I asked Dr. Harpending for an interview in May of 2014 and he graciously replied: “Would ordinarily like to do this very much. I had a CVA two weeks ago, recovering, but I am still pretty goofy with impaired reading and bad writing. EG I have to proof this note twice. You should ask Greg Cochran to have a shot at it.”
I did try but I didn’t get a reply from Dr. Cochran.
I have asked thousands of people for an interview over my blogging career, and not a few of them have been close to the end, including TV producer Edgar Scherick, who I spoke to half a dozen times while he was on his death bed.
For some people, such as Edgar, giving an interview was exactly what he wanted to do with his final days, otherwise he would be very lonely. For those with close relationships, however, it is usually the last thing they want to do.
I remember pushing author Roy Aarons for an interview via email in 2004 when he revealed he was dying and in South Africa and so I left him alone.
According to Wikipedia: On November 28, 2004, Leroy Aarons died of cancer. He was 70 years old.
At the time of his death, Aarons was working on another play, Night Nurse, about South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, for which he and his life partner of 24 years, Joshua Boneh, [2] had spent a month in South Africa doing research earlier that year.
COMMENTS TO STEVE SAILER ABOUT HENRY HARPENDING:
* ‘Henry smoked.’ Oh the horror.
I have noticed that doctors are among the worst for this variant of Last Man mentality. As a young doctor, I certainly was. It blends genuine scientific interest in the root causes of illness and death with the ego-preserving need to maintain a professional distance from one’s personal death – the young are always immortal, and none more immortal than young doctors.
Later, I realized people come as a package. The same drives that made Henry take to Africa, made him hunt that buffalo, were part of why he smoked.
Would an artist rather be an alcoholic Hemingway or a nebbish? Who wouldn’t trade tobacco to be the kind of man who could co-author a book as important as The Ten Thousand Year Explosion?
