couldn't get into the details of her, but certainly after the assassination, she did become unhinged and refused to leave the white house. johnson had to live in his hotel. mary lincoln is one the most interesting, fascinating, complex women in american history. ..

indiana, ohio, their conspiracies. defense, too was besieged. lincoln wanted to preserve the union, and to do that he had to use central federal authority to win that war. davis had to do something contrary to secession, contrary to state rights. the only way the confederacy could win the civil war would be with a strong central leader who could organize the state's, who could tell alabama send the troops north to gettysburg, who could tell north carolina those uniforms have to be sent to the army of northern virginia or they're going to leave the state to read the guns from the arsenal have to be shipped to

mississippi. they are not north carolina's property, so davis was constantly at war with governors, military leaders across purposes with the office. they felt they were the kings of their states and they resist it davis's centralizing authority. the was the contradiction of the confederacy. it was based on states' rights, and yet to win the war de but have to centralize all under one leader. davis had a terrible relationship with general john johnson and he tried to undermine defense. in fact after the war, johnston accused davis of stealing the confederate gold, which was of course utterly false. davis profited in no way from his service and he didn't take any of the confederate gold for his own use. so both men were beleaguered by certain generals who were always at odds with them, always after their own careers and their own plans so that's something both

leaders had and, as to the common. now davis was more tolerant than lincoln was. lincoln accepted human nature but was willing to work with it. lincolnwood and hold the great opinion of yourself against you if he could use you for his higher purpose and he was very forgiving, sometimes too forgiving. on the other hand, jefferson davis had committed so much to the cause he believed sometimes if you disagreed with him you were being unpatriotic or willfully committing to the time is. so davis could be more prone to anchor for to suspicion. some of the was justified because the generals were working against him but davis perhaps was less tolerant and that has led to the myth of asger for cold, arrogant, prideful, intolerant man and that is a false characterization of his true nature. but certainly, he felt the

disagreements were more motivated by personal disloyalty and ridges loyalty to the cause the clinton felt when he faced his people. davis could become no one denied that. marina davis said perhaps he wasn't suited to the president, a great general instead of the president. that might be one difference in their leadership style that davis would more often question the motives of those who disagree with him. lincoln knew these men were out for themselves what was willing to work with them or forgive it. i think davis was less forgiving of disagreement. >> host: and by the end of the war coleman-davis's standing in certain areas of this house have suffered tremendously. what before his death he was revered throughout the south. what happened in the interim to change of the opinion of him in certain circles?

>> well, his opinion of the south helped win the south over the. his view was you gave all the you have. the other people did not let me down. we lost because we were overwhelmed. and then davis did a few things early on during his capture after the release that inspired the south. when he was taken in 1865 tavis transported to the fortress monroe, and there she was abused verbally and shackled, arms and legs. the word of that spread into the south became outraged. the shackles were removed and he was only shackled for several days, but that began the myth that led to the south. he suffered for us. he became the south's representative man and when this

house learned he did not ask for mercy, that he defied his captors, he didn't believe an accord leeway, they began to honor him and that happened in a relatively modest way immediately after the capture. then he conducted himself in a way the south considered honorable after he was released and 1860's seven. he refused to take charity. he said my whole nation has been impoverished by will accept nothing. many people wanted to give him things, give him money, homes. he wondered. he went to europe, canada, his children lived in separate places, the family was involved in together but he decided early on his calling his calling was to honor the consider it debt and davis says we may have lost, but we were not wrong and if we were right then we were right today. people thought of him that we

but his greatest triumph came in the end after he had written his memoirs which were not successful because they were a complicated history, legal history, a succession of american history. he didn't unburden his heart in that book and he was prepared to spend the rest of his days at a beauford at the gulf coast and then he received an invitation in 1886 to come to dedicate a monument to the war in alabama and thought i'm just going to give a talk. he arrived and thousands of people were waiting. was the 25th anniversary when he had become the consider the president. then he gave a tremendous speech when he said, and i'm paraphrasing, he talked about the seed corn of the south lost in the war. he said i can almost see them now. the weight of less than their

packs and rifles and that became his ultra of message for the rest. they are not dead, we remember them and he devoted himself and remember the lost cause, he began a similar lost cause and the idea this house we have lost where we went wrong. we lost what were right, ours is a superior civilization. he became the physical living embodiment and people show their love for him. thousands of children came to see him. the veterans of the confederate women, the accolades he received over the last couple of years of his life were tremendous. it was like a triumphant tour of the south and then when he died in new orleans, he was buried there but was temporary. he was taken on a grand funeral train journey to richmond when marina decided he would be good. in the consider it capitals just like for abraham lincoln the train took his body from city to city. the text of some of the signs

was the same as for lincoln. a creation of the own funeral. there are some more questions i wanted to ask but i read the book bloody crimes jefferson davis' death pageant for lincoln's corpse.

nonfiction authors recently discussed medical mysteries. molly caldwell crosby is the author of "asleep" about a global epidemic of sleeping sickness. rebecca skloot has written "the immortal life of henrietta lacks" about the woman who unwittingly supplied dna for over 60,000 medical studies. from the texas book festival, this is an hour. >> thanks for introducing us anr welcome, everybody. this session is called back to life, humanizing medical

mysteries, and the authors sar molly caldwell crosby and rebecca skloot.the i want to remind you thatlu following this session about 15 minutes after it, the authors will sign their books of the llowing book signing tent on theth congress avenue between tenthy and 11th sign their books between tenth, and eleventh street. have been involved for many years and ten years ago by was taking an author to the airport and mentioned by was a scientist and the author was a history rider and he said who are your favorite science writers and i'm struck dumbfounded and i said carl sagan, i really didn't -- nothing came to me. the truth was i wasn't gripped by science and writing at that time. but since then, writers like mali and rebecca have not called got my attention but the attention of the world and this is in large part because they're

so skilled at bringing difficult and complex subject to a life. if i were back in that car today i would have molly caldwell coming off of my tongue. it is an honor to introduce them to you. molly is a master of arts degree in nonfiction and science writing at johns hopkins university who spent several years working for national geographic and her writing has been in newsweek and u.s. aid today among others. molly also served as a disease professor in nonfiction at the university of memphis. and forgotten epidemics remain one of medicine's greatest mysteries. second book--her first is american plagues, the untold story of yellow favor, the epidemic that shaped our history. rebecca is a science writer who has written over 200 articles

that have been in the new york times, discover and many others. she spent eight years on the board of directors of the national book critics her circles. she has a bs in biological science and creative nonfiction. henry and that is her first book and has become a new york times best-seller. i wanted to kind of get started with what resonated with me so much, science writing is so gripping now. in large part that is because writers like you use narratives to pull the reader in. i wonder if you could talk about a roll of narrative as a means for communicating science. >> can everybody hear in the back? thank you. wonderful. i have had the same reaction.

i'm constantly being asked to my favorite science writers are and i have a few answers i give. narrative science writing is pretty rare. i have to say how cool it is that you have to treat the women talking about it. [applause] the one thing that is more rare than narrative science writing is women narrative science writing. it is great we are here to talk about this. i think in some ways it is everything in the kind of writing that we do. science is something that affects everybody's life. is so important for the general public to understand science and to see the way science interact with daily life and it is important for scientists to learn the stories of the people behind the science that they are doing and to think of science in a narrative way. a lot of people don't. what you get in science writing is the facts and those facts are

often intimidating to the general public. one thing i hear over and over again from people when you hear about my book is, tactically it is the story of the first human cells are grown in culture and when you say that to people they go you wrote a book about cells? but it is not. it is a story about a family and what happens -- about ethics in science and the use of people in research without their consent. it is about class and race and so many things and science is that. science does not exist in a vacuum and i hear over and over again from readers to send me e-mails saying i hit science. last time i took a science class was in middle school and avoided the rest of my educational career. i almost didn't read your book because there were cells on the cover but then i did and i couldn't put it down and i got to the end and realize

accidentally learned a lot about cells. i don't exactly remember when i'd did it. that is the highest compliment i could get. it is like giving the medicine when it tastes really good. i think is really important to use these stories to put the science in and telling human stories about science and let them learn about science and a way that isn't here is the science part you are learning now. take out your highlighters and get the text books so narrative let you do that. it lets people go through science because they want to see what happens next. >> i agree. i am proud to be one of the women sitting on the panel today. i had very little interest in science at school. i was not drawn to it because it is so impersonal. my first real interest was in college. i went to a liberal arts school and english riding major. i was forced to take a science

course and so i took the chemistry of aids. it was the first time i had seen -- learned science applied to a particular disease. to a virus. from that point on i was hooked. i loved it. i do think science can be intimidating. is very impersonal and a lot of ways so as a science writer your dog is to make the impersonal personal. illness is one of the universal things we all have in common. it connects us all and transcends time periods. my books take place in different time periods. whether 1870s or 1920s. we can still understand and relate with epidemics. also a future lesson as well. the role of narrative in science as you said, it is absolutely important to get the story across and i like the point you

made that it is important that the doctors and researchers understand the personal stories of the patients because especially with my second book, that is about being a really important element of the book. this was an epidemic that spans 20 research the years with long-term effects and the doctors develop long-term relationships with the patients. they exchanged letters and christmas cards and visited one another and vacation homes. that was interesting for me because i don't think we have relationships like that today. that was part of bringing the impersonal story to life. >> we blurred the lines between science writing and medical writing. i wonder if we want to address that a little bit. what do you see as the goals and responsibilities of medical riding compared to science writing or in general? >> responsibility is getting the information correct.

the fact. i always try to have experts whether it be microbiology or epidemiology read parts of the book or the old look and make sure i am translating it correctly. i try to take the scientific information and make it more readable and bridge that gap. i want to make sure it is done correctly. >> accuracy and the writing is important but in science writing is so easy to make a little tiny mistake and state something as definitive instead of possibly definitive. there are a lot of subtleties. for me, i thought a lot about my responsibility and my role as a writer. a lot of what i read about our places where every day life in science intersects. often that can get messy sometimes so i write about this story, my book is so much about

cells taken from this woman without her knowledge in the 50s and went on to become one of the most important things that happened to madison. she never knew about it and died very young and her family lived in poverty. to this day they can't afford to go to the doctor because they don't have enough money yet their mother's cells contributed to all medicine out there. there is not a person here who didn't benefit medically in some way from these cells. the scientists were white and the -- there are a lot of loaded issues in this book. i come at science writing as a scientist. i became a writer later. for me one of the big responsibilities is asking tough questions. one of the things that is true about science writing is it is cheerleading. there are not a lot of journalists who has a lot of tough questions. a lot of headlines are about this science advance and that is not usually in a much later that

people start asking questions about things that happened long ago. is important to ask the questions about ethics and how science is impacting people's lives and also not demonize science. this was important to me, the people behind the science showing human beings behind scientists and sometimes very well intentioned scientists accidentally have negative affect on people. it was important to present these issues but not scare people away from the science. in my case so much of the story is about african-americans who have a history of being afraid to go to the doctor because there is a long history of research. i don't want to make that problem worse. you have to think about the responsibility in any science. science scares people whether you talk about nanotechnology, little molecule you can see being created a use for things,

we don't know what is going on with them. we are cloning. it is easy to sensationalize scientists and scare people. i think a lot about that when i write. how to well-balanced these things? i am asking tough questions but making it clear the science is good and i don't want to scare people from going to the doctor. that is a big personal responsibility. people often say i went to the doctor. i'm supposed to go next week. should i be worried? we spend a lot of time talking about no, you should not be worried. you should go to the doctor. read the forms they said you. i spent a lot of time translating that for people. >> the deck about demonizing is a great one. that is something i had to deal with, human experimentation. you look at that and think how can you experiment on humans

with or without their consent? as a writer my responsibility is to recreate what was like in those epidemics that would make people so desperate when you are losing tens of your population. doctors would in fact that patients, knowingly or unknowingly. looking at it from a different perspective in history. there's a lot of responsibility there cannot demonize. >> context is everything. putting people in the mindset of this is what it was like in the 1910s 1850s and why people were doing what they were doing and here's how it was different from today. when people pick up a book and start reading about some research that was done on people without consent they are reading it from today's perspective that you can get in trouble when you look at the far past or even the near past for the eyes of what we know today. context is important.

>> one thing we all share is ellis and that is another thing. but another thing, collateral damage is the effect on our families. both of you write about those affecting your books and not wonder if you can talk about it? collateral damage to families. >> my second book deals with the sleeping sickness epidemic from the 1920s. it was a very personal story for me. it is known as the forgotten epidemic. i could not find one book on the subject when i began researching it. my grandmother had been a survivor. she was living in dallas, texas. she came down with a case of sleeping sickness and slept for 180 days. she was never able to finish school. she had a slow recovery. she had a relatively normal life, but i knew all my childhood something was not

quite right. any time asked the family about it she said she had been that way since the sleeping epidemic. that made me want to cover this and even more so when i realized nothing had been written on this and surprisingly as much as it has been forgotten, when i talk in my interviews i am often contacted by people who say my great-grandmother had that or my great grandparents. we always wondered there are a lot of elements involved in this disease. people wary that it was genetic and now they know that it is related to this or the epidemic percolating at the time. it was sternly a personal story for me that inspired me to write it. >> that is one of the things. science is personal for everybody. affect everyone's live. that is something you don't think about. it is personal for the

scientists. and this is how it is personal for you. it is interesting, my book is about many things. it is about the effect that losing a mother, on the family. they dealt with so many things. and five kids, the youngest kid, the oldest was 16. and read the story and connect on that level. people almost lost a parent, the

most emotional e-mails, my mother or father or great-grandmother or someone important my life got cancer when i was young or recently and they are still here. a didn't go through that. they were used to develop a drug. that is an incredible personal connection. a lot of what brings us to our stories is some sort of personal connection. i learned about these cells when i was 16 in a basic biology class. the story that is in the book my teacher said what most biology teachers say which is there are these incredible cells that have been around since 1951 even though the woman they came from god. she never knew they were taken but they became incredibly

important. i became completely obsessed with these cells. it took me however long it is, a decade to write this book. a lot of the reason i latched onto the story, my father was very sick and he had gotten a viral infection that caused severe brain damage. he went from being my marathon running dad to being this guy who couldn't get off the couch. he had lost a lot of his money. he couldn't drive. one of my jobs as a teenager was drive dad to the hospital for a drug infusion and sit while he got treated. i was in a big room with lots of other patients who were being treated. i did my homework there and hung out in this room. a lot of fear comes with that. they didn't know if it was going

to help or hurt. we really hoped this would help fix him and bring him back and there was a lot of disappointment that it didn't help. i was wrestling with a range of the motion that come with research subjects or family member of a research subject when i heard about these cells which is why my first question was what did they think of it? going to something that felt similar to what her family -- what i imagine her family went through. john mcphee, incredible narrative, he has written a zillion books. they have a very personal connection and that is true for all science writers. i often tell students if they go back to earlier and think what

you have been obsess with your whole life related to science and where are the stories? >> you talked about this a little bit but there are mysteries surrounding both of your topics. nobody knows why and rihanna cells grow the way they do and no one knows what caused encephalitis of the delmack encephalitis to this day, how frustrating is it to write a book review can't give the answers? >> it literally means selling your brain that makes use leave the. what caused that remains a mystery. one of the physicians i interviewed in writing this was a pediatric neurologist. he has seen 25 cases among kids. it is a horrible experience for

children. it is a disease of the brain that alters their mind. some of these kids become extremely obsessive compulsive. some become violently ill. many are institutionalized. also for the physicians, they are still working on it today. they can't answer why this occurred. it is not a contagious disease. like the 1918 flow, what about the cases today? will we see this come back. this is connected to the flu. are we likely to see another sleeping sickness epidemic? some physicians are doing research to make that connection between the flu and sleeping sickness. i go on line. doctors are trying to connect

sleeping sickness with stress. they overreact to infection and sleeping sickness results. for me is interesting to keep watching. i didn't know how it was going to an end. i came to see if it was going in. >> that is one of those things about nonfiction. i could have kept researching this story forever. the family is still alive and doing things. at some point you have to say the story is over and we will see about a follow-up. there are so many things you can't answer and in a lot of ways and rihanna herself who died in 1951 didn't read or write so there were no letters, i had to recreate a person from other people's memories and little documentation and that

was one of the most challenging and frustrating experiences of answering the question of who she was. there's also the mystery that no one can explain why her cells grew and no other cells had. that is just the fact. i often talk in front of groups of scientists and that will come up and we say why don't we know that? we know everything else. there is now a group of scientists trying to get me a better answer to that question but it is not so frustrating to me. it is frustrating for readers sometimes. i get people to say one thing i didn't get from your book that you didn't explain clearly was y. the cells grow. that is because no one knows. i said no one knows but that part of a book, people wanted me to have figured out by the end. no one knows. the other big thing is there are a lot of unanswered questions.

one of my goals was to not advocate for one position or one stance on this very large issue of who should be using biological material or profiting off of them, should you be told your tissues are used in research? most people in the united states, how do we deal with getting consent for research without inhibiting science? we end with a lot of big questions. i often get people who stand up at my events and say what do we do? how do we fix it? scientists say what should our consent forms say? this is not my job actually. i feel my job as a journalist is to put this out there and say this is why this story is important and hear the issues that are real and present today. so starting a conversation is important. to meet the lack of answers is part of the story. if there were answers that would

mean all the issues had been solved and they haven't been. there's a tendency to want to tie that up and meet these ends and make it seem there is a nice end. >> you write in such narrative form we get a little diluted to thinking it is a story. it is reality. i want to talk about the structure of your books a little bit. one of the things you both have talked about that you covered so many things. there is ethical, historical, medical, personal stories. how did you come up the structured to wrap those things up? those many difficult topics? >> pounding by head against the wall for year. there are three separate narratives that are rated together. you jump around in time and between these stories and some were toward the end they all come together in one story.

it took me so long to come up with the structure of the book, what took be the longest in writing the book, i knew that if i told the story chronologically one of the things their writers have to do, it is one of the things that make narrative. i hard on my students about structural time. anyone who has been in class with me, structure structure structure. it is the thing that makes or breaks the narrative. a new if i started the story and told the chronologically, she was born in 19 -- why should we care? we would be going along and two thirds of the way for her family would take over and be the main characters and i was here and it wouldn't really work. all so that structure and chronology allows you to empathize certain things about the story. i felt like it was really important to learn the story of what happened to her family. at the same time you were learning the story of amazing

things that happen with these cells. so you sort of flip-flop back and forth. in one chapter, this is so great and the next half, this happened to the family and that amazing science created hard effect. the weight of the story is heavier when you know what happened to the family. so figuring out how to do that was a lot of index cards on big walls and moving around and i would stare at them for hours and move one card and said back down. for me, there aren't a lot of -- there are some models that you can read to look at this, but i read a lot of fiction. i collected -- went to the local bookseller, independent bookseller, little tiny store in west virginia where i would go to right and told her what i was trying to do and said will you find me any novel you can find set in multiple time periods,

greatest chronology and have lots of characters? she would find these books and i read them all and i would take little fingers from each book. fried green tomatoes was a very useful to me. and movies. lot of movies are structured like that. we don't think about it but so many movies jump around in time and do that sort of thing. i started watching any movie i could find that was structured in the same way. i was watching hurricane about resler hurricane carter. it is very annoying to everyone because i kept saying that is my book. i actually storyboarded it and map of the structure of the movie by playing and pausing. to look at how they did that. one thing i got was it is jerry fast. part of what wasn't working about my structure was it had the long chapters and another long chapter and i realize they

have to jump around quickly to keep people moving or you lose them. narrative has a lot to learn from these other areas. >> i find that to be one of the creative aspects of science writing. you have to apply a lot of creativity to make it interesting and readable. so structure will make or break a story like that. when i was writing my first book the american play about yellow fever i was sitting down to tackle a 100 year time frame with an ensemble cast and make a character who is an insect. trying to make that readable and personal was a challenge. i would write things out and focus on the people. with my second book it was completely different problem. this is a huge spectrum of a disease with everything from

people with mild symptoms who recovered to those who became violently in sane and institutionalized. how do you find one character or two that can represent that spectrum? so i divided the book into case studies. their eight case studies book ended by my grandmother's story and each case study deals with the part of the book where you going to the person, try to recreate your life as you photograph whatever you can and recreate what that patient experienced and woven throughout the case study, those same doctors who are treating these patientss and working with them. that was organizing a lot of very different material. and a creative enough atmosphere would make people read it. >> that is something those riders underestimate.

i never tackled a large project like this. by the time i got to the point that it was time to matching the been riding of, i had this mound of material and eventually had to stop the process and go back and catalog everything i had and start over again with my research material so make it so you could find the things you wanted to organize. one things, what suggestions do you have riders just starting out? organize everything, label, and come up with color coding system is because when you sit down to put that structure into place not only are you trying to organize on page but with raw material all over your office. >> i will ask you each the one question i have been dying to ask. your case studies are so fascinating but maybe things is not the one that most people got but jumped at me, the story of

bruce. i will read a couple lines from the book. the doctor on this case was frederick killme. he quietly pulls the girl here and says there's nothing else to be done. he reported every test. there were simply no answers. this followed from reach deeper and deeper into her own world like a wave disappearing due in beneath the surface of water. he apologized and told the parents she would never recover. when he looked at the sleeping girl, this girl is frozen, can't move but still hears the doctor say she is never going to recover. i was so struck. this was the case -- was there when you found the most moving? does one come back more than any other? >> that was one of the most

moving. one of the first cases in new york in 1980 and they are realizing this is spreading around the world rapidly. up until that point they did not realize these sleeping patients were trapped in their bodies and aware of everything happening around them. this is one of the first cases. he had no idea she could hear anything so when he turned around and saw the tears it is such a humanizing moment. and humbling for the doctor. at that point they realized this much work for the patients than they ever imagined and the family members. hers was one of the most touching cases from the book. a girl who went insane enough that her own teeth and eyes, that is what most people bring up and have questions about. the only thing that made that

tolerable was the doctor said the pain mechanism in her brain had been damaged. she felt no pain. the compulsive behavior that drew her to do this, in that case that was the only thing that i could get my mind around was writing about her, that i could sit down, it is like something you couldn't even imagine. that gets the most attention. but for me, the most humanizing moment in that was probably my favorite. >> this is one of those things that is difficult about narrative writing, when you have a story really emotional or really painful. you live it when you are recreating it on the page. this is true for fiction writers too but there's something about this actually happened. the chapter about the decline of

henry adams and her death, never experienced anything more traumatizing than writing that because i had to live that moment over and over again to really get into her head and body and imagine what it felt like and talked to another writer who wrote about difficult stuff. a lot of writers talk about it. the impact that has, the need to embody your material when your material is traumatizing. war reporters deal with this all the time. they get a post-traumatic stress disorder after reliving the experience they wrote about. there is something cathartic about having it on the page and moving on. the other difficult things that i would have to go laydown to recover. >> your characters in the book becomes so real. they are real people you completely visualize and imagine. when we brought up the responsibility of writing that is a huge responsibility. writing about real people.

you want to represent them, to know that if they came back today and read this they would say this is similar to what was happening. that is a daunting prospect. >> especially when they are still alive. they sent a box of 30 manuscripts to any scientist still alive before it went to press. that was a very long week. the scene from your book i want to talk to you about takes place a few days after her daughter debra sees her mother's sells for the first time with christopher -- sorry. and researcher at johns hopkins. when he projected herself on the monitor a few days later debra said they are beautiful. she was right. beautiful and other worldly. growing green and moving like water. small and is the real.

looking like heavenly bodies might look. they could even flits through the air. i remember reading that. no way did she do this. you made something scientific slightly spiritual. i feel like that is a big risk. did you realize it was a risk and were you nervous about including that? >> context of where that happens is the day before deborah stout saw her mother's cells was a very incredible experience for her and various other things happened that were traumatizing and she was spiraling into a dangerous place. i was talking to her cousin who is a pastor and he was holding the bottle in front of me and explaining to me why the family believed she was chosen as an angel and brought to life in these cells and as a scientist coming they this sells ourselves with a nucleus and rebozos and

sells structures. is she'll live in these cells? for her family she very much is and continues to be and her soul is in there. this is part of the theme, reading sections of the bible to me things like if the lord will grant immortal life to his believers and you never know what form people will come back in when they are chosen. she was brought back to do good in the world. this was on moment where it was very clear to me that it was much easier and clearer to think of these cells in spiritual terms than scientific terms particularly for the family. when you put biblical explanations next to the scientific explanation it is no contest. was much clearer and easier to relate to. i came to the point where the scientist in me was able to open up and understand where that

came from. i was jealous. people often ask did they convert you? the answer is no. i came into this without any religious background and not a person who practices religion but i got a completely different and more nuanced understanding of the role faith plays in people's lives and how important and healthy it can be. that is not something i often think about. i also saw the ways people talk about science versus religion and to be a lot of the book is about moments that science and religion can actually work together and lead to deeper understanding of things. hy thought was important to include it. i was never nervous about that but scientists often stand up and ask questions like did you ever strain out the family on her spirit is in there thing or do they still think she is in there? my answer is can you prove she is not? that is part of the story, that

whether you or anybody is alive in their cells depends on how you define life, how you define spirit and soul and what your dna means to you, your dna is in there. it is a sort of existential question that nobody can answer. you can save her family is wrong. a lot of scientists have said it is helpful to read that and held them connect to patients they always felt were far away from them in terms of understanding science. >> given that back and forth between science and religion that was fascinating. that neurologist you mentioned in the 1920s wrote the definitive book on evolution, one of the greatest -- since darwin. he called the brain the mechanism of salvation. to me it was fascinating to sees that at that time period, he much more had to gather this

idea of science through spirituality. >> this is a question everyone wants to know. how do you right? what is your writing style? >> i have always been drawn to creative writing. [talking over each other] >> definitely on the laptop. i find internet to be a huge source of information and research that makes my job embodies year. i have two small kids. i don't have the ability to do research for weeks at a time. that has been a great thing for me. people ask how do you not get writer's block? i don't have time for writer's block. i have four hours of quiet to sit down and write. i don't slow down at all but are also had a professor in college who gave me one of the greatest pieces of advice. there is no such thing as writers balk, just a lack of

research. i spend half my time going back and forth to the library. that gives the story its texture. >> i was going to say the same thing about writer's block. it doesn't exist. you just don't have enough material yet. you don't know your story. my writing process has a lot of writers, i struggled for a long time with figuring out went to right. i find the internet useful and incredibly distracting. i tend to -- i can sit down and write until i have my material to work with so i do my research. i take a lot of notes and i do brain dumps after i research a few things i am writing about supply get in on paper but i don't sit down with my writing until late in the game after the research is done and i have digested it. at that point have to unplug. i spent a lot of time in coffee

shops. when i go somewhere to write you feel like an idiot if you have gone there to write and you don't write. i would struggle. i had a teacher in grand school who would always say 8 to be a writer you have to write every day. wake up at 5:00 in the morning and right for four five hours and you really bother me when you say that. that is not my style. than he actually is a good friend and came to visit me and said -- what about 5:00 in the morning and i heard a rustling around and i will try this 5:00 in the morning thing. i wrote more than morning and i have written -- i hate you for this. i started waking up at 5:00 in the morning every day, rolling out of bed into my car and going to a nearby coffee shop where i would write and to like goodness it anymore and then do as long as i could. usually about 5:00 until 10:00 or 11:00 and that creative jews

is gone and then the e-mail and online thing that whenever other work i have to do but i only do that when i'm writing mode. am not a morning person. i go back and forth. i have to have it be at a time when nothing else is going on but also a great merit of nonfiction writer once said she does the same thing and a lot of it is because it tricked her brain. she is not really awake yet. she starts writing it eventually wakes up and she is writing. i might as well keep going. i definitely -- there is something to that. my brain has not kick in that early in the morning and it is easier to be creative. >> i would like to open it up to the audience for questions. there is a microphone. if you wouldn't mind coming. thank you.

>> it might not be on. is that on? in the back. there you go. we will repeat your question. [inaudible] therefore the family doesn't have [inaudible]

>> ok can i actually stopped you c right there because i know we are going to run out of time and i want to respond to lead up to the question that the book was a sort of frame does it wast was immoral the scientists get money and actually it is not. my -- consent didn't exist. it was standard practice. k make it clear in the it was standard practice to take cells from anybody. that was standard practice. [inaudible] >> question is, is this a really -- seems to meet the same structure that keeps you from getting health care has no problem getting consent, the price of everything goes up a little bit and it turns into the story turns into a question of monetizing everything. if i am an organ donor should i

insist i be paid for my organs? >> this offer comes up. a lot of their story, people made money off of these cells. where is our cut? these cells led to so much important medicine, why can't we go to the doctor? the question of what you monetize and who should profit off of biological materials is a big one and the discussion we are having as a culture is not just a question of should patients profit but should researchers profit and who is profiting and how do you deal with that and tell people people are profiting. there are a lot of big questions and it is the commercial of science in a bidding war moving science forward and i honestly think a lot of it in terms of other people who are very concerned about this. a lot comes down to the debate about health care. the lack of ability to go to the doctor has nothing to do with those cells.

it highlights this irony that sometimes people behind the -- can't get access to care. that is part of this discussion. should you commercialize science? the idea has always been everyone benefits from science, we owe it to do things like that. not everyone benefits. off in these samples are turned into products that go back to people that not everyone can afford. science is depending on people, should not everyone have access to that? that is part of the health-care debate. the story is about so much more than money. it is about privacy and the fact that people want to stay with their bodies. money is the center focus

because it is so -- >> if any of your books by going to be made into films. >> are any of us going to be made into films and the answer is yes. it is being made into an hbo money being produced by oprah. we are in the process of doing that right now. >> i agree narrative science writing makes it come alive. it is a great way to do it but i often wondered how you deal with the accuracy of the dialogue? you weren't there, there were no reporters running. how do you deal with it? >> those are lines that get blurred allotted narrative nonfiction writing. where do you draw the line? i am a purist about it. if it is in quotes it came directly from them, usually in that same dialect.

i don't ever paraphrase for them. i take it as it is. it comes from their personal material like diaries and letters. >> this is pretty frustrating for narrative nonfiction writers because people read narrative material and assume you were not there, you had to have made some of the up. you can reconstruct it accurately. this is why it took ten years to write the book. every narrative detail is verifiable right down to it was raining, the room looked like this. ose thingsre recreate. dialogue is more challenging. there is stuff that appears on paper and in my case medical records, journals and things like that were important. the opening scene of the book where she gets out of her car and walks up to the front counter of a hospital and says i have a knock on why will in, term medical record says patients says found tumor on

cervix. she did not walk up to the desk and say i have found a tumor on my cervix because that was not who she was. i interviewed all of her living relative is, everyone from that time and have them tell me the stories of what happened and the way they told the story is she said i got a knock >> they are direct quotes from the way were are reconstructed from the people who heard them. i fobbing to -- talk to the doctors and various people and verify them. there's moments in the story i wasn't there for all with multiple sources, and i would not say to them, did she say i have a knot on my woman. i just say tell me what happened, they all had the same toir #. when you hear the same story from five or six people, that's as accurate as you can get without any written documentation and i hired back checkers to back check the information. you know, so every single detail in the story is like that.

there's an assumption if it reads like fiction, it might be made up which is unfortunate. >> my question is mostly for molly, but i teach economics, another discipline struggling with education. what advice do you have in the educational process both in science and more general that you feel we need changes in college and high school teaching? >> actually, a lot say it's a shame that more kids aren't reading books like this in their science classes because i think especially for kids, high school age, college age, the huge stories, the connections are really what they take away from it. they remember the facts in connection with those people, and i'll often say i don't write about disease, but people who had a disease, so i think as far as education goes, kids would connect and learn better if they were given that kind of a

context, # -- a story to put those facts in. >> yeah, actually my book is being widely inducted in colleges and a lot of universities in the country and freshmen are required to read the book and medical schools and high schools required to read the book. i talk at universities and high schools now and that's exactly what the take home point from ail these kids really is, you know, this is the first science book -- i had a kid say to me last week say this is the first book i finished in my life. i hate science, but the stories got me through it. you know, in my case, the book is actually a lot is about the importance of education. i mean, her family had no access to education, and so many of the tramas that happened to them happened because they didn't understand what was going on and no one dried to ex-- tried to explain it to them. there's importance to access of education to the poor and for

minorities and i'm working on a young adult version for 10 to 14 year olds. i've seen so many kids excited about the book and getting a lot out of the science, asking important questions and i realize these are the future scientists, the ones who need to get the stories and their siblings come to my event and they want to read the book, but i'm 10, i'm rewriting it for them to get this up in schools and have the kids learn science. >> i gave a talk on yellow fever to a ceremony at the university of tennessee medical school and later a woman called and said i came in and a medical student was in the pew. we heard the story of yellow fever and the doctors who stayed in city and gave their lives in the course of medicine. that was one of the most rewarding experiences for me. >> we're being told we have to

stop. >> yeah, i'm so sorry, i think, we have just like two minutes left. i wonder if you could -- >> i'm very sorry. could you just in one minute say what's next? >> i signed on for my third book with an element of science writing in freenessic work and it's tracking down a group of jewel theef -- thief heist that took place in london. there's a lot of forensic and the psychological play between a thief and detective. to me it's still this, the story is like the film. it's taking over everything. i'm working on the young adult version and a consul at that particular -- consulting on the film. there's other things i'm working on, but i'm focusing on this and

talking at different yiefortses every -- universities every day. >> i can't tell you how much fun this has been for me. it was really a wonderful morning and a great way to kick off the festival, and i hope you'll join us in the book signing tent in about 15 minutes. [applause] tomorrow instead of our usual coverage of the british house of commons, we'll bring you analysis of the election results, the political muse outlet journal is hosting discussions with journalists and pundits about the results and what they mean for the country. live coverage begins at 8 a.m. eastern on c

span 2.

>> devra davis former in health and human services discusses her new book disconnect in georgetown university in washington, d.c.. it's an hour. [applause] >> it's really an honor to be with you today, and this is a very special day for me because it is a publication of a book that i never thought i'd be writing. we have a little echo here. i never imagined i'd write a book on a subject like this because five or six years ago when i heard cell phones could

be a problem, i thought that was ridiculous. i have a heavy user. i had three of them. i now have two. i thought this was a problem, we would know about it. then i began to look and as i looked, i got concerned about what i was learning. could cell phones really be unsafe? i didn't believe it. i didn't want to believe it. i'd been an early enthusiast of this technology and use it to stay in touch with my children and husband and can keep up with my grad students on the latest applications. i knew that most scientists were convinced like me it was impossible for radio frequency radiation from phones to have impact on human biology and there's an article today by a physicist who researched this again, and someone who spent my entire professional career in

this, i realized like the rest of us, science and scientists follow fads and fashion and what everyonements to believe turns out to be wrong. in nations like israel and finland where phones have been used heavily and longer had issued warning about cell phones, and i wanted to know why. that's why i opened the book talking about their grand children with their seat belts and car seats and all the protective elements we have for them, but now needing to protect their brains. i'll walk you through cell phones and what we know about them. >> could you raise your microphone? this one? >> yeah. >> okay. >> thank you. , the title of the book is disconnect, and we'll talk about

four major disconnects. most people don't know that cell phones are small microwave radios and they have never been tested for safety, never. most people don't know that cell phone radiation can be damaging. we assume it's harmless. in fact, i'm going to go with you today through very briefly some of the scientific evidence that's been developed by countries outside of the united states as well as by scientists working at a number of institutions. some here and often times those scientists who came up with research findings that industries didn't like, found themselves without funding shortly there after. i'll talk about models of the brain and evidence that cell phones can damage our dna not by heat, but other means and hiewsm studies -- human studs that -- studies show harm. other things that company issue

fine print warnings, but we know nothing about that. industry, finally, has fostered confusion that permits in technology. never fear, i think we can use cell phones more safely, and i think we need to put our faith in the ability of technology to lead us out of the problem that has been created. now, let's take a moment and look at what the spectrum is. it ranges all the way from here with very, very low frequencies of lights and electricity that powers our homes up to gama rays and x-rays, the things you can't see that we know can be lethal. there's no debate x-rays can be lethal. what about the stuff in the middle? you see radio waves and ray radar. they are all at a similar spectrum, and it turns out that that spectrum is perfect for

having effect on human biology. i'll tell you how the cell phone got invented. the first radar range oven, and that's a picture on your right, had a water cooling system, weighed 700 pounds, cost as much as two cars, and operated at 1.9 megahertz. people didn't like the word radar range. [laughter] it was in fact the case that young sailors during the war figured out they could warm themselves by standing in front of the radar, and in fact they got warm from the inside out. it was not a good idea. microwave ovens operated at 2.4 megahertz and they boil water in two minutes today. cell phones operate at a similar

bandwidth, 1.9 to 2.4 megahertz on less than 1 watt of power, but are used for hours a day, hours a day. now when the radar range was renamed radar ovens in 1972, there were hot and cold spots. if you put a frozen turkey in the oven, you had overdone meat in one section and cold stuff in the other. how many of you remember that? there were the cold spots. the solution was to use a turntable to rotate the food. that's why all microwaves have turntables today. you can't rotate your head when you use your phone for hours a day. the progress of phones have been phenomenal. they are now smaller, faster, and more powerful. the first phones were not

portable and used several watts of power. smart phones today weigh a few ounces and use pulled digital signals with a tent of a watt or a little more. they are much faster and much less powerful in the amount of energy they need to use. what's the problem? well, the brain absorbs radio frequency radiation, and this model shows the parts of the brain. notice the frontal lobe there, and this is a side cut of the human brain, radiation we know reaches twice as far into smaller head than in a larger head. these imaged were developed in scene of this accident when he was -- 1996 when he was working for the cell phone industry. i tell his story in my book. he trained most of the people who do this work throughout the world. industry wasn't too comfortable with this finding because he issued a warning. he said, you know, i think we

need to rethink what we are doing for children because we get twice as much exposure into the young brain, and the young brain is not just smaller than ours. the skulls are thinner, there's more fluid and can absorb radiation into the brain. the content is a measure of absorption and electricity of the care is one. the constant of adult brains is perhaps 30 to 40. the content of a child's brain can be 80, so a child's brain will absorb more electricity as we know that the child's brain is sensitive to all sorts of things. we know that led exposure in the first two years of life can cause permanent damage to children years later, so the question i began to ask is what about radio frequency radiation, and in the book i tell the stories of trying to understand these complicated models and

sitting with an engineering book and electric book on the other trying to understand it. i'm pretty ignorant about electricity, or at least i was because there's no training program or research underway. there's no way to support looking into this question with experts who understand it. in fact, motorola cut its own research program a year and a half ago and the federal government was told to study frequency radiation and its ability to cause cancer in the year 2000. that study is starting this year is will be finished in 2014. let's talk about the cell phone standards in terms of what we know about the brain. this guy on the left is sam, the big guy. actually, the top 10 percentile in military recruits and weighed

288 pounds. his head weigh 11 pounds. the cell phones were tested how long they could be used without warming the head, six minutes back then. when cell phones were not used heavily and to those people using them were mostly in fact men. the average height of the world person today is five feet seven. sam is over 6 feet tall and weighs over 200 pounds. if you look at the difference there you see on the right, you see the head of a child, and this is 1800 megahertz, the newer phones, and that's 900 megahertz, the point is the radiation gets into the brain, and we have millions of children using cell phones today, three out of every four 12 year olds has a cell phone today. the standards were set for the

big guy brain and we have millions of children using cell phones. that's the first disconnect. with 4 billion phones in use and some people having more than one, fewer than one in ten users have heads the size of sam at 6 foot tall. here actually are models that have been developed, and you can see from the models, that's sam, look at the difference in them, and they're not just different in size, they are different in the thickness of the skull and the amount of fluid, and the more fluid in something, the more it can absorb frequency signals. dna is at the heart of every living cell and without it, we wouldn't be here. it's constructed with double helixes, and they can be damaged and get repaired because we have inherited the ability to repair

ourselves. that's the good news story here. it's not too late with what i'm going to tell you. i'm going to show you now some of the evidence that pulsed digital signals can damage dna. modern agents, some of which are familiar to you here, create free radicals. free radicals are like the cougars of the body, they go wherever they can and break up whatever they can and cause a lot of damage. we know ultraviolet light is one, tobacco will cause that, and radiopulsed radiation can do this as can radar. studies on this have been carried out largely in europe by teams of researchers funded by the european union by a program called the reflex program, a $5 million study, carried out by these different laboratories

throughout europe, and when they first got the results, the researchers thought they had made a measurement mistake because they new the general belief was it's impossible for cell phone radiation to damage dna, the physics are it's impossible. the head of this team was sure of it. he took the money to show what he thought was the case, and when he got the results that showed this, the first time he got the results, he actually sent them back. the second time he got the result, he sent them back. the third time he gots results, he bought new equipment. he really didn't believe this could be possible, but let me explain this. on the left here is healthy dna. it's intact, the whole double helix is together. on the right is what happens with ga measuring a rays. here -- gamma rays and here is what happens with a cell phone, and

when he first got those results, he didn't believe them, now he does, and he has had an interesting experience in dealing with the consequences of that belief because what happened was the fellow who did this work was basically supported by the european union which was encouraged to give him money by the cell phone industry because this man had a reputation of being a bit of a company man. his previous position was director of researcher for the tobacco industry. [laughter] but he was a nuisance to the tobacco industry because he produced findings he didn't like. he actually developed research showing that tobacco can cause cancer and he didn't know that his work would hit the kind of snags that the tobacco rearmingers had because he --

researchers had because he believed science really would rule the day. he really believed it, so i'm going to read you a section from the chapter that some people tells me reads like a hollywood film. it's called the doctor who danced with the devil. he didn't know that years earlier studies had shown dna damage from cell phones. when efforts were starting to undermind the findings of his project, he recognized them for what they were. he never imagined he would find himself subject to the same attacks that the tobacco industry carried out for years against its critics. he had a strange sort of self-understanding throughout his career. he recognized that the tobacco industry on some level didn't really care about what he was doing. they were buying complexity as a way to stave off regulatory actions and speedometer, so long as his own work was in fact truly independent and scientifically grounded, he felt

no moral feelings about carrying it out, but the cell phone story is different. he had grandchildren and reached a moment in his career in the position to retire to a very pleasant life, but he could not leave in disgrace because he knew something others did not. he knew that the work carried out on dna damage caused by frequency radiation was firmly established. he suspected foul play between the swift and public efforts to charge him with fraud. i then describe what happened, and i basically have recently found out that the fraud with which he was charged was itself a fraud, and it was perpetuated by a scientist who claimed to be an independent analyst. he failed to mention that for years he received millions of fundings from the program, 8.5

million euros to be precise. that's a lot of money that can have a lot of influence as you know. now, other work has been done in greece at the university of athens, one the leading laboratories, and they have shown that the blood-brain barrier can be weakened by exposure to cell phone radiation. think about that. the reason for this research was it was originally started by neurosurgeons who wanted to get chemotherapy into the brain. it's hard to do that when you have a brain tumor, so if you can weaken the barrier of the brain, you can get the therapy into the brain they thought. that's why they did the research, not because they were studying cell phones, but because they were trying to show whether or not you can weaken the blood-brain barrier. you can see leer on your -- here on your left, they were

able to do so. that's the weakened blood-brain barrier, and the other is the intact. now, i said in other disconnect is human studies. let me be clear with you. human studies are complex and costly. think about it. the last een deem logic study in the united states on cell phone and health was published in 2002, 2002. obviously, that was analyzing the use of cell phones by the small minority of people who had them them, but few people used phones heavily when this work was done, and cancer is not the only outcome of interest. i want to show you what's wrong with the conclusions you see in the headlines. you see in the headlines cell phones don't cause cancer. well, here's why. after the atomic bombs were dropped in japan, there was no increase in brain tumors in the survivers until 40 years later.

it took 40 years. most studies of cell phones do not find an increase in brain cancer until at least ten years of heavy use. all right. all the studies looking at people who used phones heavily for ten years do find a risk. do we really want to wait until we have a major epidemic? isn't the purpose of public health to prevent harm rather than to prove it's already taking place? now, the inner phone study, the world health organization study found no overall increased risk. the average user in that study used a phone for two hours a month, two hours a month for seven years or less. how many of you use your phones for two hours a day. i think quite a few people according to the statistics, it's a large number of young

people. they found risk was in connection withed only after a decade of use and heavy use was defined as 15 hours a month, now the average use is 14 hours a month so obviously the lack of human evidence should not make us feel that we don't have a problem. we have to ask have we learned nothing since what happened with tobacco? human studies are problematic. we need to do them, but we should not make the absence of definitive human evidence a ground for continuing to act as if cell phones were perfect. there is a disconnect between what we know from studies of long term users and what we see in how we use phones today. we act as if they are completely benign, and yet we have growing evidence they may not be, and technology and use patterns are

changing, so we've got to take precautions. let me show you a little bit of the human evidence that we have in all the references for the book can be found online. this is a very rare tumor i'll show you at the check. in the past six years they have trip tripled in israel. one in five is occurring in someone under the age of 20, and the israeli dental association issued a warning about cell phones. this is the site, remember the models, this is the site of the tumors, and they are one in five now under 20. the israeli organization is concerned, and so am i and they posted warnings about the safe use of cell phones. other studies have been done in seven different countries all showing a reduction in sperm count with those men who don't use a cell phone having twice

the sperm count as those who use phones for four hours a day which in the cleveland study in 2008 there were quite a few of them, but this was not one study in one clinic. these are many different studies around the world today, but we don't hear about them. there's a disconnect between the way young men are using cell phones and what we know from this research. in fact, these are the precautions that now appear on the websites of the federal commission and fda and american cancer society as of september 2010. if you are concerned about radiation, use an ear piece or headset, avoid continually wearing a wireless ear piece, and we have brochures that are available, and anyone who wants to give them away, we have some here to give to young parents who need to know it's not a good idea to down load white noise so

your babies will go to sleep or give your child an iphone hooked to the radio fright sigh wireless and let them play to themselves one fish two fish, and those things are being done now. we need to let parents know and the world know that there are safer ways to use cell phones considering texting rather than talking, and of course, don't text when you drive. you can do something radical. limit the amount of time you talk on the phone or do something more radical, turn your phone off so that you get calls when you want to be called instead of being in a state of interruption and emergency. doubt creation remains its own industry. you have seen the story in tobacco. we know the same story applies with asbestos and some

pharmaceutical products as well. here the disconnect nobody told you about. in 1972 allen fray, a naval researcher showed that pulse microwaves affected cellular resonance. that's how we all operate as part of being alive. they demonstrated that cell phone-like radiation damaged brain dna by affects resonance, and industry's response was to war game it. they said, well, this raises interesting questions about possible effects, it's our understanding there's too many questions to draw a conclusion. these are of questionable relevance and run counter to other studies. this is a memo outloin --

outlining a strategy. they went to the journal editor that accepted the article and asked him to unaccept the paper. they wrote to washington and nih seeking to have the funding revoked which for a scientist is being accused of the worst crime in the world, and they concluded, and this is a quote from the moment moe," i think we war gamed the issue assuming the advisory group and the communication association have done their homework." that was the response. well, i submit this is too important an issue for games, and it's not about a war. what they did next was to hire a new scientist to discredit. they hired jerry philips. there was a problem. phillips showed that lai and

singh were right, and now they no longer work in the field. their funding dried up. that's one disconnect between science and cell phones. the rerng i show -- the research i showed you of the dna damage, those circles, that was done by investigators and they were charged with fraud, a vienna study was headlined around the word, science magazine, fraud admitted. the provost of the university went quickly, yes, we're wrong and asked the researchers to destroy their data which made the man i just read to you about very suspicious. well, it takes a long time, but eventually often truth comes out. just this month, the oxford university in court rulings

declared the fraud itself was a fraud, but the damage has been done. those investigators lost all their funding while accused of fraud, so the research has not gone forward, and i submit it's a very important question that we need more answers to at this point. now the advice, how do you protect your family? france, finland, and israel, 12 countries say these are the things you can do to reduce radiation. the advice is simple, use a speakerphone and don't keep the phone on on your body or use it in areas of weak signals. we need to limit children's use of phones next to the brain. texting it okay. now, this is what happened in france in 2008. billboards, this is what we need to see in the united states as well. it says cell phones before 12

years of age is no, no way. keep them healthy away from mobile phones. now the french government passed restrictions on cell phones out of both houses banning advertising to children under 12, banning the design of phones to be used by those under 6, and hand sets are sold with all phones in france. you don't have to buy them and lose them, and an official campaign to discourage the use of children was carried out the president's cancer panel, and this is president george w. bush's panel issued a report the true burden of cancer is grossly underestimated and recommended long term monitoring and quantityification of electromagnetic energy exposures related to cell phones and wireless technology, and that's the same advice the national academy of science issued on the subject. we have lots of advice and a

full research program developed at an expert congress that we testified before the house and senate about, but there's no shortage of ideas, just a shortage of public will and understanding of the problem. that's why i wrote this book. i'm concerned about the marketing that is taking place in our country to 5-year-olds. they need their parents. if they are in an emergency, i don't think a cell phone is going to help them. let's look at what other kinds of christian ads in past time we had to deal with. believe it or not, this is an ad for babies on smoking. before you scold me mom, light up a smoke. this is another ads. remember sports heros and physicians boasted it was okay to smoke and it was a good idea for awhile. now, i want to raise another issue. we know now that the smoking forces made good use of

disinformation and the book thank you for smoking made into a movie included the story of people who had a difficult job. they had to sell people on smoking, drugs, and alcohol. they got together for lunch and got themselves the mod squad standing for merchants of death. in the last scene of the movie, it's quite interesting. this is the last scene veer verbatim. "gentleman, practice these words in front of the mirror. although we are constantly exploring the subject, currently, there is no direct evidence that links cell phone usage to brain cancer. " that was in a dark comedy written by a brilliant writer. this is the current response. this is what the cell phone industry said in 1993 about the

possible dangers of cell phone radiation. more than 10,000 studies show that cell phones are safe. there were not 10,000 studies then. in fact, there are fewer than a thousand studies on cell phone radiation according to the german resource i cite here. research is an excuse not to change policy. fast forward to 2010 and the golden gate opens. san fransisco's mayor proposed a really radical idea. you should have the ability to find out how much radiation your cell phone emits before you buy it instead of after. it's called the right to know. well, the cti objects and filed a lawsuit against the city for trying to do this saying it's going to confuse people. i'm honored to have representative bowland here today, the woman who first put this issue on the map for the country by proposing warning labels on cell phones in the

state of maine. at that hearing held by the state of maine, when asked why fine print warnings come with phones now, they replied, we'll get back to you. it's six months later, and we want to know the answer. i think i can give you a little clue. i know you can't see this very well, but i want to show you the size of the print. that's the fine print warning. that's my book. this is what it says. i don't think you can read it in the back. i'll read it to you. iphones measurements may exceed the fcc exposure guidelines if positioned less than 15 millimeters from the body, e.g. when carrying iphone in your pocket. well, you guys, there's a new style for man bags or fannie packs because the iphone says

you can't safely keep it in your pocket. that's good advice. this is in all new smart phones, and our website includes all these fine print warnings. you can fine them there. this was yesterday's "washington post". this is to reduce distracting driving deaths and accidents. every day there's a new horror story. a surgeon in people magazine went off the cliff while tweeting and died. there's incredible stories of the arrogance of people. everyone thinks he's above average. everyone thinks it will never happen to me, i'm no controlment i know what i'm doing. well, the short term impacts of cell cell phones we are seeing legislation in 20 states about this okay on distracted driving which is like driving drunk, but the long term impacts of cell phones on our health is something that representatives

and growing numbers of people are concerned about and the major of jacksonhole, wyoming declared october safety cell phone awareness month. we have a campaign for safer cell phones. many of my colleagues members of the chamber are joining in giving free headsets to their employees who use a cell phone for business. numbers of universities are doing that as well. the campaign for safer cell phones i invite you to join. we describe it in the book and the advice is very simple. the world is not danger because of those who do harm, but because of those who look at it without doing anything, and i'm going to read just one final passage from my book. on one of the last morningings finning up the writing of the book i was called on a conference call.

they are not brain scientists, but businessmen. one was a fresh dock rat in mathematics and the other is an attorney and one the first person from his family to go to college. i imagined some very proud parents. when i was doing my research at mit, i figured out there's a way to reduce the amount of radiation going into the brain from out of the phone,. jeff played football and before getting badly hurt, he developed headaches that didn't go away until using an ear piece. it could be a coincidence, but he didn't think so. he talked with others on making a safer phone. he thought it couldn't be good for you to hold a microwave radio next to your brain. we know cell phones are here to

stay. we are going to make them safer and reduce radiation into the head and increase the amount -- decrease the amount going out. others are working on safer phones. despite our growing dependency on phones, it makes no sense to continue assuming that today's phones are safe based on standards created for big guys who didn't use them very much when curcht technologies did not -- current technologies didn't exist. one thing is clear, cell phones have become essential to mod -- modern life as cars and planes. we spend billions to make transportation safer for us. we need to do the same thing with cell phones. rather than parenting assurances of saist based on old science and bullied scientists, we need to invest in cell phone safety like we do with other technologies. of course, more rearming is

needed -- research is needed. we agree on that, but the need for research should not be an excuse to carry on as though everything is fine until we have proof that it is not. yes, we do not have an epidemic of brain tumors who used cell cell cell phones heavily used, but after ten years of tobacco, there was not an increased risk. our children will ask do we protect them or harm them irresponsibly and get blinded by the delights of our technology age? i have to say i'm very grateful to dr. herbarman who helped me set this up. we are now working on environmental health trust because we think we face a

potential global public health catastrophe that can be averted by taking simple steps. the science tells us there's a problem, and we're foolish to ignore that science. dr. herberman is a tech and is here to make remarks on what we have done at the center and what we are doing now. thank you. [applause] >> i'm very pleased to have the opportunity to say a few words. just essentially to echo what devra davis has so electromagnetic -- explained to you. she told me two and a half years ago or so when we were both the the cancer institute that she was concerned about the health

effects of cell phones. when she did that, i was very skeptical and thought aren't there more things to be concerned about than cell phones. she said, you know, you should look into it, and i had the opportunity to meet one the leaders from the national institute of environmental health sciences who told me that he had looked into it and was involved in a panel to examine some of the data and felt there was really something to it, and that particularly propelled me to begin to examine the information, and the more that i read about it, the more concerned that i had not that there was compelling or cop collusive *e6d -- conclusive evidence, but there was a number of hipts that were dis-- hints that were disturbing.

the ability of this range of radiation to damaged dna is still a bit perplexing on how that happens although the free radical possibility is perhaps the best one that's been put forward so far, but that's not clear. then the decrease in sperm counts just to make it clear the reason it was focused on in men, these are people who keep their cell phones in their front participants pocket, and therefore are fairly close to where sperm production goes on. the data which i reviewed very carefully and talked to various experts in the field overall don't give a very positive signal, but what has really struck me is that in every study that had a significant number of

subjects that were examined that had been using cell phones frightly for more than ten years, there is a signal about an increased risk. that led me about two years ago when i was the director of the university of pittsburgh cancer institute to send out an advisory memo to our faculty and staff saying i reviewed the data recently and i'm concerned and although it's still unclear, i advise them to follow what i think is a very important prips pl, mainly the precautionary principle that if you don't know and there's some concern, do something to prevent rather than wait until there is conclusive evidence. i sent out an advisory to our staff in ten points nicely summarized by devra davis in her

book and talk to keep your cell phone away from your head, and particularly i was concerned because of this increased absorption in kids to really avoid or limit the use of cell phones by children. sin i put out that -- since i put out that advisory, there was publication now from a very distinguished epidemiologist in sweden that followed teenagers who started using cell phones in sweden and had used them for ten years or more, and for that group, there was a five-fold ink in risk for brain tumors compared to ones what didn't use it, and that just in connection in connection increased my level of concern. i applaud her for sounding the alarm and doing what you can in a variety of ways to help prevent a potential calamity.

i'm a clinical oncologist by training, and i feel very strongly that this is a terrible disease particularly on malignant brain tumors, and should we wait another 10 or 20 years before it's conclusive to send the alarms out about how it should be used or rather to take simple precautions, i strongly believe that what i did a couple years ago is the right thing, and i feel more so now than i did at the time i put it out, so i also applaud andrea boland for taking this into the legislative arena, and i hope you get it passed soon. [applause] >> andrea boland is fiercely int -- independent and has been

effective on taking on this issue, and we met a few years ago, and i think i can say at this point she's done more to bring this issue forward in the political arena so people in wyoming, philadelphia, california, and san fransisco are all looking to the concerns that she first raised, and i'll ask her to tell you a little bit about what she did, and then we'll have an opportunity for some questions. >> thank you and thank you everyone from georgetown university. this is really a wonderful day because this book when you read it, you'll see is absolutely remarkable. we have here a scientist who is willing to risk issues of her own career to speak out on subjects that others have not

had the strength to do so, and she's telling a story for both scientists and average people so that we read the stories of some of the people who have been important in this whole research and issue raising realm. she tells it in such an interesting way, such a compelling way and delivers a lot of information. i think she's really done a wonderful, wonderful service for all of us because most of the folks that i associate with like myself are not scientists. we're not experts. i am a legislature from maine, and i've been concerned about health and wellness and prevention and what can we do to not have problems, so when i got on to this issue and started realizing all the information

that was out there, i was astonished, and i started talking to people who had names on these materials, and i felt like i just stepped into another world because most of the folks i knew knew nothing about this whole issue, and yet here was these stellar scientists and intelligents who understood it down to the last electron. obviously, i wasn't going to understand things to that degree, but i represent the people of a town in maine named samford, it's an average town with working people, some upper class people, some people we have to help along. it's just a regular maine time, former milling town, and they are good people there and care about their families and turn out for the events of their

children, and these are the people who elected me to office to represent them. when i discovered the kind of information available frustrate work these scientists had done, it just was so surprising to me that it had not been on the public radar screen at all, and beyond that, the government had not taken any steps at all to tell us, to warn us, so it became apparent to me that it would be very good to just put a warning label on these devices that everyone is using. this is the warning label that we came up with. it's pretty simple. it says what the case is, that the electromagnetic radiation exposure may cause brain cancer and it's smart to keep it away from your head and body. that really astounded people when they saw that.

what? this can't be. everybody uses a cell phone. certainly, weed -- we'd know. that wasn't the case. i brought this warning label and asked for it to be passed by our legislature, and we had a short session, and it didn't get passed, but the amount of the information that got covered because of that covered in all the states in the union and other states were contacting me. the bottom line to me as a representative of maine people and of anyone that we can't go on not telling our people about this terrible danger that they are inviting by putting cell phones to their heads, and young people planning to have children not understanding that if they hold that cell phone close to the area where the fetus is

growing could damage their child before it's even born, and this is the kind of study that we're seeing. now, if maine in a small population state with 1.3 million, but that's still a lot of people, and out of that population, about 950,000 or more have cell phones. i venture to say that probably not 5% of them have really focused on this issue until i brought it forward to the help of these wonderful scientists that appeared on the doorstep and really with stunning testimony to give, but 750,000 people -- 950,000 people using cell phones without knowing that they could be damaging their own brains and those of their children and

other loved ones. we have a small number for some places, but 15,000 babies being born and their parents not knowing they could be damaging them by holding them in their arms and holding a cell phone at the same time. these things concern me, and when this legislation was brought to maine, i conferred with the attorney general's office to see if the bill was written in a proper way, and they found it was and we had a discussion. what i was told at the time the industry had already been to see them and let them know that the state of maine would be sued if this legislation passed. this is a multitrillion dollar industry threatening one of the smallest states in the union. that didn't affect the thinking of the attorney general's office. they were back and they would defend it in any sense that they

needed to, but that's what we face, and perhaps for that reason it's not surprising that the bill didn't pass. it had first passed and the governor said he didn't want it pass and the they studied it for three weeks. what problem could there be there, but this is the problem we have today. good people not speaking when they see that there's a problem are not or are not willing to accept the fact that as was said we need to exercise the precautionary principle, and use our brains to figure out that maybe it's sensible to get the information out there and let people be cosh in their -- cautious in their use of cell phones. thank you very much for permitting me to speak. [applause]

.. and >> we are going to start our question and answer period. we will have about 15 minutes, and as we mentioned, the books are available for purchase, and dr. davis will be available in sure for a short conversation following the talk, too. the procedure we are going to use is that i have a mic here, and because this is being taped, if you will raise your hand and we will recognize you, we would like you to please state your name and your affiliation before you ask a question of dr. davis. i saw a hand over here. >> dr. davis, i [inaudible] professionals washington, d.c. and i have gotten wise to the dangers of cell phones and

radiation in the last two months, and first thing i want to say to you is thank you, god bless you for the work you're doing. it's been a tremendous help to a concerned father. [inaudible] however here is the thing i want to ask you. your work is incredibly important but i'm not sure if you would agree [inaudible] cell phones handle statistics just on the screen [inaudible] we are being very bombarded up this very second all over georgetown, every public school in fairfax county, virginia is wi-fi. we noted just last week the fcc reported it's probably going to make a decision within days over the so-called white spaces of radio frequency that will enable the telecom industry to wi-fi 500 sq ft areas.

[inaudible] if you take all the steps you take and incorporate them into your lives, how do we deal with this larger pervasive issue wi-fi, etc.. it is an enormous issue. where do we start? >> you know, i have to say i am not as informed on this issue as i will become, okay? fighting we start with the realization that we don't need to have all of the world made safe for wi-fi. there are some people who feel they may be sensitive to this. this is proven to be a very difficult thing to study. they're really has to read and i think that as i am sure you are just starting to get into this issue there are groups that have

developed information on this, and they can provide you with better information than i can to read but it gets down to the basic right to know, and the presumption that there is no biological fact i think is questionable, and margaret mead once said the only thing that really affects a democracy is when a group of concerned people get together to work on an issue and i think this is an example of one, and while i am not well informed on this issue at this time, i would agree with you this is the tip of the iceberg. i started out with the issue for one simple reason. there is nobody that is going to tell me that it is a good idea to hold a microwave radio next to my granddaughter's head, and if somebody likes to tell me that i would like to see that person. it's not a good idea. and moreover, there is a whole set of social, emotional and spiritual issues being raised about shortened intentions and an electronic occasion of our

lives is doing to the dinner table. you have all gone out to restaurants, whether they are fast food or nice ones and ravee sitting their like this. and what's considered sinful behavior is totally transformed. people will think nothing of talking to you, and working on their phone at the same time. on contact, empathy, all of those things are on the table. so i appreciate your concern. i think that you are doing the right thing to become informed, and i am focusing on this issue because this one is clear. it's clear and it's something you can do something about. now, wireless has radically improved our ability to do things in medicine in terms of transmitting x-ray is long distances in terms of a lot of good things. so what i am betting on again, and i've had conversations with electrical engineers, is that there are safer designs for towers. there are safer ways to transmit information. fiber-optic would be what i would be bidding on over the wireless in many cases, and i think we need to work together, and frankly there needs to be a

level playing field of getting the information and there isn't one. thank you. >> [inaudible] mitigate the radiation from cell phones [inaudible] my question is the advocacy -- are there any champions on the hill or efforts out there now that light on a national basis [inaudible] >> will come in my book i document the sort of pattern

that has gone on for about 20 years of congressional hearings, gao reports that call for more research and other hearings, and there is a proposal that i made. i testified before the u.s. senate and before arlen specter and tom harkin, and i joked that it actually was a partisan hearing because i started talking to our inspector when he was a republican and testified before him before he can a democrat. although he is going to be leading the senate soon. and at that hearing, we talked about the fact that there needed to be massive funding and training and research for this area. i know alford is a very distinguished engineer and i anderson and this is an excess of what i write about at the last segment of my book. i think there will be some opportunity. on the other hand, if you're in device works by redirecting it, then you're free directing it away from me, it may be right into my 3-year-old grandchild. so we need to think about how we

handle these things in a very broad way. and i have no doubt that it can be done. and congress, what i testified is we need a dollar per phone fee on every felon for five years, and that will provide us with the amount of money that we need to train engineers and scientists to do the work that has to be done and though that is a broad public policy initiative which is why i am excited to be talking about it here at the school of service because i think this issue cuts across every nation. it really does. it's one that gets to the core of what if we are as a people in terms of how we use science for public policy, and do we wait until we have definitive proof like we did with tobacco or asbestos or to be act, and i think we need massive funding for training and research and there are some champions on the hill. unfortunately, from my point of you, senator specter will not be

there. senator harkin remains interested in the there are a number of members of the house as well isi think all of you know there are numbers of priorities in the congress right now. for most people is getting elected and after that we will have an opportunity to revisit this issue. perhaps even when they come back after the november elections and i will be happy to talk with you more about that. .. people who considers myself sensitive to the organization, wireless mediation. just so people know [inaudible] the entire body of radiation and and a wonder how that is helpinghe

someone holding a cell phone up, to their head. sprigg that's a very good question. one research team in sweden cannot and designed these really kind of de luxe cages where they could sort of keep their heade propped and have a cell phone to the brain and you're absolutely right if you are doing a whole body exposure is if any storeboy you can slide the tail off of the rest because it doesn't have much tissue just a little cartilage and that by the way is one of tshe other things, oura hands and ears of course being was the cartilage you're not hereg to g et the tumor is developing here because youha don't have as much soft tissue.i soft tissue full of fluid is a thing we have to be concerned abou t is earthing that we have to be concerned about. the rat studies, we study rats because we are trying to prevent harm in people. that's why we do it.

and the fact is it's an imperfect approach. but it's been delayed already a decade. i know the investigators are trying to come up with a perfect way to model the cell cell phone exposure. you are right, whole body exposure isn't going to get you that. i brought this for a reason. because this is part of my discussion with dr. herberman with ongoing. we don't know the mechanism that causes cancer. but the mechanism by which cell phones may be affecting us maybe this. listen for a moment. that's resonance. all right? that's what our bodies are going all the time. your riding an airplane, or in a car or in a bus. you are resonating and the bus is resonating like this.

you can read or work on your labtop or write. if suddenly the bus on the plane stops and starts, stops and starts, you can't read, you lose. if your normal resonance is disrupted by on and off signals all the time, that'll be the way that dna is getting damaged. now through the breaking of iconic bonds, a classical approach that happens in x-rays. the theory of resonance needs to be pursued. i don't know if they are able to do that at nhis. when you have this kind of resonance and you stop it and start it, you are interfering with normal healthy cells, homeostasis, the condition out of which life we evolved. we came from the microwave world. i will leave you with one other passage that struck me as

amazing. how much microwave radiation we had at the beginning of the world so to speak? microwave radiation was around with the big bang. we know that because the scientist that received the noble prize in 1974, robert wilson, got it for discovering the cosmic microwave that supported the theory of the big bang that occurred about 15 billion years ago. this explosive radiation and energy gave rise to all of the wonders in nature and civilization that we observe today. it's sobering to think that the microwaves found in the world and spewed from that expotion are billions of times less freak than those emitted by the planets, cell phones, and other devices today. i think it's something to think about. thank you.

[applause] [applause] >> next on booktv. a look at the relationship between two american founding fathers in the book "madison and jefferson." >> tomorrow instead of our usual coverage of the british house of commons, we'll bring you analysis of the election results. we will be hosting discusses eith journalist about test

voluntary statute. there's nothing voluntary about the bible reading. former president james madison and thomas jefferson are examined in the andrew bursteinn and nancy isenberg's new book,do madison and jefferson.e they were recently invited to

speak of jefferson's home at monticello in charlottesville, virginia.me this is ani hour. >> a good afternoon. my name is andrew, i am the director of the robert h. schmidt international center for jefferson studies here at monticello. it is my pleasure to welcome andrew burstein and nancy isenberg for the launch of their doint book, "madison and n jefferson," published by random house. they are both professors ofare history at the louisiana statebh university. andrew has written widely on thh early 19th centuries and his son to books on jefferson. b jefferson secrets jefferson. "jefferson's secret" which was published in 2005, and "the inner jefferson" published in

1995. nancy earlier published on the origins of the women's rights movement in america in a book called "sex and the citizenship in america." andrew and nancy are old time friends of the thomas jefferson foundation. they are both former fellows and residents. they are known to many members of this audience. i'm delighted to welcome them back. please join me in welcoming andrew and nancy. [applause] [applause] >> within days of taking office of the fourth president of the united states, james madison received a letter from rebecca, a well educated philadelphiaian,

one of the gent of folk of that city. he asked him to start with an act of kindness. to pardon someone living in london. he unloaded on a friend of madison. i despise your predecessor too much to petition from him. heaven forbid i should place myself in a light of an inferior to thomas jefferson. a political is weak and wicked. the shifting, shuffling visionary. an old woman, a wretch without nerve, pardon me sir, my pen does a strange trick. although i often caution it, it will tell all of the secrets of

my heart. they sparred each other. madison and jefferson was a remarkably relationship. something rebecca didn't get. people perceived him as independent, not dependent on madison. she would not approach with so blunt of an opinion unless she thought she had a chance of getting through. this exposes one of the parts of our central theme, which is easy enough to identify if you look at the title and see who gets top billing. in every historic treatment that describes their partnership, jefferson has received most of the attention, positive and negative. madison descends to us as an emotional neutral actor. it's a false portrait. true, jefferson was and replains -- remains thoroughly

fascinating. madison has been diminished in stature. maybe that's a play on word, he was 5'4", and skinny. this is physical stature has been used against him, they called him little jimmy and called jefferson tall tommy. reducing masters by giving them slave names. we see them equal. our book shows that madison was a leading partisan, not a zealot, but a forceful advocate. he took on hamilton before jefferson did. in the 1790s, he's the first leader of the democratic republican party. while jefferson stayed back and did his politics over dinner and through private correspondence, madison wrote strong pieces in the press. does that make jefferson

secretive or dexterous? well, both. it's how their world worked. both madison and jefferson came to believe that political progress was best arranged in secret. madison was no boy scout. he was no wall flower. the dull cerebral madison. our book is a drama and a dual biography. many individuals who modern americans have never encountered, but whom all of the headliners paid keen attention to. virginians, such as edmund pendleton, william jones a merchant sea captain who became secretary of the navy under madison. they all matter. they all carried influence.

we speak to that part of the founding area which the popular imagination has occurred. we open with the line madison and jefferson were country gentleman who practiced hardball politics in a time of intolerance. as much as theirs was an age of enlightened pop -- proposition, if the founders have been said to be geniuses, they studied the history of government. they recognized american government would always be torn by clashes of opinion. they had to withstand the unavoidable clashes. what the founders did not anticipate was that strict party organizations would form. they did not even see the need for president and vice president to campaign as a ticket. whoever received the second most votes became vice president. in the supremely ranker of

1790s, the opinion makers protested what they called the spirit of party. fashionism. they said they had no reliability for it. one reason is the counting stories of triumph draw upon the fashion by the participates themselves and the generation born during and just after the revolution. both wish to be known as a positive message. but what really thinks american politics was a game played by sue people your gentleman in fashionable wigs? the founders were motivated by local as much as national interest and fear as much as hope. that localism is another key theme in our book.

rhetoric aside, they weren't sure if the glass was half empty or half full. the america put itself on course three years before the civil war. >> generation of mistakers have glossed over one the central realities about the founders. like their peers in new york, in massachusetts, in pennsylvania, james madison and thomas jefferson were virginians first. and americans second. if we were to understand the revolution in it's aftermath, knowing the virginians is critical. into the 1780s, virginia claimed all of the land west of the mississippi on the basis of the 1609 jamestown charter. virginia best legal mind suck scribed. this included madison and jefferson. the revolution virginia belonged

to land syndicates, investing in land they had never seen. it's not insignificant that after writing the declaration of independence, jefferson was anxious to return home and take the lead in writing his state's constitution. virginia was his priority. virginians fought big. the planter lee had expansive plans. half of the land of the state was owned by less than 1/10 of the white population, and nearly 40% of the people were enslaved. virginia tobacco represented 40% of the what the 13 colonies exported to great britain. but tobacco destroyed the soil. so they looked westwood. these people were madison's jefferson's prime constituency. the fathers of madison and jefferson both invested in the loyal land company which claims a million acres.

virginiaians had to have kentucky. the continental congress finally recognized their claim in the critical year of 1776. at the constitutional convention, madison led the delegation in defending virginia's right. he wanted to make virginia the preeminent state in the union. he told the supportive george washington, the smaller states should be made in his words subordinately useful. madison disliked small d democracy. he had encountered state legislatures whom he considered unenlightened. he watched as they were easily swayed by the oratory of patrick henry. madison identified. henry in 1785. henry had every last reform and policy that he and jefferson championed. madison feared demagoguey.

he identified henry with demagoguey. jefferson always saw tyranny at the top of the political hierarchy, until he was elected. for madison, tyranny had more than one source. it could manifest if too much power was in the state or executive branch. power could shift. it was only in the 1790s that identify noticed the sense of tyranny between him and washington in a bid to con system date national power in one plait place. madison and jefferson differed in meaningful ways on slavery. both advocated recolonization on the west coast of africa.

but their thinking was similar. jefferson the scientist saw the inevidentability of a body war if the races were not permanently separated. he believed this despite having witnessed first hand the productive lives of african-american in philadelphia. he wouldn't turn away from the series of bloodlines through breeding practices. on a trip with jefferson through new york in 1791, madison observed the talents of black former who hired white labors. he was impressed with the man's understanding the economy. the ideal farmer was meant to possession. at his home? central virginia, madison entertained a free slave, named christopher mcpherson. he was treated as a social equal at the table. jefferson referred to the same

individual by his slave name. mr. ross' man kit. telling difference in the two friends attitude towards race. madison served as president as the american colonization society because he knew his peers did not show his enlighted perspective on race. again, he and jefferson were virginians first. modern americans are told so little about madison that they don't even know the man most associated with the federal constitution never practiced law. jefferson did. he rode the circuit. and he became an expert on divorce. this is important because the declaration of independence was drafted in the language of a divorce petition and a divorce decree. instead of describing the king as father of his colonies, he demoted george iii.

consigning him to the role as abusive husband, and the patient colonies as his spouse. we know jeffersons borrowed from the theories of the social contract. as john locke argued, the first society was marriage. the same rational that approaches in jefferson's 1772 notes on divorce on a divorce case reappear in the declaration. in the earlier instance, attorney jefferson also sited the argument the philosopher david hume, justifying worse. -- divorce. cruel to continue by violence, a union made at first by mutual love, but now dissolved by hatred. jefferson's declaration sights the king's violence which produced hatred. describing the mercenaries as home wreckers sent to harass

america. he finds just cause in the abandonment in the liberty of affection. which underlying every individual natural right to happiness. this new perspective finally suggests a reason for jefferson having adjusted life, liberty, and property to read life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. he states powerfully with regard to the british we must forget our former love for them. >> there is love and there is political ranker. students know the views. the virginiaian wanted an unobtrusive federal government. they sought to powerful the executive within he personally controlled. within the full decade before washington's presidency, madison and jefferson faced a different enemy. whom nancy briefly eluded to,

the most popular was patrick henry. give me liberty or give me death. the color, theatrical henry was the first governor. in a real way, madison and jefferson who met for the first time in fall of 1776, found common purposes in the their shared distrust of governor henry. madison was demon demonstrative, but he did not use the males -- mails. again, let's wrap our minds around the notion that virginia claimed all of the land to the west of mississippi, including modern kentucky, illinois, and missouri. that's where virginian george rodgers clark ranged in the revolution. trying to stay one step ahead, jefferson gave clark a guide to

who his friends were and who was undermining him. resorting to invective, he displayed a gentleman's delicacy when he damned a person someone as all tongue without either head or heart. one the great putdowns of the 18th century. jefferson went on to fain surprise with support for clark. in the letter again, speaking again of henry, he asserted the clause as far as he has personal courage to show hostility to any man. this is an early example of what jefferson did so well. he could write off a political rival with one twist of the knife. the way to secure an ally was to impugn another man's courage, manliness, honestly. jefferson found himself attacked

as coward. having his governor, they ascended monticello in 1780. what kind of idiot would have stayed around to take on the army? that's what jefferson asked. we know the answer, it's the crazed mel gibson in "the patriot." [laughter] >> it was meaningful. this was how politics of the madisonian, jeffersonian and kind would be constructed. identifying friends and enemies, then molding opinions, building alliances, and forging plans and betters and finally presenting those well forced plans to large bodies. in general, it would be jefferson who issued the controlling statement while madison reshaped the strategy, when necessary taking a chisel

to trim the excess. it was madison that knew congress. though it was jefferson who suggested that they pray devoutly for henry's death. he was forward in expressed distaste for his approval. in 1789, henry presented madison from becoming a u.s. senator. madison was the anti-henry. in his style of address as a legislator, his of the art of persuasion rather than the art of captivation. he took notes, fought through arguments, and spoke to influence. he usually succeeded. in the early years, madison and jefferson combined on the statute of religious freedom over the objection of governor henry. which explains his play on words with praying devoutly for henry's death. jefferson had went to france to serve as the u.s. minister. when madison was able to seize

on an opportunity. he offered one the most vivid and striking pieces, memorial and remonstrance which arosed his colleagues to take action. it was so strongly encouraged, madison did not admit authorship for 40 years. in the paper forshadowing the separation of church and state, the religious of devow the attendance on the powers of the wonderful. what had it brought to civilization in centuries? bigotry and persecution. the virginia declaration of rights of 1776, the virginia statute for religious freedom, 1785, its ringing phrase,

almighty god hath created free. it was a voice within the republican progress within the union. in the 1790s, they criticized jefferson and madison. they refer to the virginia party. in 1808 and 1812, they were tired of virginias hold on the ms. presidency. they sought to elect george clinton, and his nephew, dewitt clinton in 1812. first as jefferson's successor, and then as an incumbent. one pamphlet read that virginia saw the rising greatness in rank new york would assume among the states. in all of the blackness and envy, immediately plotted the dismemberment and two disstink

states. this man is now in the hands of james madison. a scheme as diabolical as could. that was the allies venting their fears of virginia tyranny. you can imagine what the opposition federalist were saying and writing. in the mid 1790s, federalist dubbed jefferson as the m.a.d.s or mad democrats. partisanship was the order of the day, so was hyperbole. >> it is misleading to call madison the father of the constitution. now this maybe conventional -- conventional, but hear me out. even in his own note taking, his own renders of the philadelphia convention in 1787, he does not come across of victor or hero of the convention. in anyone deserves, it might

have been roger sherman of tiny connecticut who was manager of address was scribed as laughable, but who effectively stood in the way of virginia domination. madison's virginia plan hammered out in private over many months was mostly rejected. his most sought was position was rejected. he wanted the u.s. senate to be granted a negative in all cases whatsoever. madison's word, over state and national legislation. he would have had the senate as an intellectual elite. more or less, the plant the supreme court in lecturing to the states as to what legislation made sense and what did not. madison had no patience for mediocrity. what he and alexander hamilton had in common was that neither cared for the constitution at the time it was passed. they were coauthorship of the federalist papers represented the means of the union. for that which the states would

continue to argue among themselves. madison believed even after the constitution was adopted and he wrote this in a long letter to jefferson that the u.s. still remained were for him a lose confederation of states. what he wanted a futile system of republics, and he thought this might lead to alliances between states and the regional coalitions. the other thing we have to remember is that the federalist papers which we often think of as some of the most important writings were not particularly important at the time they were written. no one sited the federalist papers in any of the ratifying conventions. and when we think of the importance of federalist number 10. this founding document really only achieved renown in the 20th century. as the leading voice of the first united states senate in

1789-1790. madison wrote the inaugural address and congress' official response to it. yes, you heard me correctly. you might call it the madison administration. he set the legislative agenda, and he assumed the central role in proposing the bill of rights, despite his belief they were unnecessary. our point here is that the founders were not prophets. they spoke with many voices. discorrespondent voices. jefferson had reservations about the constitution, notably because it lacked the bill of rights. he sought to undermine madison's work by writing letters from france, proposing that the constitution be turned down by both the virginia and maryland ratifying conventions. he wanted a majority to ratify the constitution, but he also wanted a few ores -- others to

hold out until the bill of rights was added. there was no straight line from the revolution to the democratic government and even jefferson and madison already in close confidence worked across purposes. jefferson came home in 1790, and with no small effort on madison's part, became the first secretary of state. step by step, congressman madison became jefferson's handler and chief political consultant. when jefferson tired of the in fighting in washington cabinet and went into a mid career retirement, he urged madison to stand for president against john adams in 1796. madison did some arm twists and obliged jefferson to re-enter politics. he had done this before when he convinced jefferson to join the democratic corps and join franklin and adams in europe.

without that time, jefferson an ex-governor and widower might have been holed up in his library. madison was ambitious. he found hid friend president washington turns away from checks and balances and instead turning towards hamilton's view of cultivating money men and making them a special class. madison was no longer satisfied just to be the leader of a growing congressional opposition. he understood the power of the press, there was at this point only the proadministration vehicle, and he recruited his college roommate, the poet philips fernot, to editor a

paper. madison wrote under a pseudonym in the paper, taking on hamilton, and proclaiming the difference of what he said was the real friends of democracy. madison was a sturdy political operative, not merely a political thinker. >> in 1793 when war between england and france placed americans in one of two camps, there was no middle ground. hamilton wrote of madison and jefferson they had a womanism resentment towards england. jefferson spelled out who he thought of his enemy, the armed chair specklator, a species that produced nothing of value. men of commerce who thrived on their association with the

brittish juggernaut and had transferred loyalty to london. madison had a hatred of monarchy. it produced an observative fear that the republican government and i quote, only as a stepping stone to monarchy. drawing a line in the sand, jefferson claimed for his and madison side the small, modest hard working the american nation. of course, when he used the innocuous word farmers to describe americans republican corps, jefferson concealed the truth, wealthy, slave-owning aristocratic virginians. it was jefferson's habit to personify his enemies. he dubbed the federalist

monocrats, monarchies and aristocrats. it was a feminism disorder, embodied in a timid nervous constitution and a desire to worship the strong. pseudoaristocrats were backward in their thinking and out of step with the times, dysfunctional and do you doomed. it was a monstrous recreation of poison introduced into the natural environment. an unnatural entity unable to progress and adapt to new ways of thinking. dr. jefferson aimed to create new healthy cells who the body would heal once the disease died off naturally. or in the case of african-american, unloved offspring of the constitution of slavery. he preferred to purge the body,

expel, and replace by the form of white european peasants. madison adopted anglicans, he was less likely to blame them on failing. madison focused on social forces, errors and reasons and demanded structural solutions. madison approached policy as recommending a healthy lifestyle , madison saw it as a chess master with his steady eye on the move with the most valuable pieces and people as so many pawns. regardless of the met -- metaphor that we choose, there's was a cut throat business.

it does not have to diminish the achievements of either madison or jefferson. in writing their story of a rise to power, we have tried to shift emphasis from the less tangible judgments of their private character to the culture of competition and that a nationwide struggle to define how a public should constitute itself. there's rarely a single moment in historical research, a smoking gun that permanently changes the way he think about the past. the madison, jefferson relationship is too complex to be understood in sound bytes. the most extraordinary misjudgment in the historical record is, of course, the portrayal of the cerebral. while it's true he was opaque to many observers, he was not unemotional. he had a raw sense of humor. those who saw him up close over time, particularly in the context of political performance knew he could become flustered,

and quarrelsome. jefferson held on to his resentments. madison was able to move beyond them. however, both felt the pressure from europeans. and so expansion akeenly absorbed them. florida, cuba, canada, the west. america, especially in jefferson's eyes, could be peaceful and resilient as a breeder nation. it was affection, attachment, health, good air, natural abundance, and the almost historical rejection of bad blood. it all added up to expansion of the white american species, pioneers carrying the spirit of personal independence with them. what nancy and i have learned most in the research process is the humbling fact that the american past cannot be told in any one book. past is dirty, messy, the region

had and arguably still had distinct political and culture. interstate relationships, especially the virginia/new york access, have not been studied sufficiently, yet the power dynamic there was certainly volatile. >> so that's some of what we've learned as scholars. what we've learned as writers is that a dual biography is much more than a standard single biography. by focusing on two lives going on at the same time, often in two different places, one is periodically engaged, and the other disengaged from key political events. their communication reveals the proactive and reactive. one man playing off against the other, trusting, doubting, second guessing.

it's more like real life. you see their egos in motion. the dual biography adds a level of intensity to their humanity. there's a collaborative tension as they consciously struggled to change the course of history. what we've also found that virginians, madison and jefferson never thought about the republic without thinking about slavery. almost every policy matter or every to reform had to engage with the national sin. in 1775, madison called the institution of slavery virginia's achilles heel. jefferson's awkwardly worded paragraph declaration, blaming the king for imposed slavery on america had to be eliminated because of opposition from the deep south. when it came to foreign policy, madison and jefferson focused not only on the european powers of england and france, but also on the tiny island of haiti.

where slave rebellions happened and fearing they were contagious and might spread to the south. madison believed the southern economy with its dependence on slave labor was viable. they both sold slaves as a last resort, yes. but still they did so into their retirement years. jefferson, especially, envisioned nationhood in rationally untainted hues. in 1836 in his death, madison left to the american society. who was design was to remove black people, but the call was couched in terms of philanthropy. even abraham lincoln the great emancipator saw the removal plan to whiten america. the point here as throughout our book is that america's early leaders had few long-term

solutions. as all people do, they rationalized in action. our task is historical investigators is not to indulge ourselves in transferring moral judgments to the past. whether it is to glamorize the achievements and imagine a golden age that never existed, or to use their failures to express self-satisfaction about our own motives as a modern, more progressive future. our task is to recover the language, the issues, and the people that mattered to them. their political environment, not our fantasy of sturdy nights who's elegant prose is reflected in their shining armour. madison and jefferson stood out because of campaigning psyches. they knew the revolution. yet they chose to remember it as a moment of promise. they realized that political success was built on productive alliances. that one man alone could not

transform a nation. thank you. >> thank you. [applause] [applause] >> we look forward to your questions. go ahead. >> well, i wondered about the great distaste they have for patrick henry. i'm guessing it's mutual. i wonder how much of that is style and how much is substance? >> it's substance. in the legislature, the virginia legislature, before madison and jefferson shifted their focus to national matters, they found themselves stymies every step of the way. whenever they sought some reform, patrick henry would automatically be on the other side, standing in their way.

jefferson tried to influence william warts biography of patrick henry. that's the biography that gives us the quotes that may or may not be accurate. give me liberty or give me death. so much of the knowledge, the little knowledge that we have comes from william's biography. jefferson tried to correct by making sure the biography did not gloss over henry's weaknesses. and especially jefferson wanted to say that make sure that we're emphasize that henry had a love of money. and he would do anything for a dollar. that he was ill educated, studied the law for just several weeks and barely squeaked by in his examination for the bar. so he looked upon henry at the time and historically when he

was carrying about legacy as a man of minor intellect. shall we say? >> i want to add one point, one the interesting things about madison, he writes a very important manifesto of the constitution, it's called vices of the united states, where he's describing the you seductive or- oratory, and he's using the life and blood of henry. he didn't think of abstract. he based his encountered on the virginia assembly. madison had to take on henry in the ratifying convention. and it was -- you know, henry basically took over the show. he refused to follow the

designated plan of the way they were going to debate issue by issue, and it's an interesting moment. because there's an effort to corral people, know their votes even before the ratifying convention is held. you know, madison, even before the actual meeting in philadelphia makes this claim, you know, we're going to have to like tie henry down. make sure to tie him down by the instructions. make sure he doesn't interfere. he even imagines before the meeting in philadelphia that henry is plotting disunion. so these are real, not only emotional, only not about style, but they are also about the kind of very personal, political tension that's existed among virginians. >> henry mattered very much. he died in 1799, the same -- just a few months before george washington. and not long before his death, washington urged patrick henry

to run against the democratic republicans to deny national election to jefferson. and it shows that throughout their building careers, madison and jefferson faced henry in every way imaginable. after the falling out with washington, once again, patrick henry loomed as a perspective candidate to oppose jefferson, another virginian who might oppose jefferson for the presidency. is that all we got? yes. >> can you tell us something about how you collaborated on the two men? and if there was issues that went back and forth between them, how did you deal with that to make it, you know,

continuity? >> yeah, the question is how we collaborated on writing a book about these two partners. and the simple answer is that we've been intellectual partners for close to 15 years. and we've been arguing history for all of that time. so we've taken part in the process when each of us was writing a book individually. and we happened to finish our last books at the same time they came out at the same time in 2007. it was that time we decided to do something together. and it turned out to be dirty politics in early america. >> i'll just add one thing, a lot of people imagine that somehow we're adopting the personas. you know? of the two people that we are studying.

that's not what drew us into the project. basically we were interested in different themes or topics, we wrote on those different themes. then we would get together and revise it and work on it and debate it. but we're not secretly pretending to be the reincarnation of madison and jefferson. >> it's a book as much as the virginians edmund pendleton, albert randolph, and people who interact with jefferson and madison. we were always talking about a whole configuration of individuals and groups across state lines. and just trying to understand the dynamics of early american politics in a new way to show that madison and jefferson found

that they had to ally with one another to deal with tensions that they saw across the country, when they themselves were very