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extremities as toe, hand, shin, external ear, etc.; some were accompanied by scars while others were not (Linderman 1998; Strieber 1998, pp. 171-247). Indeed, so varied are the implants, their sites, and other characteristics that they recall a similar craze of yore. During the witch mania of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, inquisitors identified certain “witch’s marks” which could be almost anything. As one writer explains, “Papillomas, hemangiomas, blemishes, warts, welts, and common moles were seized upon as authentic witch’s marks, and these marks invariably determined the destiny of the suspect” MM 721.1266 1071 (Rachleff 1971). Several disparate implants are described in the bestselling Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens by Harvard psychiatrist John E. Mack. For example, two small nodules that appeared on an abductee’s wrist were surgically removed and analyzed in a pathology laboratory. are (Mack 1994, pp. 27-28). Another implant was supposedly placed at the base of an abductee’s skull. Under hypnosis the man who believes he has an alternate identity as a humanoid named Orion—described a small, pill-shaped object with protruding wires that, he said, would make it easier for the aliens “to follow me.” Astonish- ingly, Mack makes no mention of any subsequent attempt to locate and remove the reported implant (Mack 1994, p. 172). Many of the removals have been performed by “California surgeon” Roger Leir. Actually Dr. Leir is not a physician, but a podiatrist (licensed to do minor surgery on feet). He was accompa- nied by an unidentified general surgeon (who did not want to be associated with UFO abduction claims). The latter performed all of the above-the-ankle surgeries. A critic of implant claims, Dr. Virgil Priscu, a department head in an Israeli teaching hospital, observes that a foreign object can enter the body unnoticed, as during a fall, or while running barefoot in sand or grass—even as a splinter from a larger impacting object (Priscu 1998). Such foreign objects may become surrounded by a membrane, like several of the “implants” removed by Dr. Leir et al. (Lindemann 1998); depending on the material, they may also degrade over time, leaving only a small bit of “reaction” tissue in place of the foreign object—“‘No mystery, no ‘implants,’ says Dr. Priscu. He challenged Dr. Leir’s associate, a hypnotherapist named Derrel Sims, to provide specimens, or at least color slides of them, for analysis at a forensic medical institute, but reported he received no cooperation. Dr. Priscu also noted the lack of the scientific peer-review process in the case of implant claims. Although he is himself an admitted UFO believer, he states, “I also firmly believe that meticu- lous research by competent persons is the way to the truth” (Priscu 1998). In Confirmation Whitley Strieber describes several of the implants including ee ene ee en LI nee et eed one removed from his own external ear by a physician. It turned out to be collagen, the substance from which cartilage is formed (Strieber 1998, p. 228). Strieber admits that the promised “hard evidence” provided by implants is not so hard after all: “I hope this book will not cause a rush to judgement,” he writes, “with skeptics trying to prove that evidence so far retrieved is worthless while UFO believers conclude that it is proof. Both approaches are a waste of time, because the conclusive evidence has not yet been gathered” (Strieber 1998, p. 255). A similar admission comes from to similar admission from comes UFOlogist David E. Pritchard, an M.1.T physicist who, with Mack, hosted the 1992 Abduction Study Conference at M.LT. (Pritchard emphasized that the conference was merely held there; it was not an M.I.T. conference.) Pritchard gave a M.LT. M.I.T. conference.) Pritchard gave a presentation on a suspected implant, a tiny object with a collagen sheen that he 52