    34

    31. Danny A. Riley of the Medical College of Wisconsin, who ran an experiment

    with five rats in the Soviet Cosmos satellite, discovered that when weightlessness

    renders excess musculature unnecessary, "muscles not only shrink but also lose

    blood vessels, nerve connections and even their own cells...."  These disturbingly

    deleterious effects showed up in only two weeks.  ("Muscles in space forfeit more

    than fibers," Science News, October 29, 1988, p. 277.)

    32. According to Soviet research confirmed in the author's personal communication

    with NASA.

    33.  The Crow Indians ritually lopped off the joint of one finger.  The Sioux ran

    thongs under their pectoral muscles, then were hoisted toward the sky until a

    muscle tore.  And African tribes have mutilated themselves with ritual scarifications,

    while the primitive tribes of Malaysia have indulged in painful piercing and

    distension of the earlobes.  How could there possibly be an adaptive value to these

    practices?  Quite simple.  By opening wounds in the body, the rituals invited

    infection.  Those who survived the deliberate breach in the body's protective

    barriers and overcame the resultant microbial invasion had immune systems that

    would stand their progeny in good stead.  Most of the rites that sliced through the

    fortress of the skin took place as part of the ceremony that allowed young males or

    females to pass into adulthood, when sexual activity is permitted and reproduction

    becomes a possibility.  Those who didn't survive the ordeal did not get to

    reproduce.  For the individual, self-mutilation was not a great way to ensure

    survival.  But it was a dandy way to raise the overall health of the group.   (For

    information on the Crow Indians, see Dudley Young, Origins of the Sacred: the

    ecstasies of love and war, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1991, p. 223.  For

    Malaysia, see Redmond O'Hanlon, Into the Heart of Borneo, Salamander Press

    Edinburgh, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1984.)

    34. Richard Bergland, M.D., The Fabric of Mind, Viking Penguin Books, Ltd.,

    Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1986, p. 64.

    35. quoted in Richard Bergland, M.D., The Fabric of Mind, p.64.

    36. George Ordish, The Year of the Ant, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1978,

    pp. 61-62.  George Ordish is an economic entomologist.

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