In the 19th century, after Charles Darwin formulated his natural evolution theory, Gregor Mendel studied heredity and produced the first hybrids: plant hybrids, that presented characteristics (color, size) selected and bred from their parent plants. But it was not until the Avery-MacLeod-McCarthy experiment of 1944 — officially — that  deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) was identified as the  molecule responsible for storing the genetic code of any living being, as Scully says in 3X02: Paper Clip.

While some produced pest-resisting crops, some thought of applying these methods of breeding out undesired characteristics and of improvements through selective cross-breeding to humans: rumored soviet plans to create a better scientist or a better athlete for winning Olympic Games tournaments or Hitler’s plans for a fit and intelligent aryan race (a racial hygiene to keep the Herrenvolk unsoiled) are some examples. These attempts on humans were called eugenics — as Deep Throat muses in 1X10: Eve.

However, complexity grows extremely between experiments like eugenics and genetic engineering involving direct DNA manipulation, both in the knowledge and the technology that needs to be developed, and things get even more difficult as one tries to manipulate animal cells. Between the discovery of DNA and the first cloned mammal (Dolly the sheep in 1996), the world’s scientific community struggled and more than fifty years passed. Ethics considerations aside, going from a cloned animal to a cloned human should add another level of complexity.

Project Paper Clip

After the Second World War, under President Truman, the United States brought Nazi and Japanese scientists to American soil, thus saving them from public exposure and judgement at the Nuremberg trials, in order to expoit their knowledge and also to prevent the USA’s enemies to have access to that knowledge. This offer of immunity was called Project Paper Clip.

Among these scientists were space and rocket engineers, but also medical doctors and geneticists, such as doctors Victor Klemper, Takeo Ishimaru (who later changed his name to Shiro Zama), Strohman and Alvin Kurtzweil. Thanks to them, the USA planned to further Nazi research and create a better soldier, stronger, less in need of rest or sleep, more resistant to radioactivity or biological agents: a super-soldier. Sleep deprivation experiments on a platoon of soldiers in the Vietnam War in the 1970s were conducted as part of that research.

Roswell and the decision

Then in July 1947, a UFO crashed near Roswell in New Mexico and changed everything. After recovering the remains of its passengers and reading the data banks stored in the ship, the US government learned of Purity’s plans to colonize the Earth, of Purity and of the biological hazard that the Purity virus represented. At a secret United Nations meeting between the USA, the Soviet Union, China, UK, Germany and France it was decided that any alien survivors of a UFO crash would be executed (Security Council Resolution 1013) — effectively establishing a war between Earth governments and the alien Colonists.

But the USA also made a change of policy. Creating a super-soldier was no longer necessary for the USA to protect itself against its Earth enemies: creating a super-soldier that would be resistant to the alien Purity was necessary for the survival of the human race itself! Thus, a group of government officials was created to gather all knowledge on the alien menace and the Paper Clip scientists were gathered to study alien biology. It was then that it was decided that creating an alien/human hybrid was the best way to resist the alien invasion: a human being in appearance but alien enough to be immune to the alien virus. The facility created for the purposes of post-nuclear attack identification in West Virginia was used to gather medical and genetic data on all American citizens, in order to assess their suitability for the hybridization experiments.

The first hybrids: the Merchandise

The Paper Clip scientists used their raw eugenics knowledge and injections of alien biological material cultivated from the deceased bodies of the Roswell aliens to create hybrids. The human test subjects were selected among the most undesired strata of American society (the poor, the homeless, perhaps the Native Americans as well): they were code-named the “Merchandise”, further de-humanizing the process. Since they were deformed after the experiment, the test subjects were identified through specific proteins left on their shoulders after their mandatory smallpox vaccination. The results were not pretty to see. The still living hybrids were put in train boxcars, buried underground and gassed with cyanide — a means of extermination the Nazis had used already elsewhere.

The “Merchandise” hybrids – 1940s-1970s – method: gene therapy – deformed human, or alien-like appearance – unknown immunity to the Black Oil – failures, asphyxied and buried in train cars

Such experiments started in the late 1940s and continued throughout the early 1970s. The human scientists did not lack determination nor remorse, but the ends justified the means. What they lacked was the science, the Method that would efficiently blend human and alien genetic material.

Key episodes: 1X16: E.B.E., 2X25: Anasazi, 3X01: The Blessing Way, 3X02: Paper Clip, 4X07: Musings of a CSM, 6X12: One Son, 9X19/20: The Truth
See also: Primer 2