okay, folks! i indicated a while back on the "alchemical synchronicities " thread that i'd like to share the relevant bits from the mentioned Fortean Times article on Art Kunkin's quest for longevity via alchemical elixirs...so here goes:

"His quest began in 1980, when he travelled on a journalistic assignment to Salt Lake City to interview the alchemist Frater Albertus at the Paracelsus Research Society. So impressed was he with the alchemist's experiments, Art joined the famed school, which boasted that it provided access to teachings previously available only to members of a secret society or fraternity.
" "Frater Albertus...was working on how to make herbal medicines in a totally different way," explains Art. "His idea was that if you made a separation of a plant and were capable of preserving the life, then at the end of it you would not only end up with a medicine, you would end with something alive, an herbal stone. The whole theory of alchemy is that the principle of life is the mineral kingdom - that minerals are really alive and evolve one into another. If you can extract the life principle from a mineral, then you can change one metal into another through a transmutation, and you could then process it further into a medicine to rejuvenate the human body. This is the philosopher's stone.
" "For 30 years, I collected a library of 1000 alchemical books and i began experimenting, replicating the methods in ancient documents. But nothing was successfull. I then worked with mercury, lead and antimony (the latter features heavily in the works of the alchemical monks) and still nothing. The only thing that kept me going was a book i found called Biological Transmutations, and this showed a metallic transmutation using soil bacteria - it wasn't one of the old alchemical books, which talked of distillations and so forth. i used soil bacteria called leptothrix that i found in a puddle at UCLA and cultured. After feeding the sample manganese, it turned into iron."
"although the would-be alchemist has been successfull in transforming soil bacteria into metal (a result he discovered was also acheived by the U.S. Army, which was developing sources for batteries), Art isn't interested in getting rich with mountains of precious metals. In his autumn years, he's more concerned with extending human life and invigorating his body with new energy.
"Incredibly, by pulling together the strands of his research, he now believes he has created the mythical Philosopher's Stone, and for the last year has been preparing and eating a special herbal medicine with startling results. Art has just released an e-Book, Alchemy: the Secret of Immortality Finally Revealed, so the whole world can have the chsance to live forever. He also maintains that this public disclosure of information means that clandestine powers are less likely to try and bump him off.
" "I'm almost 100% sure i've succeeded," he beams, with a youthfull glint in his eye. "Two years ago i got an email from Albert Cau, a French professor of chemistry who wanted to share his work with me. He was working with a mineral that no alchemist had looked at, because it was a radioactive mineral, and there was no basis for the alchemists in the Middle Ages or earlier to even detect radioactivity. Gold and platinum miners would dig this mineral and throw it away. it's called pitchblende and consists of uranium oxide. It looks like an ordinary rock with absolutely no value but is giving off low level radiation. non-ionizing radiation is al around us, mainly from the Sun, and radiation is probably how life developed, from energy in inorganic minerals like this."
"in recent years, evidence has arisen which suggests that low level doses of radiation could be beneficial rather than harmful to the human body. an article in National Geographic of January of 2004 revealed that a number of purported 'miracle cures' were happening in undrground mines in Montana. Doctors were even signing medical prescriptions for people to sit inside the mines for an hour a day to improve their health by exposure to the low level radiation produced by the radon gas found there.
" "There is a lot of reseach that a certain level of radiation is good for you - like homeopathy," notes Art. "A vey small amount is very healthy for the human body. i actually discovered in Japan that, while obviously many people died from atomic explosions, there are pockets of people that are super healthy, and evidently they recieved only a low level of radiation. then there are the spas in Europe, where people have been going for hundreds of years because of their healing qualities. up until now the healing was thought to be because of the sulphur in the heated waters. But all those baths are actually radioactive."
"Art considered the U.S. Army's research which found that the soil bacteria's mitochondria were responsible for its transmutation into iron. he did further research into Chinese alchemy, which speaks of a 'secret fire' to create the herbal stone, which was eaten in the form of fruit. Then Art began experimenting with adding apples and pears into the pitchblende concoction.
" "It's a very simple procedure. i have a jug full of pitchblende rocks and i put a pear in. i've been eating the fruit every week or two for nearly a year now, taking a risk at this point because i don't really know how strong the radioactivity is. the latest theory of aging has to do with mitochondria, that it is the source of life and energy for the body and that they kill eachother off in the process of producing the ATP. What i am assuming is that the radiation is affecting the mitochondria inside the pear, helping these mitochondria reproduce. when you eat this fruit you are taking in substances that add to the energy of yourself, directly from the inside."
"The modern day alchemist says he has acheived some startling effects. already sporting a thicker head of hair than the average 20 year old, he now claims it grows twice as fast. so do his finger nails. He's admittedly a workaholic, but his everyday energy has now increased to the point where he has been known to sit at his computer for 30 hours straight without eating or sleeping."