Mac Tonnies, a writer for aboutSETI.com and his own blog Posthuman Blues, posits that extraterrestrial aliens aren’t doing the experimenting, it’s something much closer to home:
…the notion that advanced aliens — presumably thousands of years more advanced than us — would rely on kidnapping unsuspecting humans to obtain genetic samples seems singularly clumsy.
It’s more likely that a civilization capable of traveling between stars (or burrowing through space-time itself) would possess a knowledge of genetic engineering surpassing our own. Indeed, it’s tempting to speculate that a civilization only a few hundred years in advance of our own would have mastered the fundamentals of nanotechnology, rendering the need for “punch biopsies” and forcible semen extraction — let alone craft with portals and landing gear — obsolete.
This leaves us to consider that the “aliens,” instead of hailing from some distant star system, are in fact closely related to us and may originate much closer to home. Their frequent allusions to outer space, such as the celebrated “star map” shown to abductee Betty Hill, may be a subterfuge crafted to further our collective infatuation with “space visitors” — a fascination set firmly in place by the controversial “contactees” who preceded the emergence of the modern abduction epidemic by at least a decade.
(Former Ministry of Defense UFO investigator Nick Pope deals refreshingly with the contactee movement in his book “The Uninvited,” questioning the conventional wisdom that all those claiming benevolent contact with human-looking ETs were hoaxers and cranks. Instead, noting the distinct vein of duplicity that accompanies the history of paranormal visitation, he proposes that at least some of the contactees may have been dealing with genuine “others.” That these “others” made their first appearance as space travelers shortly after the creation of nuclear weapons, while typically attributed to social factors, may belie their terrestrial origin: If you lived among savages with increasingly destructive devices at their disposal, it may prove all too tempting to intervene, but in a way than denies your own existence at the same time it propagates your message.)
If we share our planet with indigenous humanoids — and I think the case for terrestrial origin is at least as robust as the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis — then it would certainly appear that we’re numerically — if not technically — superior. The “others” would be forced to live at the periphery of normal human perception, perhaps utilizing techniques analogous to recent breakthroughs with brain-machine interfaces and “mind control.”
Tonnies goes on to say that these beings often go out of their way to change our perceptions, saying that, ” …so many encounters with apparent aliens involve exposure to chemicals and needles inserted into the victim’s head. Sometimes close encounter witnesses are asked to drink noxious-tasting beverages prior to conversing with the “crew,” or subjected to imagery that can be ascribed to psychedelic “conditioning.” It would certainly seem that the aliens — terrestrial or otherwise — prefer to alter our perceptions prior to establishing contact. Given the selfish motives attributed to UFO occupants by researchers like Hopkins, the most coherent explanation for these techniques is that we’re being compelled to participate without the luxury of trusting our senses… “.
