March 21, 2001: Animal Mutilations - Linda Moulton Howe

Researcher and reporter Linda Moulton Howe, introduced for her crop-circle and animal-mutilation work, joins Art Bell with a report on the USDA seizure of 233 Vermont sheep over prion-disease concerns. Art also surveys a cascade of troubling headlines, from foot-and-mouth disease spreading to the Netherlands and mad cow fears reaching Vermont, to stock markets in freefall and rolling blackouts threatening to spread beyond California. He describes the convergence of crises as evidence of an accelerating quickening, noting that just months earlier, the nation seemed prosperous and secure.

Howe covers the USDA's seizure of 233 sheep from Vermont farmers whose animals tested positive for antibodies to transmissible spongiform encephalopathy. She interviews USDA veterinarian Dr. Linda Detweiler, who reveals that definitive testing to determine whether the sheep carry BSE, scrapie, or another prion disease will take two to three years, requiring mouse inoculation studies. Howe explains how prions resist destruction by ordinary burning and require autoclaving with bleach for hours.

The conversation shifts to Howe's new book, Mysterious Lights and Crop Circles, as she presents eyewitness accounts of luminous phenomena emerging from crop formations. She describes a 1994 incident near Avebury where a Swiss researcher watched four successive lights rise from a formation, one taking a transparent rectangular shape that moved toward observers before retreating when it seemed to sense their fear.