T HE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION FRIDAY, AUGUST 2, 2019 | 9
business
the human gene pool. (Only one Nobel
Prize winner has acknowledged con-
tributing sperm to it. The repository dis-
continued operations in 1999.)
Mr. Lanier, the virtual-reality creator
and author, said he had the impression
that Mr. Epstein was using the dinner
parties — where some guests were at-
tractive women with impressive aca-
demic credentials — to screen candi-
dates to bear Mr. Epstein’s children.
Mr. Epstein did not hide his interest in
tinkering with genes — and in perpetu-
ating his own DNA.
One adherent of transhumanism said
that he and Mr. Epstein discussed the fi-
nancier’s interest in cryonics, an un-
proven science in which people’s bodies
are frozen to be brought back to life in
the future. Mr. Epstein told this person
that he wanted his head and penis to be
frozen.
Southern Trust Company, Mr. Ep-
stein’s Virgin Island-incorporated busi-
ness, disclosed in a local filing that it was
engaged in DNA analysis. Calls to
Southern Trust, which sponsored a sci-
ence and math fair for school children in
the Virgin Islands in 2014, were not re-
turned.
In 2011, a charity established by Mr.
Epstein gave $20,000 to the Worldwide
Transhumanist Association, which nowoperates under the name Humanity
Plus.
The group’s website says that its goal
is “to deeply influence a new generation
of thinkers who dare to envision human-
ity’s next steps.”
Mr. Epstein’s foundation, which is
now defunct, also gave $100,000 to paythe salary of Ben Goertzel, vice chair-
man of Humanity Plus, according to Mr.
Goertzel’s résumé.
“I have no desire to talk about Epstein
right now,” Mr. Goertzel said in an email
to The New York Times. “The stuff I’m
reading about him in the papers is pretty
disturbing and goes way beyond what Ithought his misdoings and kinks were.
Yecch.”
Alan M. Dershowitz, a professor
emeritus of law at Harvard, recalled
that at a lunch Mr. Epstein hosted in
Cambridge, Mass., he steered the con-
versation toward the question of how
humans could be improved genetically.
Mr. Dershowitz said he was appalled,
given the Nazis’ use of eugenics to jus-
tify their genocidal effort to purify the
Aryan race. Yet the lunches persisted.
“Everyone speculated about whether
these scientists were more interested in
his views or more interested in his
money,” said Mr. Dershowitz, who was
one of Mr. Epstein’s defense lawyers in
the 2008 case.
Luminaries at Mr. Epstein’s St. Thom-
as conference in 2006 included Mr.
Hawking and the Caltech theoretical
physicist Kip S. Thorne. One participant
at that conference, which was ostensibly
on the subject of gravity, recalled that
Mr. Epstein wanted to talk about per-
fecting the human genome. Mr. Epstein
said he was fascinated with how certain
traits were passed on, and how that
could result in superior humans.
Mr. Epstein appears to have gained
entree into the scientific community
through John Brockman, a literary
agent whose best-selling science writ-
ers include Richard Dawkins, DanielGoleman and Jared Diamond. Mr.
Brockman did not respond to requests
for comment.
For two decades, Mr. Brockman pre-
sided over a series of salons that
matched his scientist-authors with po-
tential benefactors. (The so-called “bil-
lionaires’ dinners” apparently became a
model for the gatherings at Mr. Ep-
stein’s East 71st Street townhouse,
which included some of the same
guests.)
In 2004, Mr. Brockman hosted a din-
ner at the Indian Summer restaurant in
Monterey, Calif., where Mr. Epstein was
introduced to scientists, including Seth
Lloyd, the M.I.T. physicist. Mr. Lloyd
said that he found Mr. Epstein to be
“charming” and to have “interesting
ideas,” although they “turned out to be
quite vague.”
Also at the Indian Summer dinner, ac-
cording to an account on the website of
Mr. Brockman’s Edge Foundation, were
the Google founders Sergey Brin and
Larry Page and Jeff Bezos, who was ac-
companied by his mother.
“All the good-looking women were sit-
ting with the physicists’ table,” Daniel
Dubno, who was a CBS producer at the
time and attended the dinner, was
quoted as saying. Mr. Dubno told The
Times that he did not recall the dinner or
having said those words.Mr. Brockman was Mr. Gell-Mann’s
agent, and Mr. Gell-Mann, in the ac-
knowledgments section of his 1995 book
“The Quark and the Jaguar,” thanked
Mr. Epstein for his financial support.
However impressive his roster of sci-
entific contacts, Mr. Epstein could not
resist embellishing it. He claimed on one
of his websites to have had “the privi-
lege of sponsoring many prominent sci-
entists,” including Mr. Pinker, Mr.
Thorne and the M.I.T. mathematician
and geneticist Eric S. Lander.
Mr. Pinker said he had never taken
any financial or other support from Mr.
Epstein. “Needless to say, I find Ep-
stein’s behavior reprehensible,” he said.
Mr. Thorne, who recently won a Nobel
Prize, said he attended Mr. Epstein’s
2006 conference, believing it to be co-
sponsored by a reputable research cen-
ter. Other than that, “I have had no con-
tact with, relationship with, affiliation
with or funding from Epstein,” he said.
“I unequivocally condemn his abhor-
rent actions involving minors.”
Lee McGuire, a spokesman for Mr.
Lander, said he has had no relationship
with Mr. Epstein. “Mr. Epstein appears
to have made up lots of things,” Mr. Mc-
Guire said, “and this seems to be among
them.”Freeman Rogers contributed reporting.Financier hoped to spread his DNA widely
Jeffrey E. Epstein’s 33,000-square-foot Zorro Ranch in New Mexico, which he confided to
scientists and others he hoped to use as the site for impregnating women with his DNA.DRONE BASE/REUTERSEPSTEIN, FROM PAGE 8some independent brands — including
Yotel and Hive — offer their own pro-
grams.
Another type of compact sleeping ac-
commodations, ranging in size from 30
to 56 square feet, is also now available
post-security at some airports in the
United States, including Atlanta, Dallas
and Philadelphia. Minute Suites and
Sleepbox, which operate these, charge
guests by time increments that can
range from 15 to 60 minutes to
overnight. Many Minute Suites rooms
have showers, but Sleepbox provides
neither bathrooms nor showers; its
guests must use the airport’s facilities.
The experiences of guests who stayed
at two Manhattan microhotels recently
show they can appeal to a wide variety
of customers.
Sarah Yawn, 29, a Los Angeles-based
national accounts manager for a
Swedish watch company, stayed at the
citizenM Bowery hotel. She praised its
guest room décor, lobby that was “al-
most like a co-working environment,
with a lot of young professionals,” and
proximity to trendy shops.
Robert Smith, 58, is the chief financial
officer of ClevR Mobility, an electric
scooter company in Berkeley, Calif. A
frequent business traveler, he has spent
over 50 nights at the Moxy Times
Square hotel this year.
He likes the company of its young
staff — he called them “just happy, help-
ful people” — and the guests, who re-
mind him of his four children, who are in
their 20s.
The staff’s attentiveness likely stems,
in part, from Mr. Smith’s recently at-
tained top-tier status in Marriott’s loy-
alty program. The staff marked his new
status by leaving a thank-you note, in
green and red crayon, on the mirror in
his room, and presenting him with a
sweatshirt and sweatpants with the
Moxy logo.
The lasting proof of all microhotels
will come when the economy “slows, un-
employment rates increase, and corpo-
rate and leisure travel gets curtailed,”
said Jan Freitag, senior vice president of
lodging insights for STR, a hotel re-
search firm.
Mr. Van Stekelenburg said he did not
anticipate that the attractiveness of the
microhotel concept would dim any time
soon. “We will see continued efforts by
independent and large hotel companies.
I believe they’re here to stay.”
Dr. Robson said she did not expect to
see microhotels on suburban highways
or resort destinations. “But where real
estate costs are high and length of stay
is relatively short, they will be very suc-
cessful,” she said.Microhotels
make the
most of
their size
MICROHOTELS, FROM PAGE 8Saying the opioid crisis requires bold
measures, the state of Arizona has filed
an audacious lawsuit in the Supreme
Court asking the justices to order mem-
bers of the Sackler family, which owns
Purdue Pharma, to return what the
state said were billions of dollars looted
from the company.
“We want the Supreme Court to make
sure that we hold accountable those in-
dividuals who are responsible for this
epidemic,” said Mark Brnovich, Ari-
zona’s attorney general. “We allege that
the Sacklers have siphoned billions of
dollars from Purdue in recent years.
They did this while knowing the com-
pany was facing massive financial liabil-
ities.”
Lawsuits making similar claims have
been brought in several state courts.
What distinguishes the new suit is that it
was filed directly in the Supreme Court,
which almost never hears cases until af-
ter lower courts have considered them.
“I do think it’s a long shot,” Mr.
Brnovich said. “It’s a little different. It’s
a little unorthodox. Sometimes you’ve
just got to throw deep.”
He added that the urgency of the cri-
sis warranted the unusual move. “We
don’t have time for this to take years to
wind through the courts,” he said. “The
Supreme Court has jurisdiction, and we
think they have to act.”
A spokesman for members of the
Sackler family called the accusations in
the new lawsuit “inconsistent with the
factual record” and said the family “will
vigorously defend against them.” A law-
yer for Purdue, which makes the opioid
OxyContin, did not respond to requests
for comment.
In papers filed in the Supreme Court
on Wednesday, lawyers for Arizona
wrote that the opioid crisis had contrib-
uted to hundreds of thousands of deaths
in the last two decades and cost the
United States economy more than $
billion annually. Over the years, the law-
yers wrote, Purdue earned more than
$30 billion from sales of OxyContin.
From 2008 to 2016, Purdue trans-
ferred more than $4 billion to the Sack-
lers, according to the new lawsuit. It is
commonplace and lawful, of course, for
a company’s owners to withdraw prof-
its. But the suit contends that the trans-
fers were intended to frustrate efforts
by victims of the opioid crisis to obtain
compensation.
“These transfers,” the suit said, “all
took place at times when company offi-
cials, including the Sacklers, were
keenly aware that Purdue was facing
massive financial liabilities and thatthese transfers could prevent it from
satisfying eventual judgments.”
The Sacklers are one of the richest
families in the United States, and its
members have made significant dona-
tions to museums and other cultural in-
stitutions. Several museums have an-
nounced that they will no longer take
money from the family, and the Louvre
Museum in Paris recently said that it
had removed the Sackler name from its
Sackler Wing of Oriental Antiquities.
The Constitution gives the Supreme
Court “original jurisdiction” to hear dis-
putes “in which a state shall be party.” In
such cases, the Supreme Court acts
much like a trial court, appointing a spe-
cial master to hear evidence and issue
recommendations.
Though the Constitution seems to re-
quire the court to hear cases brought by
states, the court has ruled that it has dis-
cretion to turn them down and often
does. When the court does exercise its
original jurisdiction, it is usually to adju-
dicate disputes between two states overissues like water rights. In 2016, the jus-
tices turned down a request from Ne-
braska and Oklahoma to file a challenge
to Colorado’s legalization of recreational
marijuana.
The states said the Colorado law had
spillover effects, taxing neighboring
states’ criminal justice systems and
hurting the health of their residents.
Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., dissented,
saying that the case presented a sub-
stantial question and that the court was
required to hear it.
“Federal law does not, on its face, give
this court discretion to decline to decide
cases within its original jurisdiction,”
Justice Thomas wrote.
Drawing on that dissent, Arizona
asked the Supreme Court to overrule de-
cisions that allowed it to turn down
cases filed by states directly in the court.
Failing that, Arizona asked the court to
allow it to sue in the Supreme Court as a
matter of discretion.
“Absent resolution in a single forum,”the state’s lawyers wrote, “these dis-
putes will be fought over and over in
nearly every state in the nation. This is
likely to take years, lead to inconsistent
judgments and create an inequitable
distribution of money damages.”William S. Consovoy, one of Arizona’s
lawyers, said there was no time to
waste.
“The urgency is a big deal here.” he
said. “It’s very important that we get
this resolved expeditiously, and that’s
one of the key reasons why the Supreme
Court is the right place to do this and to
do this now.”
Mr. Consovoy is also representing
President Trump in legal clashes with
House Democrats seeking his tax re-
turns and business records.
Arizona’s lawsuit is based on the Uni-form Fraudulent Transfer Act, which
has been adopted in most states and for-
bids companies from making some
kinds of transfers of assets when they
are insolvent or likely to run out of
money to pay creditors. The Supreme
Court does not ordinarily hear cases
based on asserted violations of state
laws.
The unusual Supreme Court filing
may reflect jockeying among states and
local governments for a leading role in
settlement negotiations. Vast sums may
be at stake.
In March, the company and the family
agreed to pay $270 million in connection
with the settlement of a suit brought by
the State of Oklahoma.
In October, Judge Dan Aaron Polster
of the Federal District Court in Cleve-
land is scheduled to preside over trials
in a test case even as he seeks to resolve
some 2,000 federal lawsuits brought by
cities, counties and Native American
tribes against key players in the opioid
crisis.Opioid fight goes straight to Supreme Court
WASHINGTONIn bold suit, Arizona
asks that family be
ordered to repay billionsBY ADAM LIPTAKProtesters at Purdue Pharma in Stamford, Conn., owned by the Sackler family. Arizona wants the family to be ordered to return billions that the state says was looted from Purdue.JESSICA HILL/ASSOCIATED PRESSA novel approach to settle claims
that have been made before.Similar pressures have been building
in the last few months, with a slowdown
in much of the world economy, this time
linked to trade wars. One way of inter-
preting the Fed’s interest rate cut
Wednesday is that Mr. Powell wanted to
react more pre-emptively than he and
his colleagues did in late 2015. The hope
is that the economy does not slump in
2020 the way it did in 2016.
There is less and less evidence to sup-
port the rationale for the earlier rounds
of interest rate increases: that the econ-
omy was at risk of overheating and so
higher rates were needed to forestall in-
flation. The unemployment rate has
been at or below 4 percent for nearly a
year and a half, yet prices continue ris-
ing more slowly than the Fed’s goal of 2percent. And if anything, growth in
workers’ wages — the channel by which
a tight labor market is expected to fuel
inflation — has leveled out in recent
months rather than accelerated.
It is becoming more clear than ever
that we should not expect interest rates
in the United States to return to their
pre-2008 norms anytime soon. Consider
that 30-year Treasury bonds are yield-
ing only around 2.5 percent — implying
that global investors with trillions of dol-
lars on the line do not anticipate a quick
end to the era of low rates.
So to make sense of what Mr. Powell
and his colleagues did, don’t look for
some particular data point that per-
suaded them interest rates were too
high, or for an argument that slightly
lower borrowing costs will unlock signif-icantly more business investment or
consumer spending.
Unfortunately, that makes forecast-
ing what the central bank will do next
particularly tricky — and Mr. Powell’s
news conference didn’t help matters.
He described the action as a “midcy-
cle adjustment.” That fueled a stock
market sell-off, as traders interpreted it
to mean that there may not be the fur-
ther rate cuts that have been reflected in
asset prices.Later, Mr. Powell added that he was
not saying necessarily that this would
be the only rate cut, only that it is not en-
visioned as the first in a long series of
them.
This may be less of a communication
failure and more of a genuine uncer-
tainty within the Fed over whether to
act again in light of solid economic data
in recent weeks. Two Fed officials dis-
sented from this week’s rate cut, so Mr.
Powell could face a tricky task if he
pushes for a further move later in the
year.
And this strategy does have risks.
Lower interest rates against the back-
drop of a solid economy may fuel finan-
cial bubbles that eventually bring the
expansion to an end, which was proba-
bly a consideration of the dissenters.Moreover, Mr. Powell has come under
sustained pressure from President
Trump to lower rates, and no matter
how much Fed officials insist their deci-
sions are driven by economics rather
than politics, perceptions can be hard to
change.
But the best approach to understand-
ing what the Fed is likely to do next isn’t:
“What is President Trump tweeting
about them?” or even “How is this
month’s jobs report?” or “What is G.D.P.
growth going to be this quarter?”
Rather, it’s: How much more re-
adjustment is going to be needed to get
the Fed’s interest rate policies in line
with the economy we’re living in — one
where the gravitational pull of slow
growth, an aging work force and low in-
flation is the reality nearly everywhere?Why the Fed decided to lower U.S. interest rates
F EDERAL RESERVE, FROM PAGE 1The Federal Reserve chief, Jerome H.
Powell, explaining the interest rate cut.BRENDAN MCDERMID/REUTERSThe Fed is willing to act to
keep the economy growing,
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