Planting The Seed

Posted by dt on Friday, 18 July 1997, at 5:53 p.m.

Readers:

I'll start with gecco's comments in the foreground-

>EG&G had a run of bad luck in the late 80's (into 1990) with not just
>the two founders but also O'Keefe (another ex-Manhatten fellow)
>dying.

>More interesting to those of a conspiracy bent, is the map of the
>world locations of EG&G offices which amusingly has an EG&G logo
>smack in the middle of Australia and yet there is no mention of
>Australian offices anywhere in their database. A (Pine) Gap in their
>data so to speak

caveat: I'm only discussing one issue the working group had after formation
(sorry no hardware discussion as it was "not my problem, man!")

Why I mentioned MIT, DoE, and EG&G is because that these were the initial
players in the working group's approach for planting the seed for developing
a genetic map of the human chromosomes which would be useful for us.
Therefore, several methods were tried.

Thus, at the onset, you see we didn't have, to my knowledge, any alien help,
so in essence maybe Winston's response to LtCdr Snake's tiles' event is
somewhat accurate. The "early problems" dealt with working the problem
ourselves, not the incognito blending in of alien technological ideas. With
regards to biological questions, my suspicion is that only Dr. Detlev Bronk
(an original working group member) was charged with looking into (no pun
intended)alien anatomy as the individuals that I interacted with much later
was formed by members from the National Academy of Sciences. Bronk was their
founding and first President. So I figured that he had to develop a select
group which must have taken time as they were only now, that is at my
entrance in the '70's, thinking about EBE physiology in relation to us.

Before I begin to discuss the seeding methods, I should point out we didn't
know much about our DNA (even today we may know about 5% of our genetic
make-up). "Sequencing" the DNA amino acids was critical to developing a
"linkage map" or a linear map reflecting the order in which genes are
located in a particular chromosome. What I'm trying to say is that the
biotechniques to do the aforementioned were very undeveloped to say the
least.

"We" needed to encourage therefore TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION...there I got it
out. We still are in this mode at the present.

The direct method took time and, as gecco keenly points out, failed. I liken
the failure to the cold war missile race between the US and USSR. Failure
attributed to not having enough money to compete and politics. For example,
remember my uncertainty about whether one or more of E, G, & G were involved
with the working group? It was unusual the President to go to the wastelands
like Grier did as such task was more typical for a highly trusted
subordinate. The working group tried to get EG&G to transform from the
physical to the biological sciences, but this was fought internally. Grier
associated with the newly formed NASA not viral warfare labs. But, around
the mid-1980's, EG&G Biomolecular (in Watertown, Mass) helped the cause by
coming out with a economically priced DNA sequencer based on detecting
radioactive phosphorus which, as a result, found its way into many labs.
However, EG&G biomolecular didn't last long, but numerous other companies
pick up the creative baton. So, indirectly I guess it was a success.

The EG&G operations dealing with A-51 went more and more underground. The
old working group allies were dying off so a new breed had to be recruited.
The recruitment was very successful as gecco's observation of its company
location map indicates. (remember, the working group's motto, "we are
talking about something that doesn't exist")

My recommended method was spanked by a lecture that I heard while an
undergrad. I went to hear a Noble virologists from Stanford University named
Kornberg. He described his DNA duplication experiments in test tubes. Wow!
Heavy weight stuff! I knew Stanford was continuing its DNA studies via
medical R&D. This plus seeing what Bishop and Varmus were doing up the road
led Stanford to eventfully see the wisdom of DNA sequencing. At least this is
what I told my fellow working group representatives. The problem that was
pointed out to me was that "We" didn't have an infiltrator at Stanford (no
"We" would never trust a grad student or even a post-doctorate student).

Luck came our way. A member of the Stanford group started communicating with
researchers at....taa dahh...yes...MIT. Now what I'm about to say would
incite a riot in the biological ranks as so many claim what i'm about to
say.....

Around 1978 the above communication was encouraged. Encouraged so, that by
1980, a revolutionary paper was jointly written and published by Dave
Botstein of MIT and Ron Davis of Stanford (also a couple of others too).
They got the idea out in the open. That is, they hypothesized what medical
science needs is systematic approach to finding and organizing "markers" on
human chromosomes because a map of the markers spaced through out the
chromosomes could then be used to locate genes by correlating the
inheritance of the markers with the inheritance of traits in families.

Scientific dominos began to fall. More and more geneticists picked up the
chant. Next came the "show me the money" call. In 1985, a guy named Charles
Delsi was appointed director of the Office of Health and Environmental
Research in the Department of ....Energy....to cheers from fellow AEC
members (one of his biggest backers was the biological group at
LANL)......you see he was interested in the effects of the A-bomb Japan
blasts. Guess what he funded...yes human genome research...which has know
turned into the "Human Genome Project" (HGP)funded by NIH. I guess that I
should point out that in 1993 when NIH took over as the heavy weight funding
source for the HGP President Clinton nominated the right guy for NIH
director.....he had a Noble Prize.....it was none other than.....Harold
Varmus!

My contributions were not for their altruistic medical/health
reasons.......my efforts were in the area of...what is called..... eugenics.

-dt