A moment ago, we received the shocking and tragic news that
Dr. John Mack had been knocked over by a car in London and
killed.
This is a tremendous personal loss for me and Anne, and for
all who this sacred man helped. He was truly a man of
courage, who put his reputation, his career and his
livelihood on the line for the most scorned and derided
group of people in the world: the close encounter witnesses.
I well remember the first moment I heard of John--Budd
Hopkins told me that a Harvard psychiatrist had become
interested in the abductee phenomenon. I said something
like, "Oh, God, he's going to kill us." Budd said, to the
contrary, he's open-minded and taking the whole matter quite
seriously.
There followed one of the most courageous and noble things I
have ever been privileged to witness: the life of a great
man who was willing to stand up for the scorned, at the cost
of his own impeccable reputation.
He was the most important scientist ever to dare to admit
the truth about the abduction phenomenon: that it involves
normal people describing true experiences, not neurotics,
idiots and publicity seeking liars making up nonsense. In a
world that has dismissed this most important of all human
experiences with sneering laughter, John Mack stood up and,
with great skill and exemplary good humor, spoke out on
behalf of the wonder and the value of close encounter.
He was a leader in the best sense of that word: his presence
in this world helped people and lifted them and inspired
them. He lifted me out of black despondency, not by any
particular help he gave me personally, but by the way he
fought for his findings and the people he had studied, and
the way he never lost his sense of humor or his perspective,
despite brutal treatment in the media and serious attempts
on the part of well-connected skeptics to utterly destroy
him by revoking his tenure at Harvard and getting his
license to practice medicine cancelled.
He beat back his accusers with the sheer excellence of his
work and his elegant, effective efforts to preserve his
standing. John did not fight dirty, and, in the end,
actually won the grudging acceptance of some of his worst
detractors. They could not deny the superb quality of his
work, or the fact that the people he had gathered in his
studies were, by any standard that could be applied, normal
human beings who appeared to be reporting actual experiences.
We have lost so many allies recently. Congressman Steven
Schiff, Laurance Rockefeller, engineer Jim Fueling,
Dr. William Mallow, the materials scientist who was so
helpful in studying implants, Constance Clear who was a help
and an inspiration to every abductee whose life she touched,
UFO publisher and investigator Graham Birdsall, and now John.
I only wish that there was more depth in our ranks. But
with the loss of John, the scientific community will quickly
close ranks behind the lies by which it prefers to live,
that the close encounter experience is without value and
certainly not worth study.
And mankind's best chance to advance in knowledge--in fact,
the best chance we have ever had in all our history--will
continue to be squandered.
John said no to this waste, and he put his thoughts into
superb books that opened at least a few minds in the
scientific community--opened them a little, anyway. What
they did, though, for us abductees, was incredible. I can
very well remember reading the wonderful prose and superb
ideas in his first book, with tears running down my face
because, at last, somebody who had a high reputation had
attempted to grapple with this great wonder that is the
close encounter phenomenon.
He leaves behind his work, the lives he touched, but above
all the knowledge that science CAN address the issues of
close encounter intelligently and productively, in a manner
that advances human understanding of this world.
He also leaves behind a great unanswered question: what IS
close encounter? What's happening, here? How is it that
perfectly sane people are suddenly deciding that they are
having often elaborate secret relationships with non-human
beings?
John has shown the scientific community that the witness
testimony can be studied usefully. It is up to future
scientists to take up the challenge he left behind, and find
the answers to the questions he asked with such honesty,
fervor and eloquence.
