Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And hey,
Speaker 1: it's Saturday. Looks like it's time for a vault episode.
Speaker 1: Can we crank one out here? Yes, we're going to
Speaker 1: open the vault and let loose the humanzies. Now, this
Speaker 1: was an episode you did back with Christian And when
Speaker 1: was this? This would have been from January twenty one,
Speaker 1: two thousand sixteen, and this was, Uh, this is an
Speaker 1: episode that it gets into some very troubling territory. We
Speaker 1: start thinking about this, like like breaking the barrier between species. Uh,
Speaker 1: it gets a little dark, I have to admit. But
Speaker 1: it was a popular episode and it's one that Joe
Speaker 1: Rogan himself contact us about and gave us the thumbs
Speaker 1: up on okay, which was very cool of it very
Speaker 1: cool to Joe to do that. It surely was. If
Speaker 1: I remember it was like he like posted about it
Speaker 1: on Instagram or something. Well he's at the gym, I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh, I mean it is. It is a weird episode,
Speaker 1: but it's it's the truth in the weirdness that is
Speaker 1: the most amazing. Like the actual true story of researchers
Speaker 1: looking at this uh this taboo area, this place where
Speaker 1: uh species, the human species brushes up against some of
Speaker 1: its closest relatives. Crazy. Yeah, all right, well let's get
Speaker 1: right into it. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Christian Seger. Hey, Robert, if I were to ask
Speaker 1: you how you felt about eight human hybrids on a
Speaker 1: scale of one to ten, one being really uncomfortable and
Speaker 1: ten being you know, pretty comfortable, like you'd hang out
Speaker 1: with them. Uh where where where did you fall? Uh?
Speaker 1: My gut is a three? Three? So yeah, that that
Speaker 1: seems I think about on par with most people. Most
Speaker 1: people's reaction to the idea of a species, a new species,
Speaker 1: I guess, being generated from humans and apes coming together,
Speaker 1: as discussed right, Yeah, yeah, I fear yeah, And that
Speaker 1: would probably be like the one in the two on
Speaker 1: the three. I would probably just stand there awkwardly while
Speaker 1: the hybrids did their thing, and would contemplate a lot
Speaker 1: of reservations about how this came to pass, who who
Speaker 1: allowed this to happen, who made this happen? And uh,
Speaker 1: and how am I supposed to feel about myself as
Speaker 1: a human, as a person, How am I supposed to
Speaker 1: feel about them? It brings up a lot of questions,
Speaker 1: and and not just for us. Uh. And this is
Speaker 1: an old stuff to blow your mind topic. In fact,
Speaker 1: there's a there's an episode from four years ago where
Speaker 1: you and Julie tackled the same topic. We're talking about
Speaker 1: human z s, which is the possibility of hybridization between
Speaker 1: chimpanzees and humans. Uh. It's something that's been studied and
Speaker 1: experimented on for as far as we know, at least
Speaker 1: a hundred years, if not more longer. Uh. And is
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's stuff to blow your mind, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's definitely something that most people didn't expect.
Speaker 1: I came across it when we were researching for the
Speaker 1: X Files. Episodes about the possibilities of alien human hybrids
Speaker 1: and human zies came up in the research there. So
Speaker 1: we're revisiting it. Yeah, and luckily we have we have
Speaker 1: some better sources at our disposal this time around, for
Speaker 1: a you know, a deeper dive into one particular case
Speaker 1: that we're going to spend a lot of time with
Speaker 1: here and uh, and yeah, you mentioned the X Files,
Speaker 1: and I think that's that's great. We're gonna mention a
Speaker 1: little bit of horror fiction, a little bit of a
Speaker 1: comic book material here at the top, because it's a
Speaker 1: it's such a mind blowing topic. It's a topic that
Speaker 1: it forces us to to rethink what we are and
Speaker 1: what it is to be human, what it is to
Speaker 1: be a person. It certainly worked for a turn to
Speaker 1: the century sort of chilling thrillers. Right. Oh yeah, but
Speaker 1: before we get into that, let's just remind the audience. So, hey,
Speaker 1: we do way more than just the podcast. If you've
Speaker 1: been listening to the podcast as many, We've been getting
Speaker 1: a lot of nice letters from people who have just
Speaker 1: started listening to the show. Uh, we do more than that.
Speaker 1: We've got videos. Robert is on How Stuff Works Now
Speaker 1: once a week, both of us, right for How Stuff
Speaker 1: Works Now at least once a week. Joe is also
Speaker 1: on another podcast and show called Forward Thinking. The best
Speaker 1: way to find out about all that stuff that we
Speaker 1: do writing videos, et cetera, is to visit us at
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your mind dot com and then follow
Speaker 1: us on social media whatever your you know, your social
Speaker 1: media of choices, Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler. We're on all of them, yeah, indeed, so,
Speaker 1: so check us out there if you haven't already. And hey,
Speaker 1: if you listen to us on iTunes or you know,
Speaker 1: however you listen to us, uh, give us a little feedback,
Speaker 1: bump us up in the algorithm for your preferred podcast service,
Speaker 1: and that'll help us out. It's a great way to
Speaker 1: support the show. Yeah, I'm really excited. We're about to
Speaker 1: hit some new I guess they call them markets in
Speaker 1: terms of podcasting, but Google plays coming up for us
Speaker 1: and um and Spotify as well. So hey, whatever you
Speaker 1: listen to out there, we're on all of them soon.
Speaker 1: All right. So to start off, I want to talk
Speaker 1: with you just a little bit about an area of
Speaker 1: fiction that that always fascinated me, particularly because you see, uh,
Speaker 1: several different individuals hitting the same topic around the same
Speaker 1: time in the same time frame. Um, the earliest being
Speaker 1: that of that explored by H. G. Wells in his
Speaker 1: novel The Island of Dr Moreau. Yeah, yeah, what mostly
Speaker 1: known for the movie adaptations nowadays, although I imagine at
Speaker 1: the time that it came out there is a little
Speaker 1: bit of shock to the subject matter as well. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and apparently Wells wrote this, uh in large part as
Speaker 1: a as a protest against vivisection the live dissection of
Speaker 1: of animals for research purposes, and um, you know, I
Speaker 1: think that's definitely something that's lost in the film generations.
Speaker 1: But I definitely remember watching the old Burt Lancaster version
Speaker 1: of this on like on a daytime horror show that
Speaker 1: was hosted by alum, what was your name, Grandpa Muster?
Speaker 1: Oh okay, yeah, okay, I don't hosted by Grandpa on
Speaker 1: tbspect in the day, and it was you know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of grimy and creepy and Harry and then of
Speaker 1: course we got that that wonderful marlones one. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: saw that in the theater in the nineties. Um, it's
Speaker 1: it's not good, but it's still I don't know, it
Speaker 1: has holds a warm place in my heart. There's some
Speaker 1: there's some stuff about it. I like director, but Richard Stanley,
Speaker 1: I believe, And I think there's a there's a documentary.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it yet, but there's a documentary about
Speaker 1: the making of it. But yeah, for more more than
Speaker 1: just the fear of vivisection or human interspecies, crossover. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of people who stay away from that movie. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. What I'm thinking of two is even before
Speaker 1: that this isn't necessarily like a crossover, but murders in
Speaker 1: the room or post story spoilers for like a two
Speaker 1: year old story, but ends up being the murderer ends
Speaker 1: up being an orangutang that the escaped from a zoo
Speaker 1: or a circus or something that was nearby and and
Speaker 1: comes in and it's a it's a locked door mystery
Speaker 1: and kills these people with like a razor blade or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's a great one. Uh. And certainly I think
Speaker 1: is a part of this this sort of scene of
Speaker 1: weird ape short stories like because another one that comes
Speaker 1: to mind, and this was a bit later, ine, but
Speaker 1: you had the Adventure of the Creeping Man by Sir
Speaker 1: Arthur Kunnan Doyle. Yeah, I haven't read that one. Well,
Speaker 1: the there's an interesting twist here because it seems like
Speaker 1: it's going to be a marauding, murderous ape, but it
Speaker 1: turns out that it's um that it's a human who
Speaker 1: has been taking um simion derived enhancement products, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's actually either biologically or psychologically changing
Speaker 1: him into this, uh, this ape like guy that was
Speaker 1: a Dr Jackal Mr Hyde kind of scenario. Kind of yeah, huh.
Speaker 1: I wonder if they're going to incorporate this into the
Speaker 1: next season of the BBC Sherlock, where Benedict cumber Patch
Speaker 1: will be uh dueling with this half apalf man. They should, Man,
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of the weirder Conan Doyle stories
Speaker 1: like that one and the Devil's Foot, which has a
Speaker 1: deadly psychedelic poison that drives people mad. Yeah, that stuff's great.
Speaker 1: So Okay, you've also told me that there's a Lovecraft story,
Speaker 1: and this is outside of my knowledge of the Lovecraft
Speaker 1: readings I've done, so so what's it about the title
Speaker 1: of the story is Facts concerning the Late Arthur German
Speaker 1: and his Family by bioh Lovecraft. This and this is
Speaker 1: pretty early Lovecraft. Yeah, and it's uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: definitely wouldn't classified as being one of one of the
Speaker 1: great stories, but it's definitely worth exploring if you're interested
Speaker 1: in weird ape fiction and if you're interested in the
Speaker 1: whole like racial context of of love Craft and his
Speaker 1: racial attitudes, because I can definitely see that kind of
Speaker 1: racial anxiety. To put it kind like uh, in this work,
Speaker 1: I'm going to read quick quote from it. It concerns, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Europeans coming back from African expeditions, having encountered apes. Quote. Science,
Speaker 1: already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the
Speaker 1: ultimate exterminator of our human species. If separate species we be,
Speaker 1: for its reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne
Speaker 1: by mortal brains. If loosed upon the world. If we
Speaker 1: knew what we are, we should do as Sir Arthur
Speaker 1: German did, And Sir Arthur Germans soaked himself in oil
Speaker 1: and set fire to his clothing. One So, as it
Speaker 1: turns out, classic Howard Phillips, just you you immolate yourself
Speaker 1: and that's tell you in the story. But basically what
Speaker 1: happened is this German character goes out on the more
Speaker 1: and burns him stuff after seeing the boxed object which
Speaker 1: had come back from Africa. So basically the whole twist
Speaker 1: here is he finds out that that his his mother
Speaker 1: I believe, was a white ape okay, and his father
Speaker 1: was like an explorer or something like, yeah, who fell
Speaker 1: in love with the creature and that he's the offspring.
Speaker 1: And yeah, so it's you know, maybe it's a he's
Speaker 1: so horrified by his lineage that he commits suicide exactly,
Speaker 1: and you know it's maybe that's a little um, it's
Speaker 1: a twist, I admit, it's a twist on the old
Speaker 1: Lovecraft shadow over in Smith. It's very similar kind of ending,
Speaker 1: except that guy that doesn't kill himself. Yeah. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: also similar a little bit too in Smith in that
Speaker 1: regard getting into you know, the racial horror, racial anxiety,
Speaker 1: and and but it it does tie in nicely into
Speaker 1: what we're going to talk about today, into the real abhorrence,
Speaker 1: and into the some of the actual science that was
Speaker 1: going on around this period. Yeah. In fact, so I've
Speaker 1: talked about this on the show before, but you know,
Speaker 1: the Silver Age of comic books, right around the end
Speaker 1: of the fifties beginning of the sixties, there was a
Speaker 1: fascination with this very topic of these of ape men
Speaker 1: basically uh, and they shut up all over the place
Speaker 1: in comics, and some of the big ones are still
Speaker 1: around today. I mean, the Flash TV show that's airing
Speaker 1: right now just had Guerrilla Grod, which is one of
Speaker 1: my favorite characters. From all of comics history on it.
Speaker 1: He's a super intelligent ag. Yeah, so these aren't necessarily
Speaker 1: ape human hybrids, but they're they're Oh they're either that
Speaker 1: or they are men that have been turned into apes,
Speaker 1: or they're super intelligent apes. So like in the case
Speaker 1: of Guerrilla Grod, he comes from a city called Guerrilla
Speaker 1: City that's hidden in the wilderness somewhere where there's just
Speaker 1: all these super intelligent apes and they're so smart that
Speaker 1: they've like built science that allows them to hide themselves
Speaker 1: from society. Uh. Cong Guerrilla is another one which I
Speaker 1: believe I don't know the specific details, but I think
Speaker 1: Cong Guerrilla is like a guy who's been cursed or
Speaker 1: something like that in the Congo to be a gorilla.
Speaker 1: Same with Guerrilla Man. Uh, almost the exact same origin.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a villain called the ultra Humanite that
Speaker 1: is like a scientist who's placed his brain inside a
Speaker 1: guerrilla's body. I believe it's like a big white gorilla
Speaker 1: um and that that'll come into play when we talk
Speaker 1: later about the Chinese experiments that we're being done around hybridization.
Speaker 1: There's Monster and Mala and then the one uh that
Speaker 1: I that I immediately thought of when we were doing
Speaker 1: the research for this was the Red Ghost, which is
Speaker 1: an old Fantastic Four villain, and he's like a Russian
Speaker 1: scientist who gets exposed I think like cosmic rays or
Speaker 1: something like that, with three apes that he has with him.
Speaker 1: He has a guerrilla a baboon and orangutank and they
Speaker 1: all developed superpowers and hang out together. And his name,
Speaker 1: his real name is Ivan Kragoff. And the guy we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about today, his name is Ivan Ivanof.
Speaker 1: And so I wonder if, uh, that was the inspiration
Speaker 1: Ivan Ivanof was the inspiration for the Red Ghost character.
Speaker 1: It might have been. You know, I'm also reminded of
Speaker 1: the hell Boy villain Herman from The Conqueror Worm, which
Speaker 1: is my favorite hell Boy adventure. Well, all right, real quick,
Speaker 1: before we get into the crazy science behind this, I'll
Speaker 1: give you a little factoid. So it is a known
Speaker 1: thing within comics industry that if you put this is
Speaker 1: back in the day, if you put the color purple
Speaker 1: or an or and an ape on the cover of
Speaker 1: your comic, it would sell more copies. And so that
Speaker 1: was one of the reasons why there were so many
Speaker 1: of these characters that popped up at the time, is
Speaker 1: that they just they don't know, you know, somehow the
Speaker 1: things correlated together to higher sales, so they were constantly
Speaker 1: producing more gorilla grods or cong guerrillas or whatever. So
Speaker 1: maybe there's somehow those covers were just cutting in almost
Speaker 1: subconsciously to this to the post Darwinian um existential problem
Speaker 1: exact Man versus eight, not not only in physical combat
Speaker 1: where we're going to lose, but just in terms of identity.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, it was. It's like the tabloid cover
Speaker 1: of its time that immediately kind of put click something
Speaker 1: in your head and make sure you go, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: not quite right with that, but I need to figure
Speaker 1: out what what danger it poses to me? Yeah, Polus.
Speaker 1: I've also heard that in the post Darwinian world, the
Speaker 1: idea of our b steel nature, instead of being represented
Speaker 1: in the form of werewolves and um, you know, another
Speaker 1: type of beast man like the gorilla and the apeman,
Speaker 1: becomes the prime mold. That makes sense, the steel human. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The fear of regressing back to your primal nature beyond
Speaker 1: your rational one. Yeah, so what better for Superman. Superman
Speaker 1: has a villain I believe his name is Titano the
Speaker 1: super ape? Is he made of metal? No, he's just
Speaker 1: a big ape with superpowers, I think, or so well,
Speaker 1: I get by that point all the names are being
Speaker 1: used up. Yeah, exactly, something fancy. So all right, let's
Speaker 1: dive into this. Let's dive into the Darwinism, the the
Speaker 1: eugenics behind it, the fear too. There's just a palpable
Speaker 1: fear about this, so much so that scientists have actually
Speaker 1: filed patents to try to keep this from happening. So
Speaker 1: the filing of a of a patent just to make
Speaker 1: sure nobody d else actually engages in hybridization. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: in developmental biologists, Stewart Newman, who at the time was
Speaker 1: working at the New York Medical College in Valhalla, which
Speaker 1: sounds like a pretty cool place to work, together with
Speaker 1: a guy named Jeremy Rifkin, who is the president of
Speaker 1: the Foundation of Economic Trends, which is based out of Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. They submitted a patent for the chimera of
Speaker 1: a human zy So we'll explain what a chimera is,
Speaker 1: shortly made from embryonic cells of humans and chimpanzees. And
Speaker 1: the reason why they did this wasn't because they wanted
Speaker 1: to create a human zy. It was because they wanted
Speaker 1: to secure the patent, because they wanted to prevent other
Speaker 1: people from ever making a human z and exploiting it.
Speaker 1: In particular, they were worried about corporations, uh somehow building
Speaker 1: these human zies and like using them either for artificial organs,
Speaker 1: as we'll talk about later, or or even for like
Speaker 1: labor purposes. What happened was the patent was denied in
Speaker 1: two thousand four by the Patent and Trademark Office. But
Speaker 1: the rejection basically came because the government looked at it
Speaker 1: and they said, well, this includes within its scope a
Speaker 1: human being, which we can't legally patent a human being.
Speaker 1: So in and of itself, they sort of defined by
Speaker 1: law that trying to patent any kind of species creation
Speaker 1: that it involves human cross breeding is unpatentable. So we'll see,
Speaker 1: I mean, if it ever comes to comes to light that,
Speaker 1: you know, corporations do start designing human zase, we'll see
Speaker 1: how that plays out in courts. But that's an interesting point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what can you say to the resulting hybrid, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: you're in violation of patent? Yeah, exactly, And so Newman
Speaker 1: and Uh, and Riffkin. You know, they basically their whole
Speaker 1: goal was just to start a debate, right Like, however
Speaker 1: it played out, I don't think they particularly cared. They
Speaker 1: wanted the debate about what it means to be human
Speaker 1: to actually get in there in the legal you know jargon,
Speaker 1: especially when it came to patenting organisms with human genes.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if you remember this. It's funny
Speaker 1: because as we're recording this last night was Barack Obama's
Speaker 1: last State of the Union speech, but in two thousand six,
Speaker 1: President George W. Bush during his State of the Union
Speaker 1: speech called for a ban on human animal hyper Remember
Speaker 1: I was I remember watching it, and I mean this
Speaker 1: is ten years ago now, and I remember watching it
Speaker 1: and thinking where did this come from? It just it
Speaker 1: came out of nowhere, and I was like, why is
Speaker 1: he worried about werewolves? Uh? And now I can kind
Speaker 1: of see where the you know, where where the origin
Speaker 1: of that came from. Clearly, Uh, the argument got started
Speaker 1: by Newman. It's interesting to think of this in terms
Speaker 1: of breaking the species barrier, which is a phrase that
Speaker 1: I picked up in James Randerson's article in the Guardian
Speaker 1: where he's talking about um Richard Dawkins proposing a two
Speaker 1: thousand nine at the successful high orginization between a human
Speaker 1: and a Champanzee would would be something that would change everything,
Speaker 1: A real, a real game changer for for human civilization.
Speaker 1: Is that makes sense along Dawkins line of research and
Speaker 1: thought too, Yeah, he would attack that. So I definitely
Speaker 1: challenge everyone to keep thinking of this species barrier as
Speaker 1: we as we move forward, because in a sense it
Speaker 1: is a an artificial barrier, and since it is a
Speaker 1: but it's but it's still a barrier that is is
Speaker 1: carefully maintained and it has a lot to do with
Speaker 1: with not only the biological reality of of who and
Speaker 1: what we are, but also just our our existential understanding
Speaker 1: of Yeah. Absolutely uh, And I think that we're going
Speaker 1: to keep coming back to that with these research. The
Speaker 1: research that we're exploring too, is that that fear, that uh,
Speaker 1: confrontation of understanding of what being human means kept coming
Speaker 1: back throughout these and for good reason. Before we get
Speaker 1: into the like the meat of it, though, I just
Speaker 1: wanted to add a note here because I always have
Speaker 1: trouble with this and I wanted to make sure that
Speaker 1: the audience was with us. So chimpanzees, which would be
Speaker 1: you know, how we would produce a human z they're
Speaker 1: not monkeys. Monkeys and great apes are separate from one another,
Speaker 1: right this It feels like the old Carl Pilkington. Uh,
Speaker 1: like I'm I'm I'm Gervais trying to explain to my
Speaker 1: inner Carl Pilkington. A great ape is a chimpanzee, a gorilla,
Speaker 1: and orangutanga binobo and potentially humans, right, And here's the distinction.
Speaker 1: They don't have tails. They have larger bodies and bigger
Speaker 1: brains than monkeys. They're built for different kinds of locomotion
Speaker 1: and this includes walking by pedally on their legs like
Speaker 1: we do, but also that swinging from branches that we
Speaker 1: think of, right, So the anatomy of great apes is
Speaker 1: their shoulder blades are designed in such a way that
Speaker 1: allows that monkeys can't necessarily do all those same things.
Speaker 1: So that's what we're talking about here. And the distinction
Speaker 1: is important because of you of the definition of species
Speaker 1: and how close we as human beings are two chimpanzees
Speaker 1: as speeches as a species. Yeah, as a regular zoo
Speaker 1: visitor with my my son, this comes up a lot
Speaker 1: as I hear other parents talk about the monkeys. Look
Speaker 1: at the monkeys, look at him, go look at and
Speaker 1: because that's the other thing, like, the gender of the
Speaker 1: creature of being viewed is always male. And I always
Speaker 1: want to point out, do you see an elephant penis?
Speaker 1: Because I do not see an elephant penis? Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's a that's a side tansion. So let's do this.
Speaker 1: Let's line up what a hybrid is and what a
Speaker 1: chimera is so we can kind of define those before
Speaker 1: we get into it. This is uh, you know, fertile
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind ground. We've covered this on
Speaker 1: multiple episodes before, but it's always good to have a primer. So,
Speaker 1: hybrid animals are created when the genetic material from different
Speaker 1: animals joined form a single embryo. So a mule, for example,
Speaker 1: was the offspring of female horse and a male donkey.
Speaker 1: Every cell in the body of a mule contains genetic
Speaker 1: material from both parents. Yeah, and as we'll get into later,
Speaker 1: they're almost always infertile. Yeah, and you have not other
Speaker 1: problems present. So chimeras are a little different in that
Speaker 1: they are two different sets of DNA that originate from
Speaker 1: the fusion of different zygoats or eggs. Right, So the
Speaker 1: first one of these was created actually in nineteen sixty one.
Speaker 1: That's uh quite a bit after a lot of the
Speaker 1: research that we're gonna be talking about today, at least
Speaker 1: the Russian research. Uh, and chimeras aren't always a fifty
Speaker 1: fifty blend. The example I gave this in the X
Speaker 1: Files episode I'll give it again here is if you
Speaker 1: make a chimera of a sheep and a goat, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's not going to be like half sheep half goat,
Speaker 1: like right down the middle. It's gonna look like a
Speaker 1: sheep maybe, but the hair will feel like a goat, right,
Speaker 1: Like it would be a little bit more briskly or
Speaker 1: core us than a sheep would be. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I've also read that you could make an argument that
Speaker 1: an individual who has animal tissue in their body, some
Speaker 1: sort of a transplant, that they are technically a chimera,
Speaker 1: but obviously not in a way that's really all that
Speaker 1: mythological and monster right yeah, well, right, in the term
Speaker 1: chimera comes from the monstrous myth of what is it
Speaker 1: part dragon, part lion, part eagle? Is that right, there's
Speaker 1: a goat on the goat in there too. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's a mix of every everybody knows that monster
Speaker 1: from their D and D adventures, right, Um, a monster
Speaker 1: frequently seen in the Monster Manual, but I think rarely
Speaker 1: rolled out because it's hard to get excited about something
Speaker 1: with a goat for a tail. Yeah, it's just kind
Speaker 1: of a mishmash of animals and a little bit of
Speaker 1: dragon in there. So what do we mean when we
Speaker 1: say species too? That's important, right? So most of us think, oh,
Speaker 1: a species is different kinds of animals, right that look alike,
Speaker 1: act alike, and have babies together that follow the same
Speaker 1: paths that they do. But to biologists, there's a differ.
Speaker 1: Prints They have a phrase biological species concept, and by
Speaker 1: this they mean two animals are only the same species
Speaker 1: if they can interbreed and produce offspring that are fertile.
Speaker 1: So that's crucial, especially when we're using the mule as
Speaker 1: the benchmark here, and it leaves out a lot of
Speaker 1: the plant kingdom and even some of the animal kingdom too.
Speaker 1: As we know from talking about lots of parasites and
Speaker 1: things on the show, there's plenty of beings species that
Speaker 1: can reproduced a sexually. It's also worth noting that, as
Speaker 1: you know, as any given lineage within the within the
Speaker 1: animal kingdom makes its way across time, worms its way
Speaker 1: through the centuries, there's um there's a divergence. So you
Speaker 1: have you have what was once one species gradually become
Speaker 1: two species or more species, and some of those of
Speaker 1: those branches die off, others thrive, but there can still
Speaker 1: remain the ability for those branches to reconverge, if only temporarily,
Speaker 1: in the form of a hybrid. Well, it funny that
Speaker 1: you mentioned that, because actually one of the studies that
Speaker 1: I read for this was from two thousand six h
Speaker 1: Scientists at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, mass Massachusetts released
Speaker 1: a study where they were comparing human and primate genomes
Speaker 1: down to the letters of each base pair, and they
Speaker 1: came to the following conclusion, which is right in line
Speaker 1: with what you just said, Robert. Chimps and humans likely
Speaker 1: diverged from the same evolutionary tree six point three million
Speaker 1: years ago. Now that's actually a lot more recent than
Speaker 1: was previously thought. Also, early humans and chimps probably interbred
Speaker 1: with each other for four million years before they split
Speaker 1: as species for good. So all of you out there
Speaker 1: that are really uncomfortable with that idea our species are
Speaker 1: or I guess like our proto human ancestors were breeding
Speaker 1: with chimpanzees for four million years. That's a that's a
Speaker 1: likely possibility based on this study. So that implies not
Speaker 1: only are we descended from human z s, but like
Speaker 1: you said, it's possible we will become human zes again. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know, and also when you go back into
Speaker 1: and look at archaic um forms of humanity, uh that
Speaker 1: the you know, strip away the human taboos and and
Speaker 1: we have to remember that that humans have have bread
Speaker 1: with other species as well. UM. Neanderthal genome mapping provides
Speaker 1: strong evidence that humans and Neanderthals interbread. Between one and
Speaker 1: four percent of DNA of many humans living today likely
Speaker 1: came from Neanderthals. People of European and Asian heritage especially
Speaker 1: are more likely to carry those genes UM and there's
Speaker 1: some studies that that support the idea that such interbreeding
Speaker 1: may have made it stronger. We pick up some of
Speaker 1: the strengths of this slightly alien species that we're breeding with.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not it's not all completely cut and dry.
Speaker 1: Experts go back and forth on the matter. But but
Speaker 1: there does seem to be compelling evidence to suggest that
Speaker 1: a certain amount of it occurred. Um. So, in our
Speaker 1: an archaic sense, interbreeding definitely occurred, and a lot of
Speaker 1: us are the hybrid results of that. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: I guess there's just some kind of like uh uh
Speaker 1: like inner guilt that we're all carrying around. Maybe, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could you can make an argument there. I guess
Speaker 1: that it's some sort of uh, you know, a species
Speaker 1: a guilt that remains because of some uh slightly weird
Speaker 1: romantic trips back in the back of the day. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But this brings us back around to the idea of
Speaker 1: the humanzie, the idea of humans and chimpanzees or some
Speaker 1: other um notable um um great ape species. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think huating something implied just based on any great ape
Speaker 1: slash human pairing, right, it's not necessarily chimpanzees. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: a lot of experts have have commented on this and
Speaker 1: continue to comment on this. Um. Jeffrey Borne, director of
Speaker 1: the the Yurkey's Primate Center here in Atlanta, one of
Speaker 1: the founding fathers of the Federal Program of Primate Research,
Speaker 1: wrote the following the nineties, everyone quote. There seems to
Speaker 1: be very little physiological reason why artificial instimination could not
Speaker 1: be used between man and the apes with a possibility
Speaker 1: that a viable child might be reproduced, And it is
Speaker 1: surprising that this type of hybridization has not in fact
Speaker 1: already taken place. Yeah, So now I'm fascinated because I've
Speaker 1: lived here for almost ten years, You've lived here for
Speaker 1: longer than that. I've never heard of or been to
Speaker 1: this place. So news occasionally and I feel like there's
Speaker 1: a friend of a friend who worked there. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know a tremendous amount about the facility. Seems
Speaker 1: like it would be a great resource for us for
Speaker 1: future episodes. Maybe we'll look into it. If anybody out
Speaker 1: there works there, let us know. Now we could rattle
Speaker 1: off other individuals who have commented about the possibility in
Speaker 1: varying degrees of fear or wonder. But really, the best
Speaker 1: place to go from here is to the study of
Speaker 1: a man who tried dearly and it nearly succeeded. It
Speaker 1: feels like in carrying out such an experiment, where talking
Speaker 1: about Russian biologist Ilia Ivanov Ivanovich ivanof Yeah, also known
Speaker 1: as the Red Frankenstein. Well if I don't think at
Speaker 1: the time of his life he has known that way.
Speaker 1: But when these stories broke Originally my understanding is that
Speaker 1: there were some Russian documents that were found, technical documents
Speaker 1: about his work that were found and translated and kind
Speaker 1: of made a flurry like maybe in the eighties or nineties,
Speaker 1: and the meaning this the Red Frankenstein thing is important
Speaker 1: to to to discuss here and sort of keep separate
Speaker 1: from the real ivan Off, because there's the real ivan
Speaker 1: Off who were going to discuss in detail, and then
Speaker 1: there's the Red Frankenstein ivanof which very much stems from
Speaker 1: um From particularly in early nineteen nineties, when certain individuals
Speaker 1: picked up on these existing documents. Sometimes there are misconstrued
Speaker 1: as having been um uh you know, top secret KGB documents,
Speaker 1: but in reality it sounds like these were all documents
Speaker 1: that were readily available in Russian, either at the Suitcomb
Speaker 1: Russian Primate Center or in um Ivanoff's own you know,
Speaker 1: personal correspondences and records, his own archive, so that the
Speaker 1: material wasn't new, but suddenly new eyes were on them
Speaker 1: and it started spinning off varying levels of unbelievable uh
Speaker 1: you know, modern urban myth about what he was up to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so as we approached the research for this to
Speaker 1: bring it to you, we tried to be very careful
Speaker 1: about distinguishing the real from the myth with this guy,
Speaker 1: uh And you know, our best resource for this is
Speaker 1: actually an academic paper that came out in two thousand
Speaker 1: two by historian Kreel Rosianoff, and it was published in
Speaker 1: Science and Context. It's called Beyond Species Ilia Ivanof and
Speaker 1: his Experiments on cross breeding humans with anthropoid apes. And
Speaker 1: I think the crucial bit there is that uh Rosianoff
Speaker 1: spoke Russian, and this was able to actually read the
Speaker 1: documents firsthand and translate them and give us something a
Speaker 1: little bit as close to a primary source as possible
Speaker 1: for US English speakers, whereas like the articles that were
Speaker 1: showing up in the Chicago Tribune and and and other
Speaker 1: like fairly reputable sources were a little out there and
Speaker 1: extrapolated in their terms of like him making super soldier
Speaker 1: super soldier apes for stallar thing. Another source that I
Speaker 1: I really liked was the paper the Russian Primate Research
Speaker 1: Center A Survivor, and this was by Dr m M. P. Fridman.
Speaker 1: And this is that he was the former chief of
Speaker 1: the Laboratory of Informational Analysis in Medical Primatology of the
Speaker 1: Russian Primate Center at Sukhum, which is which is gonna
Speaker 1: be a place we're going to discuss linked there. And
Speaker 1: it was also and it was co authored by Dr
Speaker 1: Douglas M. Bowden, m d. Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral
Speaker 1: Sciences and core staff scientist at the National Primate Research
Speaker 1: Center at the University of Washington and Seattle so UM.
Speaker 1: And in their paper was what was he was even
Speaker 1: more skeptical than most of the material that I've looked at,
Speaker 1: And I thought, thoughts supplied a wonderful breath of fresh
Speaker 1: air amid so many papers that that tended to to
Speaker 1: get into that Red Frankenstein territory. Yeah, So I guess
Speaker 1: we should start with just a general kind of abstract
Speaker 1: overview of the Ivanoff story, which is that Ivanof was
Speaker 1: funded by the Russian government. They gave him about two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars to find out if it was possible
Speaker 1: to create a human zy uh. And so he went
Speaker 1: to the past Tour Institute in France, where I believe
Speaker 1: that he had had some training previously, and used their
Speaker 1: primary primate facility in Kannakery, Guinea to conduct his experiments,
Speaker 1: and in nine he had artificially impregnated three chimpanzees, but
Speaker 1: the experiment failed. And by sorry, I should clarify, he
Speaker 1: artificially impregnated three chimpanzees, female chimpanzees with human sperm. Well
Speaker 1: he he attempted, attempted to it didn't. There's no evidence
Speaker 1: that any of those pregnancies actually that anything actually there.
Speaker 1: Um and in fact, one of them died on the
Speaker 1: way back to UH to Russia, and often the necropsy
Speaker 1: performed on the specimen showed no sign of pregnancy. They
Speaker 1: see so so and this is this is out of
Speaker 1: the Scotsman in two thousand five, they were the ones
Speaker 1: reporting on this, uh and so again like we're gonna
Speaker 1: try to parse out the truth from the fiction here.
Speaker 1: Um well, I guess one of the important things to
Speaker 1: sort of start at the beginning of where this guy
Speaker 1: came from. Um so. So his background, where he really
Speaker 1: initially made his name, was in artificial examination, particularly in
Speaker 1: the veterinary sciences, experimenting with with cows and horses in
Speaker 1: the like very real world practical applications. Uh. But and
Speaker 1: this was like, this is you know, in nineteen twenties, okay,
Speaker 1: right around the same time Lovecraft's writing yeah, yeah, story.
Speaker 1: And he was a big fan of artificial instimulation, and
Speaker 1: he figured it would allow hybridization among a wide variety
Speaker 1: of species. But in and we see the first inkling
Speaker 1: of this, this idea to create a chimp hybrid at
Speaker 1: the International Zoology Congress uh in Graz and nineteen ten,
Speaker 1: and this is where he mentions it as a possibility.
Speaker 1: But there's no there's no inkling that he was actually
Speaker 1: planning anything. It's just kind of like, hey, you could
Speaker 1: artificial instamonation is great, you could even use it on
Speaker 1: a chimp in a human Yeah, I mean he didn't
Speaker 1: even have access to the resources to begin conducting experiments
Speaker 1: like this then, I mean really, what he was focusing
Speaker 1: on then was creating superior horses exactly. Yeah. But then
Speaker 1: around two this is during the Revolution, many Russian scientists
Speaker 1: are losing their patrons, their support systems. They're forced to
Speaker 1: abandon old research, find new avenues, find new spins on
Speaker 1: their particular area of expertise, and so in a in
Speaker 1: several letters written to the American biologist Raymond Pearl. Ivanov
Speaker 1: indicates that he's thinking more and more about experiments on apes,
Speaker 1: and in particular about hybridization between between man and chimpanze.
Speaker 1: And then we see him discussing the possibility with the
Speaker 1: scientists at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and it kind
Speaker 1: of builds up from there, Right. He begins talking to folks,
Speaker 1: he begins talking up this idea. He begins winning some
Speaker 1: support here and there among particularly among individuals at the
Speaker 1: Russian Science Academy. Yeah, and so we'll get into this.
Speaker 1: I think it's best to maybe approach it after we
Speaker 1: go through the history of Ivanov. There are multiple reasons
Speaker 1: why he may have approached this research, right. It may
Speaker 1: not just have been oh, let's just make a half
Speaker 1: man half chimpanze, right right. Uh. Their political possibilities, uh,
Speaker 1: really weird devious possibilities for old men and their sexual rejuvenation.
Speaker 1: But we'll get into that after we finished the history
Speaker 1: on him. Yeah, And and there's also it's worth noting
Speaker 1: that you know it's it's there's the work you do
Speaker 1: as a scientist, and then there's how you sell it,
Speaker 1: how you get funded, and then just how your approach
Speaker 1: to a particular area of research. Particularly, something is as
Speaker 1: powerful as this may change over time the closer you
Speaker 1: get to it, and as you're exposed to different cultural
Speaker 1: attitudes concerning your uh, the individuals and the creatures that
Speaker 1: you're going to experiment upon. Yeah, it's especially interesting to
Speaker 1: see as Ivanov goes from Russia to France to Africa
Speaker 1: and then at one point you even approached supposedly an
Speaker 1: American uh woman who just was extremely wealthy, to see
Speaker 1: if she would back him up with resources, and the
Speaker 1: different cultural resonance and response to his his research all
Speaker 1: of those areas is very very fascinating. Yeah, that uh
Speaker 1: rosann enof article again Beyond Species. It's the it's out there.
Speaker 1: It's available behind a paywall if you want to pay
Speaker 1: forty bucks for it. It is uh It's a great
Speaker 1: paper that goes into a lot of depth about the
Speaker 1: particularly about the cultural attitudes that are surrounding all these
Speaker 1: different pieces. Like, for instance, he goes into how on
Speaker 1: one hand, he ends up going to Africa and he's
Speaker 1: engaging in you know, very very racist imperial ideologies concerning
Speaker 1: the local population and ultimately concerning apes as well. But
Speaker 1: at the same time he's he's received letters from the
Speaker 1: Kluflux Klan telling him not to come to America. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's so he's I'm surprised that he was on
Speaker 1: their radar, Yeah, because I mean he's writing around about it.
Speaker 1: The stuff his work is making headlines and and pissing
Speaker 1: people off even at the time. But yeah, back to
Speaker 1: this sort of the talking days. So he ends up
Speaker 1: making a number of friends, uh, in the in the
Speaker 1: government at the time, people who who think that if
Speaker 1: nothing else, they may not be that into the particulars
Speaker 1: of his research. Go. But then, but the idea of
Speaker 1: Russian scientists going to Africa carrying out some sort of
Speaker 1: big scientific expedition, that sounds good. That sounds like good
Speaker 1: pr for And we'll see this in other episodes where
Speaker 1: we've we've talked about you know, early twenty century Russian
Speaker 1: science too. There seemed to be just a motivation to
Speaker 1: get out there and do it right, to try to
Speaker 1: break boundaries and make headlines. Yeah, And and it does
Speaker 1: seem that he also factored religion into his early pitches
Speaker 1: for it, to say that hey, you know, we want
Speaker 1: to you know, religion, is this this this horrible force
Speaker 1: in the modern world we want to completely remove it
Speaker 1: from from the you know, the higher levels of of
Speaker 1: modern civilization. This is a great project to help convince everyone.
Speaker 1: What better way to get two hundred thousand dollars from
Speaker 1: the Bolsheviks. Yeah, and then of course once he once
Speaker 1: he actually gets funding, he stops talking about the religion
Speaker 1: angle because ultimately that that seems to be less on
Speaker 1: his radar. He's more focused on on the scientific frontier
Speaker 1: here and his explored in beyond species. There doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to be a lot of discussion of ethics at the time. Um,
Speaker 1: he's he's already he's talking about basically, we're gonna I
Speaker 1: want to go to Africa, I want to engage, to
Speaker 1: engage with these apes and are officially inseminate a female
Speaker 1: primate with with human sperm. He do's have an i
Speaker 1: RB that he had to answer to and fill out
Speaker 1: ethical forms before he conducted his experiments. Yeah, there seems
Speaker 1: to be some some notion that there were some critical
Speaker 1: rumblings and sort of rumors already, like not everyone who
Speaker 1: heard about this thought it sounded great, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: enough to actually derail the efforts. So, as you previously mentioned,
Speaker 1: he had are he made friends with the Pasteur Institute,
Speaker 1: so that's what he does. He sets out to the
Speaker 1: to the primate center there in French Guiana and sets
Speaker 1: about trying to carry out this work, right, and so
Speaker 1: one of his major goals is to get ahold of
Speaker 1: as many chimpanzees as possible so he can bring them
Speaker 1: back to Russia. Right. Yeah, And well ultimately, but during
Speaker 1: this initial phase, it's all about we're going to carry
Speaker 1: this out here. Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna insimilate which
Speaker 1: female question where the human sperm came from? Yes, according
Speaker 1: to Rosianoff, they seem to have been very clear on
Speaker 1: that matter that it was not diving Off nor his son,
Speaker 1: both of whom were traveling on ure um. But there
Speaker 1: are a number of problems that that immediately pop up.
Speaker 1: First of all, at this primate research center, this is
Speaker 1: you know, don't don't go into this expecting a modern
Speaker 1: primate research center. In order to obtain specimens, it involved
Speaker 1: local hunters going out killing adult chimpanzees and bringing back
Speaker 1: the babies. So, on one hand, the primates that he
Speaker 1: was working with, we're almost all prepubescent, So that was
Speaker 1: going to prevent this from from happening. Also, the conditions
Speaker 1: were not great and and and you know, surprise, surprise.
Speaker 1: In order for primates, particularly chimpanzees, to successfully breed, they
Speaker 1: need to be in at least semi comfortable surroundings, I know,
Speaker 1: like you hear about like today, like when they're trying
Speaker 1: to get pandas to breed, it's like you know, pull
Speaker 1: pulling teeth because they have to be like very comfortable
Speaker 1: and at ease with their surroundings. And can you imagine
Speaker 1: this situation that these chimpanzees have had their family murder,
Speaker 1: they've been kidnapped and dragged over to this weird facility
Speaker 1: that can't imagine had very modern equipment or facilities. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and it sounds like the handling of the animals
Speaker 1: was also really rough and it was dangerous work dealing
Speaker 1: with them. Ivanov's Sun was apparently severely bitten on the
Speaker 1: hand and had to go to the UH seek medical
Speaker 1: tension over it and UH in the whole time, Rosianov argues,
Speaker 1: they seem to be treating the chimps a little extra harsh,
Speaker 1: perhaps in order to establish more psychic distance between human
Speaker 1: and chimpanzee because of what they're trying to do about
Speaker 1: this offspring that they have. I mean, really, he's he
Speaker 1: is such a supporter of this idea and the powers
Speaker 1: of artificial exsemination. I mean, he considers it to be
Speaker 1: a done deal. They're going to create this offspring and
Speaker 1: bring it back. And but how's he going to feel
Speaker 1: about that? What's fascinating about that is like even Ivanov,
Speaker 1: who was like behind this, this was his baby, no
Speaker 1: pun intented. Uh he he even seems to have carried
Speaker 1: that inner fear of the species coming too close together. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he kept emotional distance that the pregnancies don't seem
Speaker 1: to take hold. He's growing more and more frustrated with
Speaker 1: just how difficult this is, and so he begins to
Speaker 1: think about flipping, uh, the scenario. Right, so we're going
Speaker 1: to go the other way around. Now we're going to
Speaker 1: impregnate a human woman with chimpanzee sperm. Right. And he
Speaker 1: seems to approach this in a very cold and calculating way,
Speaker 1: like very very much. I don't want to maybe not
Speaker 1: cold and calculating, but his mind seems to be firmly
Speaker 1: placed on the scientific goal here. And uh, and so
Speaker 1: if it's if it's extremely difficult and dangers to deal
Speaker 1: with the chimp better to deal with the human right,
Speaker 1: because he's also experimented you can just shoot the chump,
Speaker 1: a male chump. You can then get sperm from the
Speaker 1: corpse and use that viable sperm as in artificial insemination.
Speaker 1: So wait, was he planning on telling the human woman
Speaker 1: what he was going to be putting insider? That's that's
Speaker 1: where this gets really ethically shady, is that he apparently figured,
Speaker 1: all right, the best way to do this is to
Speaker 1: also not have the local woman because that's the other thing.
Speaker 1: That's where you get into into a lot of the
Speaker 1: racist imperial attitudes toward towards local africans. Um. He begins
Speaker 1: to think, well, the best way to do this is
Speaker 1: just to not tell her what you've done, because that's
Speaker 1: going to just endanger the whole process even more. And
Speaker 1: this is where we come to knakry okay, because this
Speaker 1: is where he tries to set this up. He had
Speaker 1: on the way to Guienna in November of nine, he
Speaker 1: started talking to a feller, to a traveler, a doctor Dupey,
Speaker 1: who was head of the Colonial Health Service UH in
Speaker 1: the area, and he ended up inquiring with this guy
Speaker 1: for permission to inseminate native women with chimpanzee sperm in
Speaker 1: a hospital in the Congo without their knowledge or consent,
Speaker 1: as a means to streamline the process. And apparently permission
Speaker 1: was initially granted. Uh and he and he was all.
Speaker 1: They were going to supply a patient, everything was gonna
Speaker 1: be good to go. But then Sainer has prevailed. They
Speaker 1: changed their mind, and the ivan Offics were apparently just
Speaker 1: really offended by by the whole whole situation, so they
Speaker 1: turned around and went right back. Yeah, they they basically
Speaker 1: the expedition. They ran out of time and funding, they
Speaker 1: had to go back to Russia. He ends up packing
Speaker 1: it all up and heading to Sukum. This is in
Speaker 1: the southern Soviet Republic of Georgia where the Soviet This
Speaker 1: is where the Soviet government established a special primate station,
Speaker 1: mainly because this was a this is a subtropical area
Speaker 1: for the Soviet Union. This was a really warm tropical environment.
Speaker 1: It would be ideal for the jase. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: they still had to acclimatize the any chimps and more
Speaker 1: rang of thanks that they brought there. Because it's it's
Speaker 1: actually kind of uh, kind of chilly, kind of northern
Speaker 1: for tropicalture. But but they ended up setting this this
Speaker 1: place up and Sucum becomes in a very important research
Speaker 1: facility in the decades ahead. It plays into the Russian
Speaker 1: space program, various other scientific endeavors. It actually ends up
Speaker 1: enduring all the way up to the early nineties when
Speaker 1: it ends up being destroyed during severe fighting between the
Speaker 1: Georgian and uh Pakizan param paramilitary groups. But this actually,
Speaker 1: like in terms of Ivanov's leg to see, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is really the thing that I guess he could
Speaker 1: have been proud of. So let's okay, let's try to
Speaker 1: um split the hairs here and find the truth out
Speaker 1: on this part. So what I read in an article
Speaker 1: from New Scientists was that uh supermb sorry not Sucum,
Speaker 1: ivan Off brought twenty chimps with him from Africa to
Speaker 1: this nursery, but only four made it there. And I
Speaker 1: think there's some discrepancy there, right. The count I was
Speaker 1: looking at, I think was a little less than that,
Speaker 1: more in the lines of like ten different chimps and
Speaker 1: then some died on the way. So I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe you split the difference, but He's still
Speaker 1: made it back with a number of chimps enough to
Speaker 1: establish this place and ultimately ends up with only one,
Speaker 1: an orangutan that was named Tarzan. Correct. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: is worth stressing to. This comes from the uh the
Speaker 1: Russian Primate Center, a survivor paper I mentioned earlier. There,
Speaker 1: they were really um. They really stressed the fact that
Speaker 1: ivan Off help set this place up, but he was
Speaker 1: never like a staff researcher there who only visited the
Speaker 1: place once, so his involvement there was very limited. He's
Speaker 1: not a primate specialist. His his field of studies and
Speaker 1: artificial insemination exactly. Yeah. And and at this point the
Speaker 1: timeline becomes it begins to get really crunched to in
Speaker 1: terms of him still wanting to carry out this, uh,
Speaker 1: this strange, strange and ethically um questionable experiment because he
Speaker 1: still wants to impregnate a human being with with with
Speaker 1: chimpanzee sperm or vice versa. So another like a dubious account.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if this is true or not. That
Speaker 1: I read about this was that the human woman in
Speaker 1: Russia that they convinced to go about doing this, So
Speaker 1: it sounded like she was willing and knew what was
Speaker 1: going on. She went by the code name woman G. Yes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was apparently from from Leningrad. Uh. And she wrote
Speaker 1: a letter saying like he's accept me into this program, which,
Speaker 1: of course right, I mean get given the time in
Speaker 1: the setting, I mean you can you can imagine easily
Speaker 1: imagine an individual that's so hard up they would say, yes,
Speaker 1: take me. I need a place to go, so you
Speaker 1: know I don't. And that's also this is a case
Speaker 1: that is mentioned by Razaniof in his paper Beyond Species.
Speaker 1: So I I I believe it. It It seems like that's
Speaker 1: probably true. Then yeah, and so he he thinks, all right,
Speaker 1: I have a woman lined up. We have Tarzan there. Uh.
Speaker 1: The sperm apparently seemed good. But then June nine, Tarzan
Speaker 1: dies of an unexpected brain hemorrhage and they have to
Speaker 1: order some chimps. But it ends up being summer nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty before they arrive, and in the meantime there's even
Speaker 1: more political uh revolution going on within Russia. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: have an office during this whole point. He's not in
Speaker 1: in Uh, he's not at the Russian Primate Center. He
Speaker 1: is at the Experimental Veterinary Institute uh, engaging in sort
Speaker 1: of his original research, you know, just original artificial insemination
Speaker 1: with a veterinary um target in mind. But he's trying
Speaker 1: to set all this up and there seems to be
Speaker 1: an upheaval there. Um he's attacked by younger researchers, his
Speaker 1: key supporters that the at the scientific Academy, they lose
Speaker 1: their positions, and then to to just top it all off,
Speaker 1: December nineteen thirty, he's arrested by the secret police. And
Speaker 1: it has nothing to do with these these experiments. It
Speaker 1: doesn't it doesn't have anything to do with the hybridization
Speaker 1: of apes and humans. Now he's charged with creating a
Speaker 1: counter revolutionary organization among agricultural specialists. Yeah, and this is
Speaker 1: interesting though, to get into the red Frankenstein think, you
Speaker 1: see varying levels of either the authors not caring about
Speaker 1: the the the details here, ghosting over it, or maybe
Speaker 1: even making it seem as if it was connected. Is
Speaker 1: if as if his superiors were like, this is too much,
Speaker 1: we're shutting you down. Yeah, at least two of the
Speaker 1: accounts I read painted it that way, made it sound
Speaker 1: like it was because of this research. Yeah. Now that
Speaker 1: being said, he was shut down after this. There were
Speaker 1: the individuals who in the Soviet system who found out
Speaker 1: the details about what he wanted to do, because he
Speaker 1: wanted to go back to Africa and do it again
Speaker 1: and attempt it. But they began to say say, well,
Speaker 1: this actually sounds like rather bad pr This could potentially
Speaker 1: screw up our operations in Africa, This could make it
Speaker 1: difficult for other Russian scientists to go to Africa and
Speaker 1: conduct their work. We want no part of it. So anyway,
Speaker 1: he gets arrested, he he's exiled for five years to
Speaker 1: alma Ata, the capital of the Kazak Republic, and uh
Speaker 1: and oh and his one of his main accusers ends
Speaker 1: up succeeding him as head of the laboratory at the
Speaker 1: Veterinary Institute, which apparently was pretty common at the time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the story I read was that when he's in
Speaker 1: Kazakh Stand he ends up with poor health. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's because of like difference in the weather,
Speaker 1: maybe his age at that point in time, but I
Speaker 1: think it said something along the lines of like he
Speaker 1: died on a cold train platform. I mean maybe because
Speaker 1: the account I read here is that he Yea his
Speaker 1: health deteriorated in prison because the conditions there and uh
Speaker 1: he he has he scheduled for release finally, and his release,
Speaker 1: it's worth noting he would not have come back and
Speaker 1: been able to work with chimps and uh and humans.
Speaker 1: He was gonna, if anything, he was going to go
Speaker 1: back into veterinary sciences of some something stick horses. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But then he dies and perhaps it happened on a
Speaker 1: on a train platform, yeah, who knows. Uh. So there's
Speaker 1: some interesting, uh, I guess, like discrepancies of between what
Speaker 1: his actual motivations were for doing this, right. So there's
Speaker 1: the mythical one, which is Stalin saying, let's let's make
Speaker 1: these super ape soldiers so we can use them as
Speaker 1: part of our great revolution. Right. But then that doesn't
Speaker 1: really seem to be true. In fact, from what I saw,
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like Stalin had any direct involvement with
Speaker 1: this whatsoever. Yeah, I mean, Stalin had plenty to So
Speaker 1: then there's the argument which is that Ivanoff's motivation was
Speaker 1: to prove that man evolved from apes so that he
Speaker 1: could prove that Darwin was right and that religion was wrong.
Speaker 1: And this is the Bolshevik rhetoric version, right, and based
Speaker 1: on what I've read, it sounds it sounds as if
Speaker 1: that played into his attempts to gain funding for the program,
Speaker 1: But it doesn't seem as if that actually played into
Speaker 1: his motivations. It didn't show upin his diary entries, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And another one that I read, UH, and this ties
Speaker 1: back into another controversial Russian scientists named Serge Voronoff, was
Speaker 1: that the aging Bolshevik leaders wanted him to discover ways
Speaker 1: UH to basically breed glands that they could use for rejuvenation.
Speaker 1: So while he's doing the research in France, he gets
Speaker 1: together with Serge Voronoff, who's known for grafting slices of
Speaker 1: ape tests into rich old men so they can regain
Speaker 1: their quote vigor Uh, and together the two of them
Speaker 1: purportedly transplanted a woman's ovary into a chimpanzee and then
Speaker 1: inseminated her with human sperm. But you know, again the
Speaker 1: myth fact and fiction not so sure about all this stuff.
Speaker 1: Other than Voronoff's reputation, My understanding of this particular incident
Speaker 1: is that it is more or less a construction of
Speaker 1: a of a particular Russian sci fi writer who in
Speaker 1: the early nineties was one of the individuals, one of
Speaker 1: the primary individuals to unearth some of these documents against
Speaker 1: doing stuff with them, and it Uh. The criticism that
Speaker 1: is lodged in that that Russian Primate Center Survivor paper
Speaker 1: is that this guy basically, uh, did a little league
Speaker 1: of extraordinary gentlemen be kind of the best of both
Speaker 1: worlds and made a narrative. Yeah, Like they argue that
Speaker 1: there was no connection between these very real um tissue
Speaker 1: grafting experiments, and certainly that is a whole vornof did dudes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a real guy. This was real research, and
Speaker 1: that in that research is in and of itself very interesting.
Speaker 1: But it sounds as if basically the guy said, Hey,
Speaker 1: this character is cool and weird and interesting and kind
Speaker 1: of scary. So is this one. Let's make a meet up.
Speaker 1: They were buddies, So yeah, I would definitely take that
Speaker 1: bit of the story with a grain of salt. And
Speaker 1: then this last one that I read, and this this
Speaker 1: again seems like it fits too conveniently into the rhetoric
Speaker 1: of the political situation in Russia at the time, was
Speaker 1: that the whole idea behind this was to help transform
Speaker 1: society by transforming people using quote positive eugenics, uh, and
Speaker 1: that the idea is they breed in desirable traits, which
Speaker 1: would be the willingness to work and communal living, and
Speaker 1: they would breed out primitive needs such as competition and
Speaker 1: greed and the idea of property ownership. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: given the time frame, I mean, you really can't look
Speaker 1: at this story without the shadow of eugenics falling on
Speaker 1: it very degree. So yeah, I don't think you can
Speaker 1: write eugenics out. But on the other hand, it it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like he seems to have been laser focused
Speaker 1: on on just the idea of breaking that species barrier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think he was just primarily interested in the wonder
Speaker 1: of science and whether or not it could happen. But
Speaker 1: it also is it shows that if you were laser
Speaker 1: focused on something like that, uh, to the point where
Speaker 1: you know your your ethics a road around that focus,
Speaker 1: you can end up in a very scary place. So
Speaker 1: Ivanov isn't the only person to have attempted this. There's
Speaker 1: actually another story, And again there's a lot of this
Speaker 1: hasn't been, as far as I could find, uh, studied
Speaker 1: as much as the ivanof incident, And the fact hasn't
Speaker 1: been separated from the fiction just yet. But there's an
Speaker 1: article from the St. Petersburg Independent in nineteen eighty one
Speaker 1: called the Chinese aim to implant human sperm in Chimps,
Speaker 1: and it claimed by interviewing a guy named Dr. G
Speaker 1: Young Shang that he was experimenting with fertilizing chimpanzees with
Speaker 1: human sperm in the nineteen sixties. So this is well
Speaker 1: after ivan Off. He must have been familiar with that research.
Speaker 1: I would think, oh, I would imagine um. And he
Speaker 1: said that they did actually impregnate a chimp and it
Speaker 1: was pregnant for three months before his experiment was halted.
Speaker 1: But again there's no evidence of any of this. This
Speaker 1: is just this guy's word. And apparently he was a
Speaker 1: surgeon who directed the Sun Giao Tien Hospital in shen Yang,
Speaker 1: and during China's Cultural Revolution in nineteen sixty seven, very
Speaker 1: similar to the ivan Off situation, he was branded a
Speaker 1: counter revolutionary, his lab was smashed up, and that subsequently
Speaker 1: the chimp who was supposedly three months pregnant, died from neglect,
Speaker 1: and the researchers were hounded away from their studies, so
Speaker 1: they were never able to complete these uh. And he says,
Speaker 1: this is where it borders on the sci fi. He says,
Speaker 1: the research if it resumes, so this was in the eighties.
Speaker 1: Clearly it did not resume unless there's a secret history
Speaker 1: here that we're unfamiliar with. UM has the potential to
Speaker 1: develop creatures with a higher animal intelligence who could speak
Speaker 1: and perform simple tasks. So what he was thinking of
Speaker 1: here is that they would be like laborers, that they
Speaker 1: would use him human z s for UM. They would
Speaker 1: breed into them a larger brain and a bigger mouth,
Speaker 1: because chimpanzees have trouble imitating human sounds with their narrow mouths,
Speaker 1: So they would be used for hurting sheep and cows,
Speaker 1: driving carts, and exploring space, the bottom of the sea,
Speaker 1: and minds, so really dangerous stuff that we don't want.
Speaker 1: It's interesting here because he's he's definitely seems to be
Speaker 1: falling on the side of viewing the hybrid offspring as
Speaker 1: a non human or sub human. Yeah, like almost like
Speaker 1: it's a slave race. Yeah, yeah, it's just so still
Speaker 1: letting them explore space, which also thinks a little like
Speaker 1: that that seems like you're maybe giving them a really
Speaker 1: well like cushy job and don't forget about we we
Speaker 1: did send Chimpan's space. So maybe it's just like he's
Speaker 1: looking at like a more accelerated version of yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: more like a yeah an accelerated species, accelerated test subjects
Speaker 1: opposed to anything else. So he he proposed in this
Speaker 1: article that that they would provide solutions as well for
Speaker 1: transplanting animal organs into humans, so they would be better
Speaker 1: than artificial organs, which were kind of the trending at
Speaker 1: the time, and he wanted to set up a factory
Speaker 1: that would provide these eight organs, and even thought that
Speaker 1: they would get to the point for head transplants, which
Speaker 1: you know we're we're talking about right now again in
Speaker 1: but his idea was that you would be able to
Speaker 1: transplant a human brain into a human z these skull
Speaker 1: in case there was some kind of you know, problems,
Speaker 1: so full blown full body transplant ultra humanite. It's getting
Speaker 1: back to that DC Comics character I mentioned at the beginning.
Speaker 1: He wanted to make an ultra humanite, uh, And he
Speaker 1: claimed that there were other researchers at the time at
Speaker 1: the Harbor Medical University in China that we're doing the
Speaker 1: same thing but with dogs. They were trying to see
Speaker 1: if they could transplant I don't think they were putting
Speaker 1: human brains into dogs. They're trying to see if they
Speaker 1: could do head transplant dogs. Yeah, those those, uh, those
Speaker 1: experiments are reasonably well documented. Yeah, also that it's all
Speaker 1: another area of of scientific exploration that gets into the taboo.
Speaker 1: But this seems like another fertile area for an academic
Speaker 1: paper out there if somebody speaks Chinese and could get
Speaker 1: ahold of the documents from this period of time and
Speaker 1: really kind of pars out what the actual facts were.
Speaker 1: But so so, there have been rumors, like if you
Speaker 1: go to the wiki page Wikipedia page for human z,
Speaker 1: there's plenty of rumors about Russia trying to develop human
Speaker 1: zes and China trying to develop human zes. But as
Speaker 1: far as we can find with the research that we've done,
Speaker 1: neither actually did it, although these attempts were purportedly made. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the facts seem to be as follows. It can
Speaker 1: theoretically be done right, but in order to do it,
Speaker 1: you it's you have to have the right conditions. You
Speaker 1: have to have the right medical technology, you have to
Speaker 1: have the right funding, you have to be able to
Speaker 1: do it without objectionable parties disrupting your research. You need
Speaker 1: to be able to convince the politicians involved or the
Speaker 1: public if they're aware of it, that there's reasons for
Speaker 1: it that are beyond the squick factor just breeding two
Speaker 1: species together. Yeah, and I think that's the thing, Like,
Speaker 1: you can make an argument for these various benefits, but
Speaker 1: ultimately crossing the species barrier lands you in a very
Speaker 1: ethically existentially troubling area and it's just a place that
Speaker 1: most people are not willing to go. Occasionally you'll have
Speaker 1: a scientist pop up who has the drive and maybe
Speaker 1: even the resources to get them to a certain point,
Speaker 1: but society as a whole is not going to support
Speaker 1: that that momentum. Yeah, so far. So I would love
Speaker 1: to know actually from you our listeners, if you know
Speaker 1: what your thoughts are on this. So if you opened
Speaker 1: up you know, Facebook or your RSS reader first thing
Speaker 1: in the morning and you see a headline that says
Speaker 1: us to combine human and chimp DNA to make a
Speaker 1: human z Like, let's even leave out the breeding aspect
Speaker 1: of it. What what would your reaction be? You know,
Speaker 1: would you be comfortable with that? What? What purpose would
Speaker 1: it serve? I'm curious or even this and like, imagine
Speaker 1: this scenario, We'll just go ahead and remove the research
Speaker 1: and the the experiment in itself. Imagine that it comes
Speaker 1: out tomorrow. Hey, turns out they actually conducted this experiment.
Speaker 1: We shut the experiment down. It's not taking place anymore.
Speaker 1: But here's the offspring. Here is the humanity. How are
Speaker 1: we so? How do we feel about the humanity? Then?
Speaker 1: Is it? And is it a human? Is it a
Speaker 1: sub human? Is it? Do? Do we give it personhood?
Speaker 1: I feel like we kind of does it have right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: That reminds me of um Oliver, which was the I
Speaker 1: believe that the first, like supposed instance, it was this
Speaker 1: kind of uh ape that had human like features, and
Speaker 1: I think that there was some distinction with its DNA.
Speaker 1: It's DNA was a little weird, but I don't think
Speaker 1: it was actually a human zy But when but when
Speaker 1: it broke it was kind of like a National Enquirer
Speaker 1: tabloid type thing. Yeah, because then for for a moment
Speaker 1: it I think for a lot of readers, then it
Speaker 1: seemed possible because as we discussed, it is possible. This
Speaker 1: is the humanity is not a creature that will or
Speaker 1: could emerge completely from the realm of the fantastic, but
Speaker 1: but a being that can emerge from the scientific realm
Speaker 1: of our of our real world. Yeah, I mean, like
Speaker 1: of the DNA between humans and chimpanzees are the same,
Speaker 1: not much of a leap. Although I wonder if a
Speaker 1: human z would be fertile, because then that would be
Speaker 1: the real definition of of if it's a species or not. Well,
Speaker 1: that's why you need the factory, right exactly. You got
Speaker 1: to crank them out, all right. Well, there you have it, UM.
Speaker 1: We will make sure that the landing page for this
Speaker 1: episode includes links out to some of the key resources
Speaker 1: that we've discussed here. Again if you want to, if
Speaker 1: you want to explore the topics further, those are great
Speaker 1: resources to check out. UM. In the meantime, head on
Speaker 1: over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com just
Speaker 1: in general for all the podcast episodes, the videos, the
Speaker 1: blog posts, list galley SLINKs out to social media accounts,
Speaker 1: you name it, and if you want to let us
Speaker 1: know about how you feel about human z s and
Speaker 1: the possibilities of them. You are being used for artificial
Speaker 1: organs or some kind of labor use or or whatever,
Speaker 1: even just the invention of a human Ze. Let us
Speaker 1: know on social media Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, and we're on
Speaker 1: periscope noon on Friday's Eastern Standard time. Or you can
Speaker 1: always write us directly at below the Mind at how
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