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