15 - 04 - 2002...
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CONTENTS
#1. The Logic Behind the UFO Cover-up by: Patrick Cooke
#2. The Human Radiation Experiments - How Scientists Secretly Used U.S. Citizens As Guinea Pigs During The Cold War by: Alan R Cantwell Jr., M.D.
#3. Stalking Legendary Creatures by: Sharon J. Huntington
#4. Ball Lightning Terror - Memories of Abduction by: Al Straughan
#5. Long Way From The Loch by: Elizabeth Schneider
#6. Milky Way 'may hold a billion planets like Earth' by: James Meek (Science Correspondent - The Guardian)
#7. $1 Million Mathematical Mystery "Solved"? NewScientist.
#8. 'Now I Know All About Ghosts © 2002Telegraph Group LTD
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#1. The Logic Behind the UFO Cover-up by: Patrick Cooke
padraigco@hotmail.com http://www.bibleufo.com
To most UFO watchers the Roswell incident was the beginning of the UFO phenomenon but to the government it was the inauguration of a new approach to public relations, "Cover-up-on-the-fly". The extreme contradictions in the rapid-fire changes of the official investigation should have sent up red flags but the post-war trust of the military, in the public view, was solid. The confused nature of the government response bears witness to the fact at this time that the military had no standing policy on dealing with UFOs. It is obvious that the government dropped the ball and never seemed to fully recover as it adopted a "hide it quickly, deny it totally, and cover it up completely" policy. What followed became an almost comical chain of lame explanations, false investigations, and an amateur dance of deception that continues to this day. The government in collusion with almost every other social institution seemed to agree that the public had neither the right, nor the need to know any information about the UFO phenomenon.
In order to justify the withholding of such important information NASA commissioned the most influential think tank in the country, the Brookings Institute, to study the impact of revealing the existence of extraterrestrial life on the public. Not surprisingly the Brookings Institute concluded that such contact could cause cultural upheaval, threaten social and scientific institutions, and cause stress to the public worldwide. These few excerpts from the 1961 report titled "Proposed Studies on the Implications of Peaceful Space Activities for Human Affairs" show some of the cautionary suppositions and generalizations that brought it to that conclusion.
"Anthropological files contain many examples of societies, sure of their place in the universe which have disintegrated when they had to associate with previously unfamiliar societies espousing different ideas and different life ways: others that survive such an experience usually did so by paying the price of changes in values and attitudes and behavior." (Pg. 15)
"It has been speculated that of all groups scientists and engineers might be the most devastated by the discovery of relatively superior creatures since these professions are most clearly associated with the mastery of nature rather than the understanding and expression of man. Advanced understanding of nature might soon vitiate, (corrupt), all our theories at the very least." (Pg. 225)
"It is perhaps interesting to note that when asked what the consequences of the discovery of superior life would be, an audience of Saturday Review readers chose for the most part not to answer the question at all, in spite of their detailed answers to many of the other speculative questions. Perhaps the idea is so foreign that even this readership was bemused by it. But no one can speculate too, that the idea of intellectually superior creatures may be anxiety-provoking." (Pg. 226)
A decision was obviously made to issue blanket denials about even the existence of UFOs and the cover-up was cast in stone.
How correct is the judgment of the powers that hide this reality concerning the grave harm revealing the existence of UFOs would cause to the social fabric? That of course depends on whether the revelation gave rise to fear or hope. If it were announced that the visitors had conquest or destruction as part of their agenda, a defense posture would be the obvious result, and no doubt a futile one. There would be little need to worry about the social fabric. In consideration of the fact that they show little aggression, except for their total disregard of security zones, and that they always flee when pursued, at least the evidence weighs heavily on the side of their being peaceful rather than combative. However a positive and friendly agenda would be perhaps the greatest threat to the status quo in almost every area of society.
A power greater than anything ever witnessed by modern man would suddenly become the prime focus of almost every human being on the planet. After decades of blatant cover-up the world's governments and military powers would be immediately exposed for their deceit. Science would have no theories to cover the enigma of their inability to detect such an obvious presence and the very purpose of all scientific research would be brought into question. Education would be in turmoil as certainly most accepted knowledge would be subject to very critical analysis. Established religion would suddenly find its exclusive rights to "higher power" in serious competition and no doubt the collection plate would suffer dearly. Big business would of course be affected by everything, in every way, and most likely with an unprofitable result. As a whole the world as we know it would change drastically with the true effect being determined by the actual direct influence of the alien presence on mankind.
I present a question to those who believe there are unknown visitors in our skies. Are we not naive to think that governments, large corporations and other major institutions would not be justified in considering the possible negative impact an alien revelation would have on their individual concerns? There is no doubt that they are justified, at least in their own minds, and are doing exactly that. However is the Government not the servant of the public, are not the people the consumers that make big business big, and do not the people provide the support that keep the other major institutions thriving? If this is the reality, what gives them the right to control what the people should and should not know? And most important why are they deciding to hide history's greatest truth, is the threat really that great, and how extensive is the cover-up resulting from that decision.
The archeological field is in possession of direct evidence of advanced technology and races in the remnants of ancient cultures. They don't declare it as relevant, just unknown. The fact that these objects could not possibly have been produced by the culture to which they are attributed goes unmentioned. This reality is mirrored in many of the world's ancient writings but anthropology is dismissive on the written evidence veiling it in myth and religious symbolism. Our true history is incomplete without a clear understanding that our ancestors were in direct contact with a race of advanced beings. The remnants of the ancient cultures are mislabeled and improperly associated to satisfy certain long established and antiquated theories of our past. The "publish or perish" mentality that drives the funding needs in these fields requires strict adherence to the status quo. Disagree with the orthodox theories and you won't get published. Don't get published and the organization funding you will no longer find you a profitable venture or a magnet for much desired media attention. If you lose your appeal as a solid money and media draw with one major institution, you lose your credibility with them all. The cover-up is a key to success in these fields.
There are two other great enigmas in the scientific arena concerning the UFO phenomena, S.E.T.I., the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, and the NASA space program. If we are correct in stating that UFOs exist and are frequently present in our skies it would be safe to assume that the scientific community knows about this as well. This would mean that the S.E.T.I. Project is nothing more than a diversion meant to keep society ever mindful of the fallacy that they are looking for extra terrestrial life out there, while they know it has been here all along. The attempted cover-up of sightings by NASA astronauts is well documented. This combined with the public relations flim flam concerning the possibility of alien life forms on other planets, with no mention of evidence of the presence of alien life forms in our own skies, shows a policy focused on keeping the public totally uninformed. The cover-up is a matter of public policy in science.
Education is conspicuously silent on the subject of UFOs, having found it convenient to pigeonhole it as myth. But just as with programming computers, the educational textbooks are controlled by the GIGO principal, (Garbage In, Garbage Out). Instructors cannot impart wisdom that is not in their instructional materials. They are simply teaching the same antiquated and unproven theories that archaeologists, anthropologist, and geologists, pump out in a repetitive stream of mind mush. And of course the students who go on to be instructors absorb the same antiquated material, repeat it as programmed to do, and this cycle of disinformation repeats itself in perpetuity. Even the new field of astrobiology, created by NASA, is focused on theories dealing with the hypothetical existence of life on other planets, and in other galaxies, and not the study of alien life actually evidenced on international radar screens. Ufology is not a subject in our higher institutions while theoretical science is widely taught. Certainly there is more evidence supporting the presence of UFOs than there is for the hypothetical existence of bucky balls, fat wormholes, and invisible dark matter. The cover-up is part of the curriculum.
Organized Bible based religions are for the most part also silent on the UFO phenomenon, either through fear of facing the reality, refusal to recognize it, or church mandated social isolation. This is an enigma in itself considering the fame of Ezekiel's wheels, the chariots of the Gods, (the verse, not the book, well maybe the book too), and other evidence of flying vehicles in biblical text. When mainstream religion does deal with the anomaly there are two doctrinal views concerning the presence of UFOs, the holograph theory, and the evil alien conspiracy. One approach states that the UFOs are holographic illusions projected by Satan to lure the congregation away from the church and into alien worship, eventually enslaving mankind. The other more radical view surmises that the beings piloting the UFOs are actually fallen angels with Satan in the mother ship. They are lurking on the dark side of the moon, or some other evil hideaway, occasionally visiting our atmosphere to abduct and implant a few of their human followers, slaughter some cows, scrawl satanic graffiti in our barley fields, or run circles around our jets. Either way UFOs are evil and UFO believers are either dupes or disciples of Satan. Contrary to the doomsday bellowing of the satanic UFO prophets, this widespread cover-up itself could easily be classified as a Great Deception, while evil soul-stealing aliens piloting UFOs are not mentioned in scripture. Certainly the cover-up is safe here, in total confusion and ignorant bliss.
Big business rakes in plenty of profit from the UFO phenomenon without any need for the real thing. It is a multibillion-dollar business world wide, and dare we even consider the impact on that trade if it became politically incorrect to exploit and demean a superior alien race. Big business would also find it much more difficult to manipulate and brand an advanced race of beings than it is to manipulate the human race. Unless big business can get the visitors under contract, sporting corporate logos on their craft, doing guest appearances on talk shows, or convince them to switch to the internal combustion engine, none of which is likely, they could only be a burden. The cover-up is just smart business.
Add to this whole mix the social stigma associated with belief in UFOs and the mainstream media exploitation of the UFO phenomenon portraying it as violent and mysterious, solely for profit. Now you have very cleverly made the reality not only socially unacceptable but also well disguised as fiction. The dumbing down of our society through a constant blitz of heavily advertised entertainment insures very few will be distracted from the stranglehold of the boob tube of your choice long enough to consider weightier matters. A never ending flow of glitzy presentation keeps the populace riveted in place while being conditioned to be obsessive shoppers with good branding. Even during crisis we are told that the way to lift us up from our depression is to shop till we drop. Until the relevant information concerning UFOs inhabits prime time television, the majority of humanity in the developed world will remain ignorant. The cover-up is safe from too many prying eyes.
Perhaps the last frontiers of free thought in the "accessibility" and "regulation of speech" categories, are the Internet and privately controlled information outlets. Only on the Internet and through specialty media sources can the free flow of subjective and objective views concerning the UFO phenomenon be easily accessed by the printed and spoken word. Of course this final bastion of free speech is also being threatened by the need for censorship in the name of national security concerns and for the preservation of patriotism prompted by the recent terrorist attacks. For the most part however, and for the time being, the cover-up has only of very weak foothold in the alternative media.
There are of course rumors that the government has contact with the aliens, in negotiations, or in some other such communication. We can only hope that these rumors are false because certainly politicians and military leaders would be doing the negotiating. If such a scenario were true and assuming that advanced technologies and advanced intelligence, go hand-in-hand, the negotiations probably wouldn't last very long. Any self-respecting alien would probably give up in frustration in minutes. If the aliens capitulated to the dishonesty and insincerity of power-hungry and lobby-controlled politicians and the aggressive, overly protective, and government-controlled attitudes of gun toting career military officers they wouldn't be very intelligent. We know that the government would not consider our best interests in any negotiations and would be more likely to first protect their own power. If these aliens are peaceful and intelligent we at least have the hope they have the welfare of all mankind at heart and would be able to see that negotiating with our leaders will not benefit the people as a whole.
All things considered it appears as though the cover-up is almost complete and in the eyes of those supporting the cover-up their actions are justified. It can be clearly seen that the lifting of this cover-up would have a major impact on many areas of society and the ripple effect would carry through all of the world's cultures. As it stands now it is basically a minor irritant because UFOs seem satisfied simply to fly in, do their business, and go away. Until social values and public priorities that compromise the status quo are changed the UFO cover-up will continue and this quiet power, a power that seems to be waiting and watching, will remain officially "Unidentified'.
Whatever their reasons for being here and regardless of what the government does or does not know there is no justification for deceiving the public solely to preserve wealth and power. Unfortunately the status quo is ingeniously set up mainly to preserve an entrenched system of wealth and power controlled by the elite. Until that system is changed the deception will continue. The power elite are the direct source of, and in control of this deception and they will resist anything that threatens their power base. Not only could an alien revelation cause a major social change, but also a major social upheaval must first take place, which reclaims this power to control public information from the rich, and returns it to the people where it rightfully belongs, before it will ever become public knowledge. Unless of course they land on the White House lawn, which is more likely to happen before the rich and powerful ever lose control of the truth.
Patrick Cooke is the Editor of The Bible UFO Connection Website,
http://www.bibleufo.com, and author of the book, "The Greatest Deception - The Bible UFO Connection." This book can be purschased on Amazon.com and othe favoite book stores.
Copyright © 2002 Patrick Cooke
Patrick Cooke is the Author of the NOW #1 Seller book on the amazon.com
The Greatest Deception - The Bible UFO Connection also the owner of the Newest Discussion list called "Oraclechasers" You can subscribe by addressing a blank letter to
oraclechasers-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
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#2. The Human Radiation Experiments - How Scientists Secretly Used U.S. Citizens As Guinea Pigs During The Cold War by: Alan R Cantwell Jr., M.D.
http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/THE_HUMAN_RADIATION_EXPERIMENTS.html
In preparing America for nuclear attack during the Cold War years following World War II, thousands of US citizens became the innocent victims of over 4,000 secret and classified radiation experiments conducted by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and other government agencies, such as the Department of Defense, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the Public Health Service (now the CDC), the National Institutes of Health, the Veterans Administration (VA), the CIA, and NASA.
Millions of people were exposed to radioactive fallout from the continental testing of more than 200 atmospheric and underground nuclear weapons, and from the hundreds of secret releases of radiation into the environment. Over 200,000 “atomic vets” who worked closely with nuclear detonations at the Nevada test site during the 1950s and 1960s were especially vulnerable to radiation fallout.
Also affected were the thousands of so-called “downwinders”, who lived in nearby small towns in Nevada, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. These
downwinders (along with the animal populations) suffered the worst
cumulative radioactive effects of fallout, along with a contaminated
environment teeming with radioactive food and farm products. The plight of these poor country people exposed to government-induced radiation sickness has been recorded in Carole Gallagher’s remarkable photo-essay American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War (The Free Press, 1993).
In reviewing declassified AEC records (now the Department of Energy) from the 1950s, Gallagher was shocked to discover one document that described the people downwind of the Nevada Test Site as “a low use segment of the population.” Her shock at such callous bigotry caused her to eventually move West to research, investigate and document those who lived closest to the Test Site, as well as workers at the site, and soldiers repeatedly exposed to nuclear bombs during the military tests.
Disinformation and Nuclear Fallout
In the nuclear arms race, government doctors and scientists brainwashed the public into believing low dose radiation was not harmful. Some officials even tried to convince people that “a little radiation is good for you.” Totally ignored was the knowledge that the radiation from nuclear fallout could lead to an increased risk of cancer, heart disease, neurological disorders, immune system disease, reproductive abnormalities, sterility, birth defects, and genetic mutations which could be passed on from generation to generation. The full extent of this radiation damage to the American public during the Cold War years will never be known.
A secret AEC document, dated 17 April 1947, reveals that physicians were aware of these radiation hazards but simply ignored them. Under the title “Medical Experiments in Humans,” the memorandum read: “It is desired that no document be released which refers to experiments with humans that might have an adverse effect on public opinion or result in legal suits. Documents covering such field work should be classified ‘Secret’.”
According to Gallagher, many downwinders testified that the Public Health Service officials told them that their ‘neurosis’ about the fallout was the only thing that would give them cancer, particularly if they were female. Women with severe radiation illness, hair loss, and badly burned skin, were clinically diagnosed in hospitals as “neurotic.” Other severely ill women were diagnosed with “housewife syndrome.” When Gallagher’s investigation led her to ask a Department of Energy spokesperson about the AEC/DOE’s practice of waiting until the wind blew towards Utah before testing nuclear bombs or venting radiation in order to avoid contaminating Las Vegas or Los Angeles,
the unabashed and unconcerned official actually said on tape, “Those people in Utah don’t give a shit about radiation.”
Secret Radiation Experiments
Only recently, with the forced release of Top Secret documents, have details been revealed about the unethical and inhumane radiation studies conducted during the Cold War years from 1944 to 1974. The initial story broke in November 1993 in a series of articles in the Albuquerque Tribune which identified the names of 18 Americans secretly injected with plutonium, a key ingredient of the atomic bomb and one of the most toxic substances known to man. Some, but not all, of the patients were terminally ill. This horrifying story by journalist Eileen Welsome (who later won a Pulitzer Prize) unleashed a storm of nationwide protest prompting Department of Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary to order the release of secret files and documents
pertaining to these Cold War experiments.
The extremely dangerous plutonium experiment was performed under the
auspices of the government’s Manhattan Project, which brought together a revered group of distinguished scientists to develop and test the atom bomb. The purpose of these secret experiments was to establish occupational standards for workers who would be producing plutonium and other radioactive ingredients for the nuclear energy industry.
Some of the classified government experiments included:
* Exposing more than 100 Alaskan villagers to radioactive iodine during the 1960s.
* Feeding 49 retarded and institutionalised teenagers radioactive iron and calcium in their cereal during the years 1946-1954.
* Exposing about 800 pregnant women in the late 1940s to radioactive iron to determine the effect on the fetus.
* Injecting 7 newborns (six were Black) with radioactive iodine.
* Exposing the testicles of more than 100 prisoners to cancer-causing doses of radiation. This experimentation continued into the early 1970s.
* Exposing almost 200 cancer patients to high levels of radiation from
cesium and cobalt. The AEC finally stopped this experiment in 1974.
* Administering radioactive material to psychiatric patients in San
Francisco and to prisoners in San Quentin.
* Administering massive doses of full body radiation to cancer patients
hospitalised at the General Hospital in Cincinnati, Baylor College in
Houston, Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York City, and the US Naval
Hospital in Bethesda, during the 1950s and 1960s. The experiment provided data to the military concerning how a nuclear attack might affect its troops.
* Exposing 29 patients, some with rheumatoid arthritis, to total body
irradiation (100-300 rad dose) to obtain data for the military. This was conducted at the University of California Hospital in San Francisco.
The Atomic Energy Commission
In 1995 the Energy Department admitted to over 430 radiation experiments conducted by the Atomic Energy Commission between the years 1944 and 1974. Over 16,000 people were radiated, some of whom did not know the health risks or did not give consent.
These experiments were designed to help atomic scientists understand the
human hazards of nuclear war and radiation fallout. Because the entire
nuclear arms buildup was classified secret, these experiments were all
stamped secret and allowed to take place under the banner of protecting
“national security.”
Amazingly, these clandestine studies were conducted at the most prestigious medical institutions and colleges, including the University of Chicago, the University of Washington, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and the previously mentioned universities.
Uranium Mine Workers
In addition to these radiation experiments, workers who mined uranium for the AEC in the Four Corners area of Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico, were exposed to radioactive dust during the 1940s up to the 1960s. Although AEC scientists and epidemiologists knew the dust in these poorly ventilated mines was contaminated with deadly radon gas which could easily cause death from lung cancer, this lifesaving information was never passed on to the miners, many of whom were Native Americans. As a result, many miners died prematurely of cancer of the lung.
Stewart Udall, an Arizona Congressman and lawyer who also served as
Secretary of the Interior during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, represented the miners and their families in a class action lawsuit against the federal government for radiation injuries. In The Myths of August, Udall writes that some physicians who defended the decisions of the atomic establishment sought to justify these experiments by contending that little was known about the health risks associated with the various exposures. Others tried to put a positive face on tests conducted without obtaining informed consent by maintaining that these experiments nevertheless produced advances in medical knowledge. Some physicians argued that the conduct of
the AEC doctors should be condoned because they were merely following the ‘prevailing ethics’ of the postwar period. When the miners’ case finally came to trial in 1983, the federal court in Arizona dismissed the case by declaring the US government was immune from lawsuit.
Medical Ethics of the Cold War
How could these physician-experimenters ignore the sworn Hippocratic Oath promising that doctors will not harm their patients? Did they violate the Nuremberg Code of justice developed in response to the Nazi war crimes trials after World War II?
The Nuremberg Code includes 10 principles to guide physicians in human
experimentation. In actuality, prior to the Nazi war crime tribunals, there was no written code for doctors; and lawyers defending the Nazi doctors tried to argue that similar wartime experiments were conducted with prisoners at the Illinois State Penitentiary, who were deliberately infected with malaria.
During the Nuremberg trials the AMA came up with its own ethical standards, which included three requirements: 1) voluntary consent of the person on whom the experiment is to be performed must be obtained; 2) the danger of each experiment must be previously investigated by animal experimentation; and 3) the experiment must be performed under proper medical protection and management.
The records now show that many victims of the government’s radiation
experiments did not voluntarily consent as required by the Code. As late as 1959, Harvard Medical School researcher Henry Beecher viewed the Code “as too extreme and not squaring with the realities of clinical research.” Another physician said the Code had little effect on mainstream medical morality and “doubted the ability of the sick to understand complex facts of their condition in a way to make consent meaningful.”
Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1996, Jay Katz recalls an argument at Harvard Medical School in 1961 suggesting that the Code was not necessarily pertinent to or adequate for the conduct of research in the United States. Katz writes: “The medical research community found, and still finds, the stringency of the NC’s first principle all too onerous.” But patients in medical experiments expect the experiment to help them in some way – not to harm them! Patients also are often inclined to totally trust their physicians not to harm them. In The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code, Katz concludes that many doctors view the Code as “a good code for barbarians but an unnecessary code for ordinary physicians.”
The President’s Advisory Committee
In January 1994 President Clinton convened an Advisory Committee to
investigate the accusations surrounding the human radiation experiments. In their final report presented to the president on 3 October, 1995, the Committee found that up to the early 1960s it was common for physicians to conduct research on patients without their consent.
The Committee’s harshest criticism was reserved for those cases in which physicians used patients without their consent in experiments in which the patients could not possibly benefit medically. These cases included the 18 people injected with plutonium at Oak Ridge Hospital in Tennessee, the University of Rochester in New York, the University of Chicago, and the University of California at San Francisco, as well as two experiments in which seriously ill patients were injected with uranium, six at the University of Rochester and eleven at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The plutonium and uranium experiments undoubtedly put the subjects at increased risk for cancer in ten or twenty years’ time.
The Final Report of the President’s Advisory Committee is now available in The Human Radiation Experiments, published in 1996 by Oxford Press. Although the Committee studied the experiments in depth, there was no attempt to assess the damage done to individuals. In many cases, the names and records of the patients were no longer available, nor was there any easy way to identify how many experiments had been conducted, where they took place, and which government agencies sponsored them. The Department of Health and Human Services, the primary government sponsor of research, had long since discarded files on experiments performed decades ago.
The Committee discovered “the records of much of the nation’s recent history had been irretrievably lost or simply could not be located” and “only the barest description remained” for the majority of the experiments.
The Department of Energy also claimed all the pertinent records of its
predecessor, the AEC, had been destroyed during the 1970s, but in some cases as late as 1989. All CIA records are classified. When records of the top secret MKULTRA program (in which unwitting subjects were experimented upon with a variety of mind-altering drugs) were requested, the CIA explained that all pertinent records had been destroyed during the 1970s when the program became a national scandal.
Keeping Government Secrets
The Committee made clear that its story could not have been told if the
government did not keep some records that were eventually retrieved and made public. However, federal records management law also provides for the routine destruction of older records. Thus, in the great majority of cases the loss or destruction of requested documents was a function of normal record-keeping practices.
The Committee was dismayed to report: “At the same time, however, the
records that recorded the destruction of documents, including secret
documents, have themselves been lost or destroyed.” Thus, the circumstances of destruction (and indeed, whether documents were destroyed or simply lost) is often hard to ascertain.
In the Committee’s judgment the AEC had repeatedly deceived the public by denying it had engaged in human experimentation, and by issuing cover stories to cover-up secret investigations, and by deliberately supplying incomplete information to people who participated in government-sponsored biomedical research. It was clear that once government information was “born secret” it often remained that way.
The Committee concludes: “The government has the power to create and keep secrets of immense importance to us all.” Yet, without documents how can historians and other researchers uncover the truth about the government’s clandestine activities? Where is the ‘smoking gun’ when secret records are systematically shredded or reported as ‘lost’? We now know that many people were damaged during the government’s Cold War period of secrets and lies. But how can we uncover the medical and scientific secrets that remain hidden in the still classified documents from 1974 up to the present?
In the absence of medical records and follow-up, the ultimate fate of
individuals who willingly or unwillingly “volunteered” for these experiments is not known. The Committee simply did not have the time or the resources to review individual files and histories. In many instances only fragmentary information survives about these experiments; whether people were harmed in these experiments could not be ascertained.
Current Secret Biomedical Experimentation
The US has the world’s largest arsenal of chemical and biological weapons. However, few people are aware of the covert biowarfare experiments conducted by various government agencies, particularly the military and the CIA.
For example, in August 1977 the CIA admitted to no less than 149
subprojects, including experiments to determine the effects of different drugs on human behaviour; work on lie-detectors, hypnosis, and electric shock; and the surreptitious delivery of drug-related materials. Forty-four colleges and universities were involved, along with fifteen research foundations, twelve hospitals or clinics, and three penal institutions. In the infamous MKULTRA mind-altering experiments, the victims were lured to hotel rooms for sexual encounters with prostitutes and were then drugged and monitored by CIA agents.
Military biowarfare attacks against unsuspecting Americans in the 1950s and 60s are a documented reality. The most notorious was a six-day US military bioattack on San Francisco in which clouds of potentially harmful bacteria were sprayed over the city. Twelve people developed pneumonia due to these infectious microbes, and one elderly man died from the bioattack.
In other secret attacks, bacteria were sprayed into New York City subway tunnels; into crowds at a Washington, D.C. airport; and onto highways in Pennsylvania. Biowarfare testing also took place in military bases in Virginia, in Key West, Florida, and off the coasts of California and Hawaii.
For 50 years the shameful details of the government’s radiation experiments were kept secret from the public. In The Plutonium Files, Eileen Welsome notes the ethical horror that resulted from the melding of military and medical agendas during the Cold War. She credits the atomic bomb project’s public relations machine for downplaying the fallout controversy, the illnesses of the atomic veterans, and the diseases of the downwinders. The government propagandists simply placed the blame on sudden wind shifts, misinformed scientists, the overactive imagination of aging soldiers, and even Communist propagandists.
Welsome concludes: “The web of deception and denial looks in retrospect like a vast conspiracy, but in actuality it was simply a reflection of the shared attitudes and beliefs of the scientists and the bureaucrats who were inducted into the weapons program at a time of national urgency and never abandoned their belief that nuclear war was imminent.” She worries if what we have learned from the thousands of radiation experiment documents made public over the last several years will be remembered. Like the Holocaust and the Nazi crimes against humanity, the radiation experiments should never be forgotten.
In reviewing Welsome’s book for the Los Angeles Times (2 January, 2000), Thomas Powers asks: “If the government lied about the danger of nuclear testing, can we trust them to tell us the truth about acid rain, global warming or the safety of deep storage for nuclear waste?”
Does Secret Medical Experimentation Continue?
To this day there are no adequate safeguards to protect people from secret government experimentation. Since the mid-1970s we have witnessed the spectacular rise of genetic engineering and molecular biology, as well as the concomitant outbreak of new and mysterious diseases like AIDS, chronic fatigue syndrome, the peculiar “Four Corners” lung disease discovered on Navajo land, and the appearance of unprecedented “emerging” viruses never before seen on the planet.
Investigators linking the possible origin of these diseases to the dangerous engineering of new microbes are often dismissed as paranoids and crackpots. The mysterious Persian Gulf War syndrome is yet another recent illness clouded in military and biologic secrecy, with the origin and cause still debated and the medical records of sick veterans often “lost” or otherwise unavailable. Not surprisingly, the same government institutions that funded the radiation experiments now largely control the research, the funding, and the cover stories pertaining to all these new diseases and viruses.
What is clear from studying the Committee’s Final Report is that the medical and scientific professions collaborated with the government and the military to abuse and harm US citizens. In the process, the nuclear establishment literally got away with murder. And there is simply no end to the secrets that still emerge from the Cold War years that began 58 years ago with the Manhattan Project.
In January 2000, the government presented the results of a statistical study showing that atomic workers employed in the nuclear weapons industry during the Cold War were more likely to suffer a higher rate of cancer, due to their exposure to cancer-causing radiation and chemicals.
From the 1940s up to the present time, government lawyers and scientists have repeatedly rejected the claims of workers who became sick as result of nuclear radiation and exposure to deadly uranium, plutonium, and fluorine. As many as 600,000 workers in 14 nuclear weapons plants are now affected by the government’s final admission of wrongdoing in exposing these people to cancer and other chronic illnesses.
According to a Los Angeles Times report, “workers told of spending years trying to get compensation payments from the state, of having to hire attorneys to get disability pay, of going to clinics that forced them to sign away rights to a portion of any future disability payment before they could be treated.”
Kay Sutherland, a worker at the Hanford plutonium plant in central
Washington State, told a hearing that “the people in this area have been forced into poverty because they’ve had to retire in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, too young to get a retirement, and too young to get Social Security. They fall through the cracks and they die.” Sutherland has lost four of her five family members to disease, and has an enlarged liver and multiple tumours. She considers herself “a Holocaust survivor for the American Cold War.”
How can we stop these nuclear and biological horrors, which have condemned thousands of innocent people to disease and death? Why must decades of government-sanctioned medical abuse be kept secret and covered-up by scientists and physicians who claim to be concerned about the health of the public?
One way to prevent abuse might be to bring the physician-scientist
perpetrators of these experiments to justice in a court of law. However, unless the public is aroused, this is unlikely to happen.
Writing in the Columbia Journalism Review, Geoffrey Sea notes: “A startling fact about the experiments is that, despite the documentation of hundreds of cases of unethical conduct resulting in lasting damage to thousands of people, not a single physician or nurse, scientist or technician, policy maker or administrator has yet come forward to admit wrongdoing.”
For over twenty years the law allowed the US Department of Defense (DoD) to use Americans as “guinea pigs.” This law (the US code annotated Title 50, Chapter 32, Section 1520, dated 30 July, 1977) remained on the books until it was repealed under public pressure in 1998. The new and revised bill prohibits the DoD from conducting tests and experiments on humans, but allows “exceptions.” One of the exceptions is that a test or experiment can be carried out for “any peaceful purpose that is related to a medical, therapeutic, pharmaceutical, agricultural, industrial, or research activity.” Thus, the 1998 law has obvious loopholes which allow secret testing to continue. For details on the restrictions (and exceptions) for
human testing for chemical and biological agents, consult the Gulf War Vets website at http//www.gulfwarvets.com/1520a.htm.
Unethical and dangerous experimentation undoubtedly continues in secret up to the present time, ostensibly under the guise of “national security.” Thus, it would seem prudent for patients to think twice before signing-up for government-sponsored medical studies, particularly at leading medical institutions. Enlightened patients might also view doctors (and scientists) with a healthy dose of skepticism, and a touch of paranoia.
As weird as all this sounds, it could save your life!
References:
Cantwell AR Jr: Queer Blood: The Secret AIDS Genocide Plot. Aries Rising Press. Los Angeles, 1993.
Declassified: Human Experimentation (Video, 1999). A&E Television.
Distributed by New Video, 126 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011.
Faden RR, Lederer SE, Moreno JD: “U.S. medical researchers, the Nuremberg Doctors Trial, and the Nuremberg Code: A review of findings of the Advisory Committee on human radiation experiments.” JAMA 276:1667-1671, 1996.
Faden R; “The Advisory Committee on human radiation experiments: Reflections on a presidential committee.” Hastings Center Report 26 (no.5): 5-10, 1996
Gallagher C: American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War. The Free Press, New York, 1993.
Harris R and Paxman J: A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret Story of
Chemical and Biological Warfare. Hill and Wang, New York, 1982.
Katz J: The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code. Oxford University Press, New York, 1993.
Katz J: “The Nuremberg Code and the Nuremberg trial.” JAMA 276: 1663-1666, 1996.
Murphy K: “Government finally hears a nuclear town’s horrors.” Los Angeles Times, February 5, 2000.
Sea G: “The radiation story no one would touch.” Columbia Journalism Review, March/April 1994.
The Human Radiation Experiments: Final Report of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. Oxford University Press, New York, 1996.
Udall SL: The Myths of August: A Personal Exploration of Our
Tragic Cold War Affair with the Atom. Pantheon Books, New York, 1994.
Watts ML: “U.S. acknowledges radiation caused cancers in workers.” New York Times, January 29, 2000.
Welsome E: The Plutonium Files: America’s Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War. The Dial Press, New York, 1999.
___________________________________________________________
Dr. Alan Cantwell is a physician and AIDS and cancer researcher. He is the author of Queer Blood: The Secret AIDS Genocide Plot, and The Cancer Microbe, both published by Aries Rising Press, PO Box 29532, Los Angeles, CA 90029, USA. Email:
alanrcan@aol.com
The above article appeared in
New Dawn No. 68 (September-October 2001)
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#3. Stalking Legendary Creatures by: Sharon J. Huntington
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0409/p18s04-hfks.html
IN 1912, a pilot crash-lands on a rugged Indonesian island. He hears loud rustling in the bushes. He sees the flash of a huge tail and hears a ferocious hissing. Frightened and alone in a strange land, he wonders: Could it be a dragon? It disappears before he can get a good look.
Later, he talks with Indonesian pearl divers. He learns that stories abound of a giant reptile 12 feet long living on Komodo Island. Finally in 1926, an expedition brings two live specimens back to New York City. At 10 feet long, they turn out to be the world's largest known lizards. Now everyone knows they really exist. They don't fly or breathe fire, but they were named Komodo dragons, thanks to all the rumors they sparked about dragons on the island.
These "dragons" also serve as an example of the purpose of cryptozoology. "Crypto" (KRIP-toh) means "hidden," and "zoology" (zoh-OHL-uh-jee) is the study of animals.
Cryptozoologists try to find animals that are rumored to exist, but have not yet been proved to be real.
Roy Mackal has been a biologist and biochemist at the University of Chicago, but since 1950 he has also been interested in finding mysterious animals. Dr. Mackal has traveled all over the world to try to prove that rumored creatures exist. He also helps to show that some mysterious creatures are not terrible monsters.
Recently, a "sea monster" 50 feet long was reported and videotaped in a lake in Papua, New Guinea. Mackal was able to determine that the "monster" was actually three large salt-water crocodiles. A male was holding onto a female's tail, and another male had the second one by the tail. When only portions of their bodies appeared above the water, it looked like one giant creature.
"There are no monsters," Mackal says, "just unidentified animals." And he believes there are still many unidentified animals to discover.
He was recently researching in Central West Africa, in an area of 55,000 square miles of unexplored jungle and swamp. "There are large areas on the earth and in the oceans that have never been explored," he says. "Who knows what might be living there?"
Natives of the Congo in Africa for years told European visitors of an animal that looked like a cross between a giraffe and a zebra. The visitors assumed the stories were just folk tales. But in 1901, Sir Harry Johnston obtained skins that proved the creature, which we now call the okapi, was real.
In 1938, a fishing boat off the coast of South Africa caught a 5-foot-long fish that was later identified as a coelacanth. The fish were believed to have been extinct for 65 million years. And only a few years ago, in 1994, biologists captured the first known saola, a large ox that inhabits the forests of northern Vietnam.
Cryptozoologists think there are still plenty of creatures to discover,
while many of us have yet to learn about some of the strange animals that already exist. Look at the animals on these pages, for instance. How many are real?
Here are some descriptions of animals you might not recognize. Can you guess which ones are proven to exist and which ones are still creatures of rumors and stories? (Answers below.)
Pangolin
The pangolin is a mammal that looks like a reptile. It has no teeth, so it eats rocks and pebbles to help grind up the food in its stomach. It lives in southeastern Asia, Indonesia, and parts of Africa.
Bunyip
The bunyip lives in Australia and is believed by many to be an ancestor of the diprotodon, a marsupial (an animal with a pouch, like the kangaroo) about the size of a rhinoceros, which became extinct thousands of years ago. The bunyip lives in creeks, swamps, and billabongs (lagoons) and has a loud, bellowing cry.
Tuatara
The tuatara is a New Zealand reptile that grows up to two feet long. It has a spiny back and a third eye on top of its head. This eye can't see objects, but it can sense light and movement.
Solenodon
Solenodons live in Cuba and Haiti. They hide in hollow logs and come out only at night. They grow about two feet long and use their long claws to scratch for insects to eat. They are said to have a bad temper.
Star-Nosed Mole
The star-nosed mole is a small mammal with soft fur and sharp teeth. It has feelers at the tip of its nose and uses them like fingers. It spends most of its time swimming in ponds and streams in Canada and the northeastern United States.
Queensland Tiger
Inhabiting the rainforests of Australia, the Queensland tiger is about the size of a German shepherd. It has stripes across its back and a cat-like head.
ANSWERS: All except the bunyip and the Queensland tiger have been proved to exist. Stories of bunyips have been told by Australian aborigines for generations, and white settlers have also reported sightings. Many believe they are just stray seals, while others think they may be an unknown animal. Aborigines have also told stories of the Queensland tiger for centuries, and many sightings were reported in the 1940s and 1950s. Expeditions have never been able to locate a specimen.
Books on Cryptozoology
Ever Heard of an Aardwolf? By Madeline Moser
Harcourt Brace & Co. San Diego, 1996
Weird Animals By Tammy Everts and Bobbie Kalman
Crabtree Publishing Co. New York, 1995
Really Weird Animals By Tammy Everts and Bobbie Kalman
Crabtree Publishing Co. New York, 1995
Maybe 'Nessie' is an earthquake
You've probably heard of Nessie, the Loch Ness monster. Stories of a sea monster in northern Scotland's Loch Ness have been reported since the 600s. ("Loch" means "lake.") Sonar scans of the lake have indicated large, unidentified objects in the murky water.
Photographs supposed to show Nessie have been discounted by scientists as blurry images of seals or otters. Probably the best-known photograph was presented in 1934 by Robert Wilson. It appeared to show the head and neck of a large creature rising out of the water. The photo sparked great interest. People began taking seriously rumors of a strange creature in the lake.
It wasn't until 1992 that Christian Spurling confessed that he and his
stepfather, Marmaduke Wetherell, faked the picture. They used a toy
submarine with a model neck and head. Wetherell had given the photo to Dr. Wilson.
Some say Nessie is a large fish. Others think it might be an ancestor of ancient dinosaurs. They point to discoveries like the coelacanth, an ancient fish that was thought to be extinct for millions of years before living examples were found during the past century. Loch Ness is 20 miles long and more than 1,000 feet deep in places. That's plenty of room for a large creature to live.
Last year, Italian geologist Luigi Piccardi offered a new theory. He thinks the sightings may be the result of earthquakes. Loch Ness lies along an active earthquake fault.
"The most seismically active end of the loch is the north end," Piccardi says. "This corresponds to the site where many witnesses claim to have had experiences. They talk of seeing a lot of commotion on the water and hearing loud noises."
Piccardi thinks these could be the result of small earthquakes that shake the ground and make a roaring sound. They would also release bubbles of gas in the lake that would churn its surface.
It may take years before we prove or disprove that Nessie exists. But real or not, it is already well known around the world. Not a bad accomplishment for a creature that may be a fantasy.
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#4. Ball Lightning Terror - Memories of Abduction by: Al Straughan
http://www.100megsfree4.com/farshores/ball_li.htm
In the summer of 1941, I was two years old. My home was on the corner of two streets near the Mississippi River and a canal known as the 'Industrial Canal'. The time was mid-afternoon on a very hot day. My mother and my 12-year old sister were in the house, my mother in the kitchen off the living room and my sister in the living room. I was asleep in a crib in my parents room, also off the living room. There was a second floor to the house reached by a stairway which ended just outside the doorway of my parent's room. The door to the room in which I slept was open due to the heat and humidity.
My sister saw a glowing hissing ball appear at the top of the stairway (the stairs wound in a linear fashion to a small landing which could not be seen from the ground floor). The ball bounced down the stairs, burning the bare wood of the treads as it came and constantly emitting sparks. It bounced into my room and woke me and I began screaming. The ball bounced back and forth across my crib and then once again bounced out of the room and into the living room, where it suddenly disappeared into a light switch. My sister, my mother, and my grandmother all witnessed the occurrence. I suffered nightmares for several years after this.
About six months after this incident, I seemed to have 'disappeared' from my home ..... that is, no-one could find me. The family searched frantically for me for about one and one-half hours. I then appeared on the second floor landing (the family were unaware that I could negotiate stairs). When asked where I'd been, I responded that 'I've been talking to God'.
I've been troubled since the mid-70s by an injured left knee. I've had two operations which removed pieces of cartilage and I will have the knee wholly replaced this summer. I've also had an operation on my right shoulder to remove calcium and this problem has also now recurred. I atttributed the knee problem to having trekked in the Himalayas in the 60s.
I began visiting a healer for the knee problem, hoping to avoid another
operation. The healer is trained in a variety of techniques and used a
trance technique to try to take me back to the time of the injury. In this trance, I encountered an 'imaginary playmate' from my childhood, a figure I'd named 'Ecke'. I later learned that this is the German word for 'corner' and I may have picked this up from my German grandmother.
In the trance, I visualized a 'creature' at the top of the stair landing. This creature appeared to be about three feet tall, dark, and perhaps winged. As I observed this visualization, the creature's mouth opened and a hissing ball emerged from it. Observed at close range, the ball appeared to have layers of swirling clouds within it, a palimpsest effect. I felt great fear at the creature and the ball, there was nothing benign about it.
A week later, I underwent another trance. In this trance, I saw that I was bound by straps to a table which felt cold like metal. I was naked and there were cables or wires attached into my right shoulder and left knee. I was in a room which appeared to be octagonal. The walls were so high that I could see no ceiling. The walls shimmered as of mother-of-pearl. I was aware of no-one else in the room, but I was very frightened. I pulled at the straps and finally tore loose and tore the cables from my knee and shoulder.
This is what memory and subsequent trance have revealed. I have shared this information openly and learned that a number of others have been visited by such balls of apparent lightning. I know very little about lightning balls as a natural phenomenon, but I understand that they are quite rare. I frankly do not know if these trance memories are valid or not. I do know that my knee and shoulder problems are quite real.
(Notation: Our Thanks To Farshores for letting WOTS do a reprint odf this article.
http://100megsfree4.com/farshores/
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#5. Long Way From The Loch by: Elizabeth Schneider
eschneider@laindependent.com
http://www.laindependent.com/display/inn_news/news13.txt
From the deck of her house in Silver Lake, Valerie Elson has a spectacular view of the lake, and if she keeps a lookout maybe one day it will offer a glimpse of that curious creature, Silver Lake's own Loch Ness monster.
To foster discussion on the matter, and more importantly "have fun with it," Elson and her husband, Donald, created a website dedicated to the beloved Nessie and her adventures in Silver Lake.
Sylvia, better know by neighbors as Sylvie the Silver Lake Nessie, is a "being which may or may not exist, but is frequently seen in the water," Elson says. "There have also been some sightings of a land Sylvie in the Ralphs parking lot."
Really, the site shows off Elson's talent for superimposing pictures that she has taken during her and her husband's travels around the world onto photos of the reservoir itself.
Theelsonmall.elson.com website, which first appeared in 1998, has served not only as an "interesting place for people to visit, but a place to express creativity not only for myself but for people interested in mythology," Elson says.
Sylvie has been the inspiration for some of Elson's poetry:
Sylvie calls from the lake, dear Mum,
Entreats me, begs me to come.
With her beckoning eyes
And her pleading sighs
To embrace me as playmate and chum!
Not only does the site feature a superimposed picture of the famous 1930s photo of the Loch Ness Monster known as the "physician's photo," which received tremendous publicity, onto a picture of the lake -- "We don't want to take too much of the magic out," Elson says -- there are photos of Silver Lake prior to the 1998 sale/relocation of the London Bridge to Echo Park and the Solstice Celebration and rededication of Stonehenge in 1998 following the bridge removal.
"The site pretty much has everything about myself and my husband and all the stuff we do," Elson says, including graphic art, theater, movies, television, computer consulting and most recently book publishing.
But not everybody enjoys the Elsons' twisted humor.
"Surprisingly enough," Elson says, "there are quite a few people who take sea and lake monsters extremely seriously."
Over the years she says she has received some pretty "strong e-mails" reminding her that "the question of sea creatures is no laughing matter."
"Some people have contacted me to say that sea monsters are real and how dare I make fun of them," Elson says.
But overall, she thinks that most people enjoy the site.
The website has a Nessie quiz, "which tries to put a perspective of reality to the whole situation," where users can win a prize if they answer all of the questions correctly. But only eight or nine people have actually claimed their prizes, she says.
"I guess some people are a bit hesitant about sending their home address to a blind website," Elson says, but the prizes -- home-made bookmarks -- are legitimate.
The burning question is whether or not Elson really believes in Sylvie's existence?
"I believe in the fascination of such creatures and in the magic that the imagination can color the world," she says. "She's given me a great deal of enjoyment...and that's real."
Elizabeth Schneider can be reached at (323) 932-6397, ext. 162, or by e-mail at
eschneider@laindependent.com
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#6. Milky Way 'may hold a billion planets like Earth' by: James Meek (Science Correspondent - The Guardian)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,681578,00.html
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, could contain up to a billion Earth-like planets capable of supporting life, scientists will announce today.
The theoretical abundance of hospitable worlds among the estimated 200bn stars of our home galaxy suggests it is only a matter of time before more accurate telescopes are able to glimpse the faint signature of a far-off planet, proving that, in size and temperature at least, we are not alone in the universe.
Solar systems such as Earth's, in which planets orbit a star, have been discovered. Astronomers have identified almost 100 planets in orbit around other suns. All are enormous, and of the same gaseous make-up as Jupiter.
Today Barrie Jones, of the Open University, will tell the UK national astronomy meeting in Bristol that he and his colleague Nick Sleep have worked out how to predict which of the newly discovered solar systems is likely to harbour smaller, Earth-like, planets.
Using a computer simulation, they have created mathematical models of the far-off planetary systems and seeded them with hypothetical Earths, orbiting in the "Goldilocks zone" around stars where it is neither too hot nor too cold to support life.
The computer reports which of these model Earths is likely to be kicked out of its temperate orbit by the gravitational effects of the monster planets, and which is likely to survive.
Based on their work so far, the number of Earth-worlds could be vast. "There could be at least a billion 'Earths' in the Milky Way, and lots more if we find systems more like ours, with their giant planets well away from the habitable zones," said Professor Jones.
The size of the Goldilocks zone depends on the size and age of the solar system's star. In our solar system, it lies, like Earth, between Venus and Mars. Jupiter lies beyond Mars.
The solar system most like ours discovered so far is that of a star called 47 Ursae Majoris, which lies 51 light years from Earth, near the constellation known as the Great Bear or the Big Dipper. Astronomers have discovered two planets orbiting the star - one 2 times the size of Jupiter, the other slightly smaller.
Both planets orbit relatively close to the Goldilocks zone, which is further out than ours because 47 Ursae Majoris is older, hotter and brighter than the sun. Yet the system could still support Earth-like planets.
"It's certainly a system worth exploring for an Earth-like planet and for life," said Prof Jones. The definition of the life-supporting zone in any solar system is that water should be able to exist in a liquid state.
Nasa and its European counterpart, Esa, plan to launch instruments into space in the middle of the next 10 years which could produce pictures of Earth-sized planets.
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#7. $1 Million Mathematical Mystery "Solved"? by: Robert Matthews
NewScientist.com News Service
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992143
A British mathematician thinks he has found a way to solve a 100-year-old mathematical mystery - and if he is right, he will win a $1 million prize.
Known as Poincaré's Conjecture, the mystery centres on a guess about the properties of multi-dimensional space made in 1904 by the great French mathematician Henri Poincaré.
Since then, Poincaré's guess has been proved correct for every dimension of space but one: the three-dimensional space we inhabit. Now Martin Dunwoody of Southampton University believes he has found a way of polishing off this final gap in the proof.
His strategy is now being checked by mathematicians worldwide, and if his detailed proof passes muster, Dunwoody will win one of the $1 million prizes being offered by the Clay Institute in Boston for solving any of seven key mathematical challenges.
No proof
Poincaré was led to make his conjecture during his pioneering studies in topology, the mathematical study of the properties of objects that stay unchanged when they are stretched or bent.
In order to translate topological questions into algebra, Poincaré invented so-called "homotopy groups" - quantities which capture the essence of multi-dimensional spaces in algebraic terms, and have the power to reveal similarities between them.
Poincaré proved that any two-dimensional surface having the same homotopy group as the two-dimensional surface of a sphere is topologically equivalent to a sphere. He thought the same would be true in three dimensions - but could not prove it.
Since the 1960s, mathematicians have confirmed Poincaré's suspicions for all other dimensions using various strategies, with the four-dimensional case being solved in 1982. Frustratingly, however, none of these strategies work in three dimensions.
Mathematical immortality
Dunwoody's approach - outlined in a five-page preprint on his website - focuses on the properties of specific three dimensional spaces, and seems to show that Poincaré's conjecture is true.
Whether a fatal flaw will show up when the strategy is expanded into a full, formal proof is as yet unclear, however: "It's too early to tell - at least for me", says topologist Matt Brin of the State University of New York, Binghamton, who has helped Dunwoody in his attempt on the conjecture.
Talk of mathematical immortality and $1 million dollar prizes is being played down by Dunwoody's own institution. "Peer review is the established way of ensuring that a proof is correct", says Adam Wheeler, head of the mathematics department. "Because of this the Clay Institute rules imposes a cooling off period before the award of any prize".
It is likely to be at least several months before the checking process is completed.
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#8. 'Now I Know All About Ghosts © 2002Telegraph Group LTD
'http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/main.jhtml;$sessionid$E0BFBAIAAFLD1QFIQMFSFF4AVCBQ0IV0?xml=/health/2002/04/08/hdacre08.xml&sSheet=/health/2002/04/09/ixhmain09.html
The historian Lord Dacre tells Candida Crewe how he overcame a terrifying condition that left him lost in a world of hallucinations
ABOUT four years ago, the distinguished historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, now Lord Dacre of Glanton, noticed that his eyesight was becoming progressively worse. He had been short-sighted all his life, so he didn't take the problem seriously at first. But then glaucoma and a cataract were diagnosed and he started to see "odd things" - so odd, indeed, that he began to wonder if he was going mad: "I couldn't see much, but what I could was becoming more and more fantastical."
The walls of his study are lined with books, the legacy of a lifetime of scholarship, during which he was Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford and Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge, yet he has been unable to read them with the naked eye for at least three years. Aged 88, he lives alone - his wife of more than 40 years, Lady Alexandra, daughter of Field Marshal Earl Haig, died in 1997 - but he is dressed with the meticulous elegance of someone who has a full-time valet: a beautifully cut suit, pale yellow socks, embroidered velvet slippers.
Although his brother, the eye surgeon Patrick Trevor-Roper, now retired, told him his problem was neurological rather than ophthalmic and that - though not in so many words - he was suffering a deterioration of the brain, Dacre does not have the demeanour of a madman. Even so, he says, "I was leading a pretty miserable life: living alone here, unable to find anything, trying to cook for myself.
I won't dwell on it - it happens to everybody - but, meanwhile, the visual experiences were taking possession."
In December 2000, the consultant eye surgeon to whom he was referred recommended an operation, but warned that it carried a risk of total blindness. "I panicked and put it off," says Dacre - and so began six terrible months of accidents, visits to casualty, encounters with the police, and increasingly unsettling hallucinations.
It had all started gradually in about 1998. "First," he says, "there were little circular blobs of kaleidoscopic colour rotating in the air. Rather more disconcertingly, I saw a disorderly pattern of dark squares everywhere: geometrical and static, and superimposed on reality. It irritated me, their irregularity; they were aesthetically offensive and had no right to be there. That was stage one. Stage two was when I started seeing moving pictures which blocked reality."
At first, he saw a bicycle race. "I've never been interested in bicycle races," he says, perplexed. "But the scenes were vivid and realistic. They were limited, repeated endlessly, and lasted about a month. When that ceased, a new scenario started - horse races. They are part of my life, so they were marvellous, I loved them. The horses were real thoroughbreds and the way they moved was a pleasure to watch, whereas the bicycle races had bored me to death.
"The hallucinations - I refer to them as phantasmagoria - were more prominent in the evenings and would last half an hour or so before they stopped and I went back to my normal blurred vision. They weren't frightening - till I began to think I was going mad.
"Then, they became rather more mysterious. Looking out of the window, I started seeing landscapes which bore only some relation to the landscape actually there. For example, the trees had leaves when they oughtn't to, or I'd be sitting at my desk and a landscape would whizz past as if I were on a train travelling across Siberia."
One night, being driven through a housing estate, he saw a huge, colonnaded Renaissance square and architectural fantasies of all kinds. This became a common occurrence. Just as he had seen rural scenes in Paddington, he would see skyscrapers in the country.
Once, on his way to put out the dustbins, he found himself lost in "a cemetery of dead machines", surrounded by old combine harvesters and lorries. Inside, the house would suddenly grow an extra staircase.
Colours also became unreliable. "I was mystified by the mixture of illusion and reality and couldn't sort out the one from the other," he says.
At first, Dacre told only family and close friends about his condition. When he asked doctors about it, he was surprised at how little they knew. Initially, he suffered the hallucinations with resignation. "They blocked out everything and I was often lost in the house and having accidents. They slowed me up immensely, but I was determined not to be defeated and struggled on against great difficulty."
But then they started becoming more grotesque and alarming. "On one occasion, I thought I must clear my mind of these problems by going into the garden, but everything was blocked by huge trees. I was feeling my way with my stick and they would dissolve before me, but then I'd bump rather solidly into a real tree. I had to give up and go back inside."
Between December 2000 and June 2001, which Dacre refers to as his "very bad period", he had several awful episodes but two, in particular, stick out in his mind. The first was when he arrived on the platform of his local station to find his train to Oxford already there, waiting.
"It was a bit odd, more like a Tube train," he says, "but I went to get into it. I suddenly had doubts if it was on my side of the track or the other. I paused, not daring to get on, but didn't want to miss it. So I asked the station master and he said: `The train to Oxford will be here any minute.'
"I said: 'What about this train?' He said: 'What train? There is no train.' I was impatient with the silly man, dumbfounded. I stared at the train and, as I did so, it quietly melted into air."
The second occasion that gave him a fright was after he had arrived back from Paddington at 2am, having given a lecture in London. On the short walk home, he became disoriented and lost, and eventually found himself in an endless tunnel. Every now and then, he would apparently pass heaps of old machinery - and then, suddenly, "in splendid isolation", he came across a Hepplewhite chair. Meanwhile, he was aware that a few - real - cars were passing by, and he found himself worrying about who might be inside them. "I'd draw into the penumbra of the tunnel, so as not to be seen. Then one car stopped and a - real - policeman got out and took me home." At that point, he realised: "I can't go on like this."
He sighs. "Maybe I flatter myself, but I think I remained compos mentis throughout. One doctor told me things would get better as I got accustomed to being blind, which wasn't very reassuring."
Then, at last, between December 2000 and June 2001, another, more enlightened doctor put a name to his condition: Charles Bonnet Syndrome. "Once I'd got that name," Dacre says, "I realised it really was a neurological problem. My secretary consulted the internet and found an article in a medical journal which absolutely described what I had.
"It was a great relief to learn that those who suffer from it think they're going mad - but they're not. If you're actually going mad, you think your hallucinations are real. With CBS, you come to realise they're not."
Dacre got to work to find out as much as he could about the man after whom the syndrome was named, a Swiss natural philosopher of the 18th century. "In one sense, he was a precursor of Darwin," says Dacre. "He was the first person to identify this condition after his father went blind and suffered CBS. More people have it than one thinks, but they are inhibited because others might think they are potty.
"I don't mind if people think I'm potty. I like talking about it, and I find people are interested. It is correct to say the cause of CBS is lack of eyesight. If you lose the capacity to see, the brain gets cross and invents an artificial reality for the reality that's lost. It creates it out of the dregs of the unconscious memory - hence the bicycle races."
Armed with the name of a recognised medical condition, Dacre began to make progress. At the end of June last year, he decided to have the risky cataract operation after all, reasoning that "the situation was such that I might as well be totally blind". Fortunately, it was a success.
"When the bandage was taken off, it was like the first day of creation. The world had become dark to me and there was a flood of light. I'd never expected to see daylight again. I was in a state of euphoria, which is only quietly settling down now.
"I see much better and life has improved immensely. I still can't read with the naked eye, but I've nothing to complain about. I can navigate and I'm not in danger, I'm not afraid of catching trains or going out. I'm a whole world on from the state I was in just before the operation."
He has a positive view of his bad experiences: "I like to think I learn from every experience, even if it is disagreeable. It was horrible while I had it, but I've learnt a good deal about CBS. And it has opened a whole new area for study, as well as a window into a world I hadn't dreamt of before - the creation of illusion and fantasies. Some were so clear, beautiful, exquisite - especially the ones with late medieval architecture at its proudest.
"Sometimes, bits still come back even now, but I've no doubt the hallucinations will ultimately disappear. Two weeks ago, I woke up at three in the morning and there was a lady at the side of my bed. She was distinct and clear, wearing a fawn coat and skirt, with a hat the same colour as the costume. She was statuesque, quite good-looking, silent, immobile.
"I said, 'Who are you?' but she didn't answer. So I asked: 'Why are you here?' She still didn't answer, but then, like the train, she gradually dissolved."
Dacre has taken particular comfort from this last hallucination. "Now I know all about ghosts," he says.
"It's perfectly obvious to me that they're created out of the rubbish of the brain, in the same way as are the hallucinations of CBS. Ghosts are a sub-Charles Bonnet Syndrome.
"I don't believe in ghosts, but I've seen one now and solved one of life's mysteries - and the rational world is restored."
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"World of the Strange"
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