--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Earth moves in an extra-terrestrial way;USA
Byline: From Charles Bremner in New York
05/19/92
THE TIMES OF LONDON

When it comes to studying space, American universities have notched
up a fine record, but eyebrows are being raised over the latest
enthusiasm of a handful of academics: the abduction of earthlings
by extra-terrestrial aliens.
At issue is the question whether a Harvard psychiatrist and
professors from Philadelphia and the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology have taken leave of their ivory towers in giving
credence to the belief, shared by thousands of Americans, that
flying saucers have visited their suburbs and beamed them on board,
often for some intergalactic hanky-panky.
John Mack, of Harvard Medical School, David Jacobs, a historian
from Temple University, and David Pritchard, a physicist at MIT,
are the most prominent among a group which thinks there must be
more than fantasy behind the extraordinarily similar accounts of
alien kidnapping given by citizens from all backgrounds, races and
professions. The most celebrated report came from Michael Shea, a
government lawyer in Washington. According to reputable surveys,
about one in every 50 Americans thinks they have received the
attentions of visiting aliens.
By curious coincidence, the aliens are usually described as
diminutive, big-headed, dish-eyed, smooth-skinned creatures who
arrive in beams of intense light. But going beyond this stereotype,
the accounts usually feature some form of physical examination in a
cosmic operating theatre. This often involves sexual manipulation,
with women saying they had been impregnated and men saying their
semen had been extracted.
Dr Mack, who featured last weekend in fictional form in a CBS
television drama, is organising an abduction conference in
Massachusetts next month. Mr Jacobs, who teaches a university
course called "UFOs in US Society", has been promoting on TV his
book Secret Life: Firsthand Accounts of UFO Abductions. He believes
the aliens are engaged in "a programme of systematic exploitation
of one species over another, in which people are mined or farmed,
if you will over and over and over again, over the course of their
lives, from infancy to adulthood."
Dr Mack, who has helped 40 patients overcome abduction trauma,
says he retains an open mind and cannot dismiss the phenomenon. "I
don't have an explanation. But I know they've undergone a powerful
sense of being intruded upon and traumatised," he said recently. Mr
Pritchard said in The Wall Street Journal last week that the CBS
mini-series could prompt a MASS RECALL of alien experience. "I
think it's a DISASTER IN THE MAKING," he said.
Critics, who come from the "orthodox" wing of the UFO fraternity
as well as the medical profession, say there are simple
explanations. All the "abducted" recall the details of their
experiences under hypnosis. They are probably mingling personal
trauma, usually abuse during childhood, with Hollywood-born
fantasies suggested by their questioner.
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