May 14, 2003
by Dick Prentke
West Coast Edition – Commuting: Life has become hectic for Joel Epstein, who is commuting between NYC and Shanghai. While he still has the same NYC job, he is doing double duty as AIG’s China country manager. The “interesting challenge” makes his two-hour commute from Southport to Wall Street seem easy. Joel invites anyone ’67er passing through for the world’s best dumplings.
Tom Pritchard is living and working in Williamsburg (Brooklyn), in architecture and landscape design. He completed the executive and artistic offices for the NYC Opera at Lincoln Center, as well as landscape projects in Aspen, Palm Beach, and Cap D’Antibes.
While Reunions reminded Judy and Peter Turchi about humidity, they have watched too many of their trees struggle during New Mexico’s dry spell. Rain finally arrived in late fall, and snow was on the ski trails of the Sangres, so El Nino may save them. Peter commutes from Santa Fe to Albuquerque, working “on a number of interesting things” for the Air Force. Judy organizes more home improvements and anticipates visits by daughters Janita ’90 and Rebecca, who both work in DC. The 40 employees at General Atomics Aeronautical Systems when John Porter joined nine years ago have doubled. An interesting reunions discussion revealed that the company focuses on the design and production of state-of-the-art unmanned aircraft systems in extensive use by the US government, as well as overseas customers. It manufactures the highly successful Predator unmanned aircraft that has been in used in the “war on terrorism.” As director of international business development, John not surprisingly spends a good deal of time traveling.
’67 Freshman Handbook regulation: “Undergraduates may entertain women guests in dormitory rooms after 8:00 a.m. until the following times: Sun.-Thurs. – 7 p.m.; Fri. – 9 p.m.; Sat. – 12 p.m.” And at WOWS, where the views on parietal rules always get equal time, on this date senior year, Aretha’s “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” at #5 was topped at #4 by Neil Diamond’s “Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon.”
© 2003 Dick Prentke and The Princeton Alumni Weekly. Used by permission.
Science fiction or science?
Michael Archer ’67 attempts to clone extinct Tasmanian tiger
Michael Archer ’67, director of the Australian Museum in Sydney, lives by the maxim that museums should be safe havens for “dangerous ideas.” That philosophy reflects the project that is closest to his heart – the museum’s controversial attempt to clone the extinct Tasmanian tiger. Aiming to break new ground, Archer and his colleagues have been working for the past three years to reconstitute an animal using fragmented DNA harvested from dead cells. They hope to clone the tiger in about 10 years, using the Tasmanian devil as a host, and ultimately produce a viable population of Tasmanian tigers. “We don’t want a strange animal pacing back and forth in a laboratory. What we want to do is put that animal back in the wild,” says Archer, a biology professor at the University of New South Wales and a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.
 Archer’s Jurassic Park-style experiment has drawn its share of critics. Many scientists dismiss it as an impossible dream and a waste of money. One has called the project “the stuff of science fiction.” Other scientists are concerned with the ethical questions of cloning and “playing God.” To that, Archer says, “We played God when we inappropriately exterminated the Tasmanian tiger. What we are trying to do now is play ‘smart human’ by seeing if it’s possible to use technology to undo what we shouldn’t have done in the first place.”
Archer promotes his vision of an Australian “wildlife revolution” that he considers necessary to save the continent’s many endangered native species. Setting aside protected areas is noble but insufficient, he says. People need to support the harvesting of free-range native animals and plants to ensure that their populations won’t decline. And people should consider keeping native animals as pets as a means of conservation. A geology major at Princeton, Archer practices what he preaches. Ever since the dual American-Australian citizen was studying for his Ph.D. in zoology at the University of Western Australia in Perth, his unusual “house guests” have included marsupials such as swamp wallabies, rufous bettongs, and western quoll. He started taking in such animals when people brought him native animals that had been savaged by their cats.
In 1999 the Australian Museum launched the Future of Australia’s Threatened Ecosystems initiative, which is putting some of his ideas to the test. It aims to save ecosystems and also stimulate rural economies by encouraging private enterprises to harvest native flora and fauna instead of imported species. “By coming to depend on a native species that in turn depends on native habitat, conservation for all species gets a big win,” he says.
Decades spent leading research teams on paleontological expeditions have given Archer an appreciation of the long-term view. Critics of his vision of wildlife don’t ruffle him. If offending some environmentalists and scientists is the price of eventual success, he can live with it. Convincing people to try unconventional conservation approaches, he believes, may be a matter of life or death.
By Luba Vangelova
Luba Vangelova is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C.
-- from Class Notes Profile of The Princeton Alumni Weekly
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