's probably not as stark as we thought, it's just the fact that they've got three chromosomes when they should have two, and there are other Those types of diseases where you have too many chromosomes that are also found at higher frequencies in prisons and amongst offenders.
	But if you look at very well-to-do, famous or powerful men, Professor, do you think that you might see a higher percentage of double Ys?
	Possible, but that's not been done as far as I know.
	I see.
	Maybe we should start.
	Maybe we should.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Professor Sykes.
	Good morning.
	Hello.
	Hello.
	Professor, you're very interesting.
	Earlier, and of course just now, you mentioned that the microcondia attacks the Y-chromosomes.
	I'm assuming then, and I want to make sure if you do or not, that you accept that fertilization and mitosis is based on the theory of epigenesis?
	Theory of... Is that correct?
	I'm sorry, I couldn't... You accept then, epigenesis.
	Oh, epigenesis, yeah.
	Epigenesis is the basis for mitosis and fertilization.
	Could I have another question?
	Well, alright, but hold on.
	I don't even understand.
	Epigenesis is the term that means the genetic impact and influence of things that lie outside the chromosomes.
	Okay.
	Hold on, Collar.
	So, mitochondria and what we've been talking about with mitochondria is, strictly speaking, epigenesis.
	Okay, now if that is the case, do you, have you heard or do you believe in the possibility of the theory of Parthenogenesis, that there are two vestigial glands, the paruferun and the upuferun, that a female has in the menstrual suffix that is now somewhat dormant, and that this also might be the cause for dermoid cysts, for virgin birth in this case.
	Yeah, okay.
	Alright.
	Some animals actually, and it's been thought that occasionally women will produce children without men, without having their heads fertilised at all.
	It's never been proven in the case of any humans, but certainly that's the way that many animals reproduce, but of course they produce clones in that way.
	Strictly speaking, it's likely to happen to humans, but it's not entirely ruled out.
	But if there were any examples of it, then the offspring would be an identical clone to the mother.
	Genetic tests nowadays would prove that very easily.
	Then we'd be right back to the banana problem, wouldn't we?
	Yeah, we would.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Professor Sykes.
	Hello.
	Good morning, gentlemen.
	Thank you for a very It's exciting and enlightening program.
	My name is Paula.
	I'm calling from Canton, Ohio, listening to you out of Akron over 640 AM, WHLO.
	Yes.
	And I had two questions for Dr. Sykes.
	It is Sykes, right?
	S-Y-K-E-S.
	S-Y, thank you.
	I wanted to know, first off, In the Orient, when female babies were born, they were killed upon birth, so that they wanted to get rid of the females.
	Did that have any impact on the male babies?
	Did they finally produce more male babies there then?
	And question number two, I will preface this, Art, with you having had so many Yes, on your program between you and George over the years about ETs or maybe us from the future coming back and doing medical, I don't know, genetic manipulation maybe or experiments taking eggs and sperm from males and females because the thought was their race was dying out.
	Yes.
	So does Dr. Sykes think Or is he, with him being a geneticist and a scientist, is his research into this Y chromosome thing, does that have any bearing on
	That one's over the top for current discussion.
	Well, actually, can I answer both those questions?
	Yeah, you sure can.
	Okay, the first one was about male babies, sorry, female babies being killed in China and in India.
	Yes, indeed.
	And also abortions done selectively to destroy female children.
	Yes.
	That, Adam, is interesting.
	How many scenes from your Your listeners have actually are reproducing them.
	Of course, I do talk about that.
	I feel that is another way, a conscious way, in which the Y chromosome is being propagated by the purposeful and deliberate murder of young girls.
	So that's one thing.
	As to, you know, aliens coming in from the future or getting into the gene pool, as it were, In all the work I and others have done to reconstruct human evolution, we've never seen any DNA from anything that was completely non-human.
	That's not exactly a complete answer, but we haven't seen any DNA from anything that doesn't fit quite well with what we know to be Human DNA.
	Although I know that wasn't the question.
	If there'd been any massive interbreeding with aliens, we would have seen it.
	Perhaps so.
	But there is a lot of discussion about a race of aliens that might have failing DNA.
	And interestingly enough, what you have told us tonight really is that... Could be us, then, couldn't it?
	Well, it could be us, yes, couldn't it?
	Exactly.
	And aren't we planning to go to Mars?
	We have failing DNA.
	Yes, well.
	It's incredible.
	International Line, you're on the air with Professor Sykes.
	Good morning.
	Oh, good morning.
	Hi.
	That was funny what you said earlier, Art, about that ETs, or aliens, are all depicted as females.
	I totally forgot about that, but I was thinking, How do you know they're females and not some other sex?
	You know, it just hit me like a brick.
	I mean, we're talking about greys, and you know, we're intermarrying like crazy, and we're eventually all going to be sort of greys, or similar in some way, many hundreds of generations down the line, if we last that long.
	And yeah, when you see greys on TV or whatever, they're always female.
	That's what I think about.
	Maybe it's another sex altogether, as in Parthenogenesis, or completely androgynous.
	But I had two questions.
	One about chromosomes and embryos, and the other one about Darwinian theory.
	So I just wanted to ask your guest, Brian, I wanted to get some clarification on this.
	If the female chromosome is XX and the male chromosome is XY, wouldn't, in your opinion, make X the standard chromosome and Y the different or the deviant one?
	Yep, it does.
	That was a yes.
	Yeah, that was definitely a yes.
	But the Y is a decaying X, no doubt about that.
	The male embryo, you were saying, originates as female and then turns into male somewhere down the line.
	And I guess, wouldn't proof of that be in why males have nipples?
	Well, that's a vestigial characteristic.
	Interestingly, some males can produce milk through their nipples.
	Oh yeah?
	I'd have heard that too.
	And Darwin was known for his theory on survival of the fittest, or survival of the most adaptable, as it were.
	So, if his theory is true, wouldn't the longevity of the human male species rely on becoming more adaptable to the world or environment around him?
	And what's your opinion on that?
	Yeah, that's right.
	Well, not all species manage to adapt though, so that's the problem.
	When the environment changes, some species, and we've seen Most species become extinct, of course, but it's not necessary that we or any other species will be able to adapt to changes, and the faster they happen, the less likely we are to adapt.
	Actually, interestingly, the average life expectancy of a species, when it starts, when it becomes extinct, is only 100,000 years.
	So, extinctions are happening all the time.
	With some rare exceptions.
	There are some animals that have been around very long.
	Of course, yes, but that's the average length of a species, not very long at all.
	Professor, as a geneticist, how do you feel about how close we're beginning to get to the ability to manipulate Our genetic, our own genetic makeup to be our own creators, to be our own God.
	It almost amounts to that.
	How does people think of God?
	Well, actually, even though I am a geneticist, I'm not in favor of the wholesale interference with our genetic makeup.
	I, for example, even though I personally wouldn't have much objection To a child born, say, from two mothers, a lesbian couple, and sort of sticking my neck out, I think that will happen in my own lifetime.
	I'm not in favour of wholesale genetic manipulation to try and improve individuals' offspring.
	I'm certainly not in favour of cloning.
	I think there's a lot of mystery, there's wonder in our genetic variability and our genetic heritage that we've got from our ancestors.
	I think it should be, except in the case of very severe diseases, left to its own devices.
	But, necessarily, as the science for the diseases progresses, the ability to to do other things comes with it, doesn't it?
	It does, and I think there will be, and we have to be very careful about this, there will be the Inclination to try and design your own offspring as being the perfect child, as it were.
	Yes.
	Great dangers in that, not only from an ethical point of view, which I think are overwhelmingly argue against it.
	Also great dangers because it's very clear that genes do many things.
	So you might want to alter a gene, for example, to produce a a trait which you find attractive in a child and find that
	actually it interferes with another gene or another pathway somewhere and gives that
	child a severe disadvantage.
	So it's too complicated, it's unethical and I certainly won't look forward to that day.
	The law of unintended consequences.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	It has been said.
	You know, our time is gone.
	I mean, that's it.
	Poof.
	You were worried about staying awake.
	Here you are.
	We're done.
	We are.
	Yeah, we're done.
	We're done.
	We're out of time.
	Your book.
	Did you write this?
	So the average person?
	Absolutely.
	It's not for scientists.
	It's for everybody.
	It's written.
	You don't have to know any science to read it, really.
	Well, that's wonderful.
	And I think a lot of people are going to chase after it.
	It's called Adam's Curse.
	The author, my guest, Brian Sykes, that's S-Y-K-E-S.
	Get to your bookstore, get to Amazon, get to wherever you can get and grab it up.
	Professor, it has been an honor, truly an honor to have you on.
	Well, it's very kind of you to say so, and it's been a great honor and a pleasure for me to be part of it.
	And as you say, the three hours has gone past in a flash.
	Good night, Professor.
	Good night.
	Well, wasn't that something?
	Professor Brian Sykes, and once again, Adam's Curse is his book.
	I think you're going to enjoy it.
	It was written just for you.
	But for me, that's it for the weekend.
	Your regularly scheduled programming resumes tomorrow evening.
	From the high desert, I'm Art Bell.
	Good night.
	Midnight in the desert Shooting stars across the sky This magical journey Will take us on a ride Filled with a longing Searching for the truth Will we make it till tomorrow?
	Will the sun shine on you?

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