Pompeii is one of the most important sites for archaeologists and historians to research the Roman empire and its culture.
Pompeii was a medium-sized town, with around 11,000 inhabitants. However, it is characterized by its multicultural demographics, thriving community and sophisticated infrastructure. The nearby port of Pozzuoli enabled the development of a strong economy, particularly centered around trade.
Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii seen from above. Photo by ElfQrin CC BY-SA 4.0
The economic stability and the presence of merchants from all parts of the empire ensured for a strong presence of sex trade. Sex historians have thoroughly researched the walls of estates that served as brothels such as inns, taverns and lunch counters.
What also plays a major role in their research is the graffiti that sometimes graphically listed details connected to sex-work, therefore serving as one of the most important historical sources.
Roman painting from Pompeii, early 1st century AD, most likely depicting Cleopatra VII, wearing her royal diadem, consuming poison in an act of suicide, while Caesarion, also wearing a royal diadem, stands behind her.
The pictures on the walls usually present fair skinned women with intricate hairstyles, accompanied by tanned and athletic men. There are three potential reasons for these images.
They could have served as a visual cue for stronger arousal. It could also be that the scenes were a pictorial menu of different services one could get in a brothel. Lastly, they might have been guides for inexperienced customers who would frequent the premises.
Pompeii and Herculaneum, as well as other cities affected by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The black shading represents the general distribution of ash, pumice and cinders. Photo by MapMaster CC BY-SA 3.0
Much of the graffiti found on the walls is very graphic. It details specific employees and their skills, sexual advice, and prices for specific acts one could seek out.
Studies of this graffiti have revealed that the sex workers had names of exclusively Greek origin. Their names were sometimes descriptive and told the story about either physical characteristics or the function of a sex-worker. The names of male sex workers are also featured.
Purpose-built brothels featured cubicles with a permanent foundation for the bed, as in this example from the Lupanar at Pompeii.
As freeborn women were not allowed to have sex outside of marriage, it is almost certain that their only customers were men. The practice of homosexual intercourse was indeed nothing strange for the ancient Rome.
The only rule was that the citizens who were higher up in rank could not take on a submissive role during intercourse. In general, the sex trade was not frowned upon and it was central in maintaining the institution of marriage. It was believed that the wife’s role was solely to provide a male heir.
Roman fresco with banquet scene (detail) from the Casa dei Casti Amanti (IX 12, 6-8) in Pompeii.
Seeking pleasures from a wife was thought to be immodest and not respectful to the woman. Therefore, the husbands would fulfill their fantasies in one of the many brothels around. Sex work was not illegal, but adultery was, so it was a normal practice to pay in exchange for physical love.
However, sex-workers had it far from easy. They worked in stone cells, usually without any windows and with a curtain instead of a door.
Fresco of couple in bed.
Most sex workers were slaves, so they did not have any choice but to obey their masters. The attitude towards slaves in ancient Italy was not favorable — it ranged between indifference at best to open violence.
They were cut off from the rest of the world and usually moved only around the estate they worked in. They were usually under the control of procurers who owned the rights to them and their bodies, and who may have provided only the most basic necessities for their slaves.
At bigger towns and cities there were some women that worked the streets on their own. The percentage of solo prostitutes is rather small, and it consisted either of freed slaves or very poor freeborn women.
The largest percentage of humans believe they are their human body form. Many humans believe that once the human body form stops being animated (dies) you no longer exist.
What animates the human body form? What stops animating the human body form? What started animating the human body form and where did it come from. Where does it go when it stops animating the human body form? What is it?
It is not an it and it is not a what. It is a “who”. It is identity that is conscious (self aware) and is the “only thing that exists”.
Words humans have created to apply to the only thing that exists include: energy, consciousness, space, outer space, inner space, the universe, the multiverse, God, creator, the unified field, the singularity, mind and I prefer to use the word Source.
Remove the picture of creation and all that remains is the only thing that exists. What remains to “see”. An eternal sea of blackness. Space!
That blackness humans call space is the eternal conscious mind of God Source. So, do you believe you cannot see God Source? Close your human eyes and look at the blackness you see. That is God Source. It is your conscious mind, the only mind that exists.
You do not have to search for God Source. You simply need to remember the truth of God Source.
Realize that all of manifest creation, all expressions of energy, absolutely everything is created from, by and within the blackness you see when you close your eyes.
That is who creates the human body form and who animates the human body form. That is your true identity, the blackness of Source mind you see when you close your human body eyes.
Now imagine yourself sitting within the blackness you call space. Remove all images of manifest creation and simply look at and feel the blackness you are held within.
That is your true identity. Look! No beginning and no ending. Eternal!
Now feel! Feel the blackness of your mind. What does it feel like? Does it feel like stillness? Listen! What does it sound like? Does it sound like quite?
There is no animation, no movement, no sound. Simply the still quietness of mind.
Pay attention to yourself as you look at and feel your mind. Are you thinking? How are you thinking? What are your thoughts?
The “you” that is thinking is the blackness of your mind. What, you think your human brain is thinking? It is not!
Physics discovered centuries ago, with the discovery of the atom, that matter, which includes your human body, is 99.9999% empty space. Imagine that! Can you even begin to imagine that?
Your human body is a thought form, or an electrical digital signal, that creates a picture. A picture cannot do anything. It cannot think and it cannot move. A picture is not solid. It is an electrical stream of energy.
For a moment, think about the pictures you see on your TV. How do those pictures get on your TV? Where do they come from and how do they get into your TV?
They are electrical signals broadcast through space that you call air. Look at the air around you. Do you see the pictures that end up in your TV in the air? No, you do not because they are not pictures. They are electrical streams of energy encrypted with “thoughts”.
That is what manifest creation is, electrically charged thoughts. Your mind, space, is filled with your thoughts.
You are an expression of the only thing that exists, the only creator that exists, the eternal conscious mind of God Source.
You can choose to deny, ignore or search for your mind but as you can see, your mind is formless. So, you cannot find your mind by looking for a form. You cannot remember your mind, yourself, until you realize the truth.
You are not your human body form. You are eternal mind. Your human body form is simply a temporary thought form you have put part of your energy of mind into to turn on the thought. When you remove your energy from the thought of the human body form it stops being animated because it is energy of mind animating it.
Your manifest reality, your “picture” of creation is a digital stream of your thoughts. You are the only one creating and experiencing it.
How are you doing that? How are you experiencing the picture of your reality field that you currently believe is solid?
Look at the blackness of your mind again. Do you see anything in that blackness that would allow you to experience a reality field composed of your thoughts? You do not! You only see blackness.
You cannot see that your mind is filled with your thoughts. You cannot see your thoughts as a form. You can only think and create thoughts. What must you do to be able to see and experience your thoughts? You must create a thought that will operate to turn your thoughts into a reality and then you must put part of yourself into the thought to turn the thought on. What do you create?
You create cells!
You create a thought that humans call a cell and you code the cell with your desired operation instructions. When you put part of yourself into the cell you turn it on.
The operation instructions you created for the cell, just via thinking, turn on when you put part of yourself into the cell.
The cell begins to replicate and divide, creating copies of the cell. The instructions in the first cell, the “code”, determines how many cells are created and how the replicated cells function. This is determined by the code in the very first cell which determines what codes will be turned on or off as cells are copied.
This creates what humans call “organs”. Remember, you have created a thought and put part of yourself into the thought to turn it on. As cells are copied and created, you can put more of yourself into the cells.
The purpose of all cells you create is to generate sparks which create an electrical stream of electrically charged energy. Humans call this electrical stream of energy the neurological system.
Now you have created something to allow you to experience your thoughts. You create an uncountable number of cells, all with a unique code, that allows you to experience all probabilities of your thoughts “at the same time”.
Now think! Close your human eyes and look at the blackness of your mind.
Who creates your human body form? Who animates your human body form? Who stops animating your human body form. Where does who come from and where does who go!
The Facts:Dr. Ardy Sixkiller Clarke, a Professor Emeritus at Montana State University who is Cherokee/Choctaw has been researching the Star People, and collecting encounters between them and Native Indians for many years. This article shares one of many.
Reflect On:Are we alone? If not, what are the implications when the public becomes fully aware of this? How will it change the way we look at reality? Science? Technology? History?
Belief in subterranean worlds has been handed down as myths or legends among generations of people from all over the world. For example, Socrates spoke of huge hollows within the Earth that were inhabited and vast caverns where rivers flowed. The Cherokee Indians tell that when they first came to the southeastern United States, they found many well-tended gardens but not the people who cared for them. Eventually, they discovered a group of people who lived underground and came out only at night to tend the gardens. They harvested the food and took it underground to their cities.These people were small, had blue skin and large black eyes. The sun rays were too harsh for them so they built their cities underground and only came out at night using the light of the moon. The Cherokee called them the “Moon People.”
The quote above comes from Dr. Ardy Sixkiller Clarke, a Professor Emeritus at Montana State University who is Cherokee/Choctaw and has been researching the Star People for many years, collecting encounters between them and Native Indians. I recently published two articles detailing indigenous stories of encounters with the “Star People.” One was regarding an indigenous elder who shared a story about the “Star People” that crashed on his reservation, which you can read here. The second article, published a few days ago, was about an elder who showed Dr. Clarke a petrified alien heart, which he claimed belonged to the Star People, and you can read that here.
These people were also mentioned in a 1797 book by Benjamin Smith Barton, who explains that they are called “moon-eyed” because they saw poorly during the day. Later variants add additional details, claiming the people had white skin and that they created the area’s pre-Columbian ruins. Barton cited his source as a conversation with Colonel Leonard Marbury.
In her book, Clarke recounts a story told to her by an 84 year-old elder, who she called “Uncle Beau.” According to him, “The old ones tell stories about people from the stars who lived underground near Tanana. There are many stories the old ones told about the Star People who live among them and went underground near Tanana. The Inupiat believe they came to Earth on a spaceship.”
Clarke then asked him if he’d ever seen a spaceship, to which he replied:
Plenty of times. I was born here in Athabaskan territory. I was here before Alaska became a state and my people lived here for thousands of years before any white man ever came here. There were spacecrafts visiting Alaska when it was called Alaxsxaq, and they will be visiting long after there is no more Alaska. I think they have always been here, just as the old ones said. The government knows about it, but there is little they can do. They were here long before there was a government. I think at this point, the military just tries to contain them and keep it quiet. They don’t want us to know about it.
There is also a military base near where Beau lives, and when Clarke asked if he had ever talked with anyone at the base about UFOs, he responded:
One of my niece’s boys used to work at the base about 10 years ago. They employed about one hundred civilians at the base. He said that one morning he went to work and the base was closed. They told the workers to go home. When he reported for work the following day, one of his friends who was stationed there told him that a UFO had landed the previous night. He said there was a place up there where the UFOs go underground. He said (his nephew) it was guarded night and day. No one was allowed near the site, but he said his friend who has a high security clearance told him about it.
He went on to explain how he thinks it’s a place where “the aliens and the military collaborate and where the aliens can go underground freely without us regular people seeing them. I don’t know what they are doing together, but I think that is how they use the place. My nephew’s friend said the aliens look like us. So maybe they are the ancestors.”
Now, having been working in this field for a long time, I’ve come across some very interesting connections. Tanana, Alaska, is right next to mount Hayes, Alaska. For those of you who don’t know, the US Government in conjunction with the CIA and Stanford Research Institute initiated a program called STARGATE, and one of its functions was to study remote viewing, which is the ability to perceive and describe a distant location regardless of distance.It’s an ability that allows the ‘viewer’ to be able to describe a remote geographical location up to several hundred thousand kilometres away (even more) from their physical location — a location that they have never been to.
Long story short, it was extremely successful, reputable, and accurate for intelligence collection. After its declassification in 1995, or at least partial declassification, the Department of Defense and those involved revealed an exceptionally high success rate.
To summarize, over the years, the back-and-forth criticism of protocols, refinement of methods, and successful replication of this type of remote viewing in independent laboratories has yielded considerable scientific evidence for the reality of the [remote viewing] phenomenon. Adding to the strength of these results was the discovery that a growing number of individuals could be found to demonstrate high-quality remote viewing, often to their own surprise… The development of this capability at SRI has evolved to the point where visiting CIA personnel with no previous exposure to such concepts have performed well under controlled laboratory conditions.” (source)
Multiple remote viewers from that program, after it was declassified, all of a sudden started talking a lot about extraterrestrial phenomena. One of the things discussed was the locations of multiple ET bases here on Earth. One of the program’s top viewers had successfully remote viewed 4 extraterrestrial ‘bases’ stationed on Earth. One was located underneath Mount Ziel, another was under Mount Perdido in Spain, another was under Mount Inyangani in Zimbabwe, and another was underneath Mount Hayes, Alaska. You can read more about that specific story here.
Lyn Buchanan, one of the STARGATE army remote viewers, claims that he was tasked to find out information on extraterrestrial groups that were/are visiting the planet. He also mentions these bases. You can read more about that here. (You can read more about that here: source)
These names are ever present within the CIA’s electronic reading room, so you can look them up and verify their credibility. After the declassification of the program, most of the people involved within the program also became publicly known.
So, what’s the point? Mount Hayes is right next to Tanana, Alaska, where Elder speaks of (as mentioned earlier in this article). And with regards to his nephew, there are multiple military bases within the vicinity such as Eielson Air Force Base.
It’s interesting that I read this story shared by Dr. Clarke and then come across this connection with the remote viewing program.
Joe and I recently sat down and went a lot deeper into underground civilizations and how it relates to the extraterrestrial phenomenon. Below is a clip from our hour-long discussion on the topic on The Collective Evolution Show. Check out the clip below, and if you want to watch the entire broadcast you can sign up for CETV.
Another interesting story as told by Dr. Clarke comes from Mary Winston. At age 87, she was regarded as one of the only traditional artists still living. There are so many stories from indigenous elders about the Star People, it’s truly amazing and overwhelming.
According to Winston:
We have a story that our ancestors were brought to this land in great metal flying machines by the Star People. The ancestors lived on a cold planet, much like the arctic region. So they brought us here to colonize this planet. At that time ice covered the Earth. It was not like the Earth of today. We knew of the Star People from our grandparents. The stories were passed down for thousands of years. We were brought here by the Star People who live at the top of our world. They live under the North Pole. That is the top of the world. My grandfather talked with them when he was alive. He said they looked like us but that they had bigger eyes because on the home planet everyone lived underground. He said when we were first brought here we had big eyes too, but the sun and snow made our eyes small slits.
Clarke goes on to cite several other very interesting interviews with indigenous elders about living underground on our planet.
“My people tell of Star People who came to us many generations ago. The Star people brought spiritual teachings and stories and maps of the cosmos and they offered these freely. They were kind, loving and set a great example. When they left us, my people say there was a loneliness like no other.” (source) – Richard Wagamese, One of Canada’s foremost authors and storytellers from the Wabaseemoong First Nation in Northwestern Ontario.
The Takeaway
Several ancient texts from various cultures mention beings from ‘another world’ that exist within our own. One such world, referenced in Tibetan Buddhist and Hindu traditions, is Shambhala, which is described as a hidden kingdom within our own planet, a place we do not understand and is difficult to find. We’ve never really been down there ourselves, at least as far as we know.
It’s interesting to imagine what the Earth looks like at its core. Even though instruments can be used to determine the make up of it, to see it in its entirety would be fascinating.
Perhaps we should not be so quick to dismiss these stories
Increasingly, it looks like the political fight isn’t between Republicans and Democrats, but rather the American people against the Deep State. More and more often we are seeing bureaucrats, lobbyists, and elected officials of both parties circle the wagons so to say in an effort to prevent any true reforms of our government.
While we the American people may believe the government isn’t working, for an elite group embedded throughout our government and media, the government is working quite well — for them!
So, how did this come to be in a nation that’s founding document begins with “We the People”? For a take on the development of the Deep State and what it represents, we turn to Joost Meerloo in his seminal book The Rape of the Mind.
Presciently, in his discussion of the Deep State or the “administrative machine” published in 1956, Meerloo states,
“The burning psychological question is whether man will eventually master his institutions so that these will serve him and not rule him.”
Here’s how he describes the rise of the Deep State:
“… The development of a kind of bureaucratic absolutism is not limited, however, to totalitarian countries. A mild form of professional absolutism is evident in every country in the mediating class of civil servants who bridge the gap between man and his rulers. Such a bureaucracy may be used to help or to harm the citizens it should serve.
It is important to realize that a peculiar, silent form of battle goes on in all of the countries of the world — under every form of government — a battle between the common man and the government apparatus he himself has created. In many places we can see that this governing tool, which was originally meant to serve and assist man, has gradually obtained more power than it was intended to have.
… Governmental techniques are no different from any other psychological strategy; the deadening hold of regimentation can take mental possession of those dedicated to it, if they are not alert. And this is the intrinsic danger of the various agencies that mediate between the common man and his government. It is a tragic aspect of life that man has to place another fallible man between himself and the attainment of his highest ideals.”
But you might say that only seems to describe the expansion of “red tape” that entrepreneurs and individuals complain about, not a group of individuals who seem united to keep government operating as it is currently, and under their control. Isn’t there a difference between red-tape bureaucracy and the Deep State that we’re seeing today? Arguably, yes. But it is the regimentation and red tape that seems to foster the environment in which the Deep State comes into being and then thrives.
Meerloo expands on that point in detail:
“Which human failings will manifest themselves most readily in the administrative machine? Lust for power, automatism, and mental rigidity — all these breed suspicion and intrigue. Being a high civil servant subjects man to a dangerous temptation, simply because he is a part of the ruling apparatus. He finds himself caught in the strategy complex. The magic of becoming an executive and a strategist provokes long-repressed feelings of omnipotence. A strategist feels like a chess player. He wants to manipulate the world by remote control. Now he can keep others waiting, as he was forced to wait himself in his salad days, and thus he can feel himself superior. He can entrench himself behind his official regulations and responsibilities.
At the same time he must continually convince others of his indispensability because he is loath to vacate his seat. As a defense against his relative unimportance, he has to expand his staff, increasing his bureaucratic apparatus. In order to become a V.I.P. one needs a big office. Each new staff member requests new secretaries and new typewriters. Everything begins to get out of hand, but everything must be controlled; new and better files must be installed, new conferences called, and committees set up. The staff-interaction committee talks for days on end. New supervisors are created to supervise the old supervisors and to keep the whole group in a state of infantile servility. And what was formerly done by one man is now done by an entire staff…”
Now we see how the Deep State became so deeply entrenched in our government and why its members will fight against any threat to it. The members of the Deep State are fighting for not only their jobs and their power, but their very sense of being. What meaning do they have in life if they were shown that they are in fact dispensable, that they can be replaced or their positions or departments can be eliminated? In the end, their egos depend upon the maintenance and growth of personal power and prestige.
Understanding that the fight is not just about power and money, but self-identity and ego, goes a long way to seeing how ugly the battle between the American people and the Deep State over the government will become — and how the battle has actually been raging for years.
“Compulsive order, red tape, and regulation become more important than freedom and justice, and in the meantime suspicion between management, employees, and subjects increases.
Written and printed documents and reports have become dangerous objects in the world. After a conversation, even when there are harsh words, inanities are soon forgotten. But on paper these words are perpetuated and can become part of a system of growing suspicion.”
That sounds quite a bit like some of the latest intrigues in D.C., does it not? And how about this insight about the politicians who perpetuate and strengthen the Deep State, rather than dismantle it?
“Sooner or later nearly all politicians become infected with the bug. Under the burden of their responsibilities, they give in to the desire to play the game of diplomacy. They start to compromise in their thinking, to bend backwards and to be circumspect, lest their remarks be criticized by the higher echelons. Or they fall back into infantile feelings of magic omnipotence. They want to have their fingers in every pie — to the left and to the right.
All these are dangerous mental streaks of every human being which can develop more easily in politicians and administrators because of the growing impact of modern governmental techniques and their threat to free expression. When a man gets entangled in strategical and political talk, something changes in his attitude. He is no longer straightforward; he doesn’t express and communicate what he thinks, but he worries about what others are thinking about him behind their facades. He becomes too prudent and starts to build all kinds of mental defenses and justifications around himself. In short, he learns to assume the strategic attitude. Forget spontaneity, deny enthusiasm; don’t demand inner honesty of yourself or others, never reveal yourself, never expose yourself, play the strategist. Be careful and use more buts and howevers. Never commit yourself.”
We, the American people, have quite a task ahead of us if we are to wrest control of our government from the Deep State. Over many decades, it has put in place compulsive orders, red tape, and regulations while growing layer upon layer to enforce what it creates. All the while, its roots drive deeper and deeper into our government. Even the politicians who we send to D.C. to represent us are ensnared in the game. They begin to play by the rules set forth by the Deep State; indeed, our elected officials even become dependent upon the Deep State.
And so it is that we face an interlocking defense apparatus that is employed full time by us, using its time to further entrench itself. Further, the politicians who promised to take on the Deep State on behalf of their constituents, though not in so many words, have actually joined forces with those who they were supposed to uproot.
Without a doubt, the Deep State must be confronted and defeated for the health of our nation. But how?
On Aug. 30, 1954, Bernice E. Eddy, a veteran scientist at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., was checking a batch of a new polio vaccine for safety.
Created by Jonas Salk, the vaccine was hailed as the miracle drug that would conquer the dreaded illness that killed and paralyzed children. Eddy’s job was to examine samples submitted by the companies planning to make it.
As she checked a sample from Cutter Laboratories in Berkeley, Calif., she noticed that the vaccine designed to protect against the disease had instead given polio to a test monkey. Rather than containing killed virus to create immunity, the sample from Cutter contained live, infectious virus.
Something was wrong. “There’s going to be a disaster,” she told a friend.
As scientists and politicians desperately search for medicines to slow the deadly coronavirus, and as President Trump touts a malaria drug as a remedy, a look back to the 1955 polio vaccine tragedy shows how hazardous such a search can be, especially under intense public pressure.
Despite Eddy’s warnings, an estimated 120,000 children that year were injected with the Cutter vaccine, according to Paul A. Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
It was “one of the worst biological disasters in American history: a man-made polio epidemic,” Offit wrote.
In those days, polio, or infantile paralysis, was a terror.
“A national poll … found that polio was second only to the atomic bomb as the thing that Americans feared most,” Offit wrote.
Placed in an iron lung, 2-month-old Martha Ann Murray is watched by nurse Martha Sumner at St. Mary’s Hospital in Tucson in 1952.
“People weren’t sure how you got it,” he said in an interview last week. “Therefore, they were scared of everything. They didn’t want to buy a piece of fruit at the grocery store. It’s the same now. … Everybody’s walking around with gloves on, with masks on, scared to shake anybody’s hand.”
“I remember my mother … wouldn’t let us go to a public swimming pool,” said Offit, 69. We “all had to go into one of those little plastic pools in the back so that we wouldn’t be in a public place.”
The worst polio outbreak in U.S. history struck in 1952, the year after Offit was born. It infected 57,000 people, paralyzed 21,000 and killed 3,145. The next year there were 35,000 infections, and 38,000 the year after that.
Many survivors had to wear painful metal braces on their paralyzed legs or had to be placed in so-called iron lungs, which helped them breathe. There was no vaccine and few treatments. (One bogus approach was to spray acid into the noses of children to block the virus. All it did was ruin the sense of smell.)
Often polio victims were children, but the most famous affected American was President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who got polio and was paralyzed from the waist down in 1921 when he was 39.
In 1951, Jonas Salk of the University of Pittsburgh’s medical school received a grant from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis to find a vaccine. During intense months of research, he took live polio virus and killed it with formaldehyde until it was not infectious but still provided virus-fighting antibodies.
When tests showed that the vaccine was safe, Salk told his wife, “I’ve got it,” Offit wrote.
Word of his success soon leaked out. Public pressure grew for the vaccine and for a large-scale trial.
In 1953, Salk tested it on himself, his wife and three children.
On April 26, 1954, Randy Kerr, a 6-year-old second-grader from Falls Church, Va., stood in the cafeteria of the Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean and became the first to be vaccinated in a massive field study.
Salk’s vaccine was given to 420,000 children. A placebo was given to 200,000. And 1.2 million were given nothing.
The study found that children who did not get the vaccine were three times more likely to be paralyzed with polio than those who received the vaccine.
A year later, on April 12, 1955, when officials announced the results at a news conference at the University of Michigan, there was jubilation. Reporters hollered: “It works! It works!” Offit wrote.
The news made front-page headlines across the country. “People wept,” Offit said. “There were parades in Jonas Salk’s honor. … That’s what contributed to the tragedy of Cutter more than anything else … the irony.”
Jonas E. Salk in his laboratory in 1954 as assistant Ethel J. Bailey works on a step in the polio vaccine’s production. (AP)
That same day, licenses were hurriedly granted to several drug companies, including Cutter Laboratories, to make the vaccine.
But the officials granting the licenses were never told of Eddy’s findings, Offit wrote.
The year before, Eddy’s scrutiny of the Cutter vaccine had continued through the summer and fall.
It must have been a difficult time. She was 52. Her husband, Jerald Guy Wooley, 64, a fellow National Institutes of Health scientist, had died suddenly the previous April, leaving her with three daughters, two of them still at home in Bethesda, according to his obituary. Her mother moved in to help out.
Eddy was born in 1903 in Glen Dale, W.Va., a small town on the Ohio River, south of Wheeling, according to a 1985 biographical sketch by Elizabeth Moot O’Hern. Her father was a doctor.
She had started at NIH in 1937, had headed testing of vaccines for influenza, and in 1954 was asked to help test the Salk polio vaccine. The pressure was intense. “For weeks she and her staff worked around-the-clock, seven days a week,” O’Hern wrote.
“This was a product that had never been made before, and they were going to use it right away,” Eddy had said.
She began testing Cutter’s samples in August 1954 and continued through November, according to a later report in the Congressional Record. She found that three of the six samples paralyzed test monkeys.
“What do you think is wrong with these monkeys?” she asked a colleague, Offit recounted.
“They were given polio,” the colleague replied.
“No,” Eddy said. “They were given the … vaccine.”
Eddy’s discovery suggested that Cutter’s manufacturing process was flawed. Its vaccine should have contained only killed virus.
She reported her findings to William Workman, head of the NIH Laboratory of Biologics Control.
But amid the scientific and bureaucratic chaos, Workman never told the licensing committee, Offit wrote.
Starting on the evening of April 12, 1955, batches of the Salk vaccine made by five drug firms were shipped out in boxes marked “POLIO VACCINE: RUSH.”
About 165,000 doses of Cutter’s went out.
Within weeks, reports of mysterious polio infections started coming in.
On April 27, 7-year-old Susan Pierce, of Pocatello, Idaho, died of polio days after getting the Cutter vaccine. She had been placed in an iron lung just before she died. Her brother Kenneth had been vaccinated at the same time, but he was okay.
Other cases followed.
Alton Ochsner, a professor of surgery at Tulane Medical School and founder of the Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans, gave the vaccine to his grandson Eugene Davis, Offit wrote. The child died May 4.
Not only did some people injected with the tainted vaccine get sick, but some who got the vaccine went on to infect family members and neighbors.
On June 5, 1955, 33-year-old Annabelle Nelson of Montpelier, Idaho, died of polio after her two children had been given the vaccine in April, according to news reports at the time.
The government ordered the Cutter vaccine withdrawn on April 27. But damage had been done.
“By April 30, within forty-eight hours of the recall,” Offit wrote. “Cutter’s vaccine had paralyzed or killed twenty-five children: fourteen in California, seven in Idaho, two in Washington, one in Illinois, and one in Colorado.”
On May 6, all polio vaccinations were postponed. They were resumed on May 15 after the government had rechecked the vaccines for safety. But people were still frightened.
Offit recalled his mother asking their doctor: “What’s the story? Should we be getting this vaccine or not?”
Eventually, he was vaccinated when he was about 6 years old.
Years later, in a suit brought against Cutter, the firm was found not negligent in making its vaccine because it had done its best making a new drug that was complicated to produce.
But it was found financially liable for the calamity it had caused during that spring of 1955.
The jury foreman said: “Cutter Laboratories [brought] to market a … vaccine which when given to plaintiffs caused them to come down with polio.”
9,000-Year-Old Stonehenge-Like Structure Found Under Lake Michigan
Archaeologists found something much more fascinating than they got credit for when searching under the waters of Lake Michigan for shipwrecks: they uncovered a rock with a prehistoric carving of a mastodon, as well as a collection of stones arranged in a Stonehenge-like manner.
Gazing into the water
In modern archaeology, the use of remote sensing techniques is common: scientists regularly survey lakes and soil for hidden objects.
Archaeologists uncovered sunken boats and cars and even a Civil War-era pier at a depth of around 40 feet into Lake Michigan’s Grand Traverse Bay, using sonar techniques to search for shipwrecks, but among all these, they found this prehistoric surprise, which a trained eye can guess by looking at the sonar scans photos in this article.
“When you see it in the water, you’re tempted to say this is absolutely real,” said Mark Holley, a professor of underwater archaeology at Northwestern Michigan University College who made the discovery, during a news conference with photos of the boulder on display in 2007. “But that’s what we need the experts to come in and verify.
Professor Mark Holley hopes that a computer model of the carving in the mastodon rock will help petroglyph experts
The boulder with the markings is 3.5 to 4 feet high and about 5 feet long. Photos show a surface with numerous fissures.
Some may be natural while others appear of human origin, but those forming what could be the petroglyph stood out, Holley said.
Viewed together, they suggest the outlines of a mastodon-like back, hump, head, trunk, tusk, triangular-shaped ear and parts of legs, he said.
“We couldn’t believe what we were looking at,” said Greg MacMaster, president of the underwater preserve council.
Specialists shown pictures of the boulder holding the mastodon markings have asked for more evidence before confirming the markings are an ancient petroglyph, said Holley.
“They want to actually see it,” he said. Unfortunately, he added, “Experts in petroglyphs generally don’t dive, so we’re running into a little bit of a stumbling block there.”
If found to be true, the wannabe petroglyph could be as much as 10,000 years old – coincident with the post-Ice Age presence of both humans and mastodons in the upper midwest.
The stones of discovered underwater structure are organised circle and believe to be at least 10,000 years old.
The formation, if authenticated, wouldn’t be completely out of place. Stone circles and other petroglyph sites are located in the area.
The discovery was made back a few years ago, and surprisingly enough the find hasn’t been popularized at all, with little to no information available online, but I’ll be sure to update this post as soon as I can get ahold of more info.
