Posthuman Blues

Ufonauts and human experimentation

I just learned that Nick Redfern has published a new book about Roswell, maintaining that the alleged alien bodies were those of Japanese POWs apparently used to pilot experimental aircraft. (My apologies to Nick if this summary isn't accurate, but I think I've recounted the central idea.)

True or not, I have a nagging sense that at least some of what Redfern has to say is disturbingly accurate. For example, Cold War historians and conspiracy enthusiasts alike are typically familiar with Project Paperclip, through which the US captured Nazi scientists to mastermind its weapons program. Conversely, relatively little is heard about the possible role of Nazi medical scientists, who are known to have conducted atrocious experiments on prisoners.

If an extension of this research were carried out in the American Southwest, how likely is it we'd know -- even now, over half a century later? Declassifying files about obsolete rocket technology is one thing; admitting to abhorrent human experimentation is quite another.





I've wondered since 1995 if the "alien" of the "alien autopsy" might be a surgically or genetically altered human. This sounds bizarre (not to mention seemingly beyond our bio-engineering state of the art*), but I'm not quite ready to rule it out.

We know that Nazi engineers were interested in -- and maybe even building -- disk-shaped "flying saucers" toward the end of the World War II; rumors indicate that some of these "planform" designs were at least partly operable. If any of these experimental craft posed greater-than-usual threats to human operators, project scientists may have found it desirable to use expendable pilots. Given the Nazis' harvest of biological research (dramatized in fiction such as Ira Levin's "The Boys from Brazil"), it's just possible that the first Nazi saucer-pilots were in some critical sense less than, or perhaps simply other than, human in the conventional meaning of the word.

It's probable that Allied forces would have seized on such a biotechnological feat as tenaciously as they exploited German engineering savvy. Which, of course, paves the way for some incredibly dark scenarios. Are some "aliens" engineered humans? Why do close-encounter witnesses sometimes describe tall, Germanic-looking "Blondes" in the midst of drone-like, cadaverous "Grays?" (Author W.A. Harbinson has a field day with such questions in his ultra-paranoid thrillers "Genesis" and "Inception," in which a loner scientist utilizes the Nazi war machine to create functioning flying saucers, complete with "alien" occupants.)

It's not my intention to stoke debate about underground Nazi bases, Tesla death-rays and the national security ramifications of MK-ULTRA. Embroiled as it is in a miasma of fantastic hunches, the question is deceptively simple: Could human experimentation help explain the alleged events at Roswell in 1947, and perhaps elsewhere in the annals of ufology?

*Especially if the autopsy originates from the late 40s, which is doubtful as the "exposure time" plaque visible on the operating room wall appears to date from the 1960s.