Robert Bigelow and "implant" research

 Introduction

Over the years, Las Vegas billionaire Robert Bigelow, has created (and dissolved) a number of organisations to study the UFO phenomena. These include The Bigelow Foundation, the National Institute of Discovery Science (NIDS), and Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS.) 

One of his lesser known involvements was regarding “implants.”

Implant catalogue

Regular blog readers will be aware that one of my recent projects,  has been assembling a catalogue of cases where “implants” have been removed from the human body, and then analysed. 

As part of that research, I have recently re-read the book “The Aliens and the Scalpel” written by the late Dr Roger Leir. (1998. Granite Publishing. Columbus, NC.)

During my first reading of the book in 1998, I failed to note that the title page states “Published under the auspices of The Bigelow Foundation and the National Institute for Discovery Science.” A while ago, I conducted some research into The Bigelow Foundation, and you can read my findings here.

Later, another leaf in the book adds “The book is sponsored by The Bigelow Foundation in cooperation with The National Institute of Discovery Science (NIDS) and “The contents, views and opinions of this book reflect the author and are not those of the Bigelow Foundation or NIDS.”

The book

Image courtesy of Amazon Books

Sometime (date not specified) after conducting the surgical removal of an “implant” from his third patient, Babs, on 2 January 1996, Leir was given the name of John B Alexander, then working in Las Vegas, for NIDS.

Leir contacted Alexander, who almost immediately had Leir conference call with himself and Robert Bigelow. Leir writes that Alexander described NIDS as conducting research into the nature of the mind, and also UFOs. An hour was spent on the phone discussing Leir’s work.

A couple of days later, Bigelow contacted Leir, and invited Leir and Derrel Sims, Leir’s associate, to Las Vegas to discuss their work. They visited NIDS and spoke to Alexander and Bigelow. After a lunch, discussions were held. Bigelow advised Leir that he would present Leir’s work to the NIDS board.

Sometime later (Leir doesn’t give a date), another conference call was made by Bigelow and Alexander, to Leir. Bigelow advised that the NIDS board was interested in assisting Leir’s work. A member of that board, whom Leir describes as a PhD in Physics and a board certified neurologist, joined in the conversation.

Sims and Leir were then invited back to Las Vegas, at Bigelow’s expense. After a lunch, Leir presented his work to a NIDS board meeting, and both he and Sims were questioned.

Following a vote by the board, Bigelow advised Leir and Sims, that NIDS would support their work, with the conditions:

1. They would hand over four surgical specimens for analysis.
2. There would be no mention of NID's involvement with Leir's work.
3. A scientific paper would be written and published in a world class journal.
4. Leir insisted that the knowledge gained would end up in the public realm.
5. NIDs would select the laboratories to conduct the analysis of the samples. 

Leir writes “Robert Bigelow had agreed at our previous meeting to fund not only the analysis of our specimens, but also the next set of surgeries…” Leir was asked to prepare an estimate of the cost of these surgeries.

Following a request from Bigelow to provide additional information about who the patients were, Leir then received a set of documents from NIDS, to sign. Leir noted, that it was a month after the surgeries before he received the NIDS funding.

NIDS testing

Leir reports that some of the analyses were conducted by the Los Alamos National Laboratories and some by New Mexico Tech. Leir received the New Mexico Tech results in September 1996, and these are reproduced in his book.

Later in the book, Leir noted that NIDS had initially indicated that an article would be written for a leading scientific journal. “Thus I was quite nonplussed when he called to ask my permission to release some of the scientific data on the metallurgy we had just received from New Mexico Tech lab to the MUFON Journal.” Leir did not consent to this, but he himself wrote an article which appeared in the April 1996 issue of the MUFON Journal.

My notes

1. To the best of my knowledge, no scientific paper about Leir’s work has ever appeared in a “world class journal.” Certainly, he published multiple articles about his work in the MUFON Journal.

2. According to an archived snapshot of the NIDS website on 6 October 2007, the NIDS scientific advisory board consisted of:

John B Alexander; Warren Burggren; Douglas P Ferraro; Albert A Harrison; Edgar Mitchell; Melvin Morse; Martin Piltch; Harold E Puthoff; Theodore Rockwell; John F Scheussler; Jessica Utts; Jacques Vallee, and Jim Whinnery.

NIDS staff were Robert Bigelow; Colm A Kelleher and Mary Allman.