STARCHILD UPDATE—APRIL 21, 2003
It’s been an interesting 3 months since posting the January update. First, the Starchild skull and the human skull found with it were taken to a laboratory capable of extracting and analyzing ancient DNA. Enough material was removed from each skull to support two separate tests because an unassailable result requires a verifiable duplication. One result can be wrong, but two labs arriving at the same result means it IS whatever it is.
Two teeth (molars) were removed from the human skull (her others are intact). On the Starchild, a square-inch “window” of bone was removed from the upper right parietal area (the upper rear right side), and then halved to make two samples. The bone proved surprisingly hard and surprisingly thin. It was slated to remain in a softening gel for as much as two weeks (one week is normal), but it stayed immersed a full month before it was soft enough to begin the extraction process. That in itself was an intriguing result.
Meanwhile, I left the U.S. to speak at four venues in England and a weekend conference in Amsterdam sponsored by Nexus Magazine. Our hope was that lecturing would bolster the Starchild Fund’s coffers while exposing it to a wider audience in the UK and western Europe. However, all our promotional eggs were in one basket, “The Richard and Judy Show,” the UK version of Regis and Whoever. R&J has 2.5 million daily viewers, so we were thrilled to have such exposure two days before speaking at London’s Conway Hall.
On the show, each guest gets eight minutes with the hosts, plenty of time in a venue like that. Unfortunately, my segment was scheduled to be the last of the day so the Starchild could be promoted through each segment break to hold the audience until the end. Then one mid-show segment went two minutes over, followed by another that also went a bit long. When my turn came, only five minutes remained rather than the scheduled eight.
Richard and Judy treated me very well, but they got so caught up in the interview that the director’s “cut” sign caught them both off guard. Richard said, “Well, we’re out of time. Thanks for coming, Lloyd.” And that was it. We went off the air without ANY of the lectures in England being plugged, most importantly the London one. We were, to put it bluntly, screwed. On Friday what might have been 300 attendees was closer to 30. It was an unmitigated disaster, causing the lecture’s promoter to take the proverbial bath.
We fared no better in the other venues. Glastonbury had nearly 50 people. Merseyside (across the Mersey River from Liverpool) had 40. Gloucester had 35. This was because so few who watched Richard and Judy realized I was in the UK to lecture. That point was never made, so to the vast majority of viewers I was merely passing through. The only positive from that show was five minutes with 2.5 million UK viewers. Also, while in England I met a great group of new supporters like Belinda McKenzie, Grant Stapleton, Andrew Pashkov, Kate Gooch, Ron (Spike) Jones, and Andy Lloyd, among many others.
[BTW: The London lecture was professionally filmed to create a video for sale, and I’ve been told the result is exceptional. It is available from Belinda McKenzie through her company, Cognoscence, as a videotape now and eventually as a streaming video. Its first 90 minutes cover my ongoing research into the beginnings of life, hominoids, and human origins, followed by 40 minutes of Starchild research and analysis. It can be secured by contacting Belinda McKenzie at: b.mckenzie@btinternet.com. Also, for those in England and Europe who have been intimidated by the cost of shipping my book from the U.S., Belinda can now provide autographed copies of “Everything You Know Is Wrong.”]
Our luck changed dramatically at the Nexus Conference in Amsterdam. The event staged by Duncan Roads and Herman Hegge was extremely professional and well organized. We stayed four days and nights at the Grand Krasnapolsky Hotel on Dam Square (the central square of Amsterdam), an absolutely first-class venue. The crowd was 250-300 for most lectures, and no one left disappointed. If any of you ever have a chance to attend a conference sponsored by Nexus Magazine, I strongly urge you to do so. Failing that, get a subscription (available in several languages). I feel it provides the best textual coverage of the entire field of alternative knowledge, and its website (www.nexusmagazine.com) provides free access to its most recent articles. (Three are mine and cover the origins of life and the origins of humans from the fast-growing Interventionist perspective.)
While in Europe I learned about the Starchild bone needing to stay in the softening gel for three weeks longer than usual. Our initial hope was that somehow the geneticists could find a way to make up that lost time in an effort to keep to their original schedule of providing an answer regarding the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in the last half of April. However, in our last conversation they told me they haven’t been able to speed up the process, so now they expect to deliver an answer no earlier than the middle of May.
Naturally, we’re disappointed by this delay, but on the other hand, its cause (the bone’s extraordinary hardness) is also a cause for suspecting that some kind of aberration might be detectable at the mitochondrial stage of the analysis. Nothing would please any of us—including the geneticists, I’m sure—more than to find significant deviations from the human norm at the mitochondrial level. However, we have to be realistic and point out that this isn’t the way to hedge our bets. (Keep in mind that during reproduction mtDNA is passed on only through females; eggs are large enough to carry it but sperm are not.)
Our working assumption remains that the Starchild is most likely a human-alien hybrid. It could also be a bizarrely deformed human, and it could also be totally alien, but the most likely scenario seems to be a hybrid. If it is a pure alien, its mtDNA should be far enough removed from the human norm to be obvious. That would also be the case if it is a hybrid with an alien mother. However, if it’s a hybrid and its mother was human (the only other option), then its mtDNA will read out as entirely human (hers). If it’s a human deformity, its mtDNA will also read out as purely human because it will indeed BE human.
The most likely scenario remains that the mtDNA will read out as human and we will have to move into the next stage of testing, which will be to try to extract DNA from the cell nuclei that will have provided the mitochondria. This is much trickier than recovering mitochondria, which are quite durable relative to nuclear DNA. If nuclear DNA can be recovered it will be in pieces because the chromosomes will have been desiccated to bits. But that’s enough to provide the answers we’re looking for. Recovery and replication are the two keys. Recovering and replicating mitochondria has always been pretty much of a slam dunk. Doing the same for the nuclear DNA will be where they earn their money.
[Interestingly, the geneticists have suggested that we could profit by having an isotope analysis done on the bone, as well as an examination of the bone’s histology. I told them we would entertain those suggestions, but inasmuch as we continue to struggle to gather funding for the two DNA tests we need to pay for, additional tests can’t be undertaken in the near future. The value in these suggestions is that the geneticists are indicating they, too, are interested in knowing more about the bone. And if the DNA testing proves less than definitive, these other tests could effectively supplement ambiguous results.]
I will be speaking about all these matters this coming Friday, April 25th, from 9:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. Central Time, on the Lou Gentile Show. For those unfamiliar with Lou Gentile (pronounced Gin-tilly), or are not in the U.S., his show is remarkably accessible by internet. It streams out of nine major outlets, so there is no reason to miss hearing it. And it is absolutely free. If you are interested in hearing an extensive discussion of the lecture tour of Europe and the latest on the genetic testing, go to www.lougentile.com. The site contains easy navigation to several free downloads for streaming audio software like Real Player and others. For anyone interested in following the Starchild saga in more detail than is remotely possible in updates like these, it is VERY easy to do so this way.
Last but by no means least, a key member of the early Starchild Project family has been stricken by an extremely serious illness. Mark Bean established the Project website and was its webmaster for over three years. Also, together we took the skull to the first half-dozen scientific experts who examined it (in the Las Vegas area, where Mark lived and worked). Now Mark is battling lung cancer, and I know he would appreciate any support anyone reading this can provide, whether emotional, spiritual, or financial (we all know what treating cancer can cost, and he is now unable to work). He can be contacted at:
Mark Bean
4894 Lone Mountain Road
# 201
Las Vegas, NV 89103
I know I speak for hundreds, Mark, when I assure you that your gentle, compassionate spirit is immensely valued, and you are genuinely loved by all who know you.
Until mid-May…..