International Bureau begins taking appointments this week

March 21st, the first day of Spring, will bring relief to the many confused, mortified individuals who have been made victims of the swap phenomenon in the past 3 months, with the opening of the very first Bureau of International Swap Affairs.

BISA is an initiative launched by the United Nationd when they were first made aware of the issue last month, following the swap of Finnish ambassador Kirsten Linonen with an Australian-born tour guide at the Louvre in Paris, Michael Kent. BISA's duty will be to keep records of all swaps, both within a nation's orders and between.

"The idea is that once someone is swapped, they will report to the nearest bureau to get all their affairs in order," says Aaron Beaulieu, Director of the American branch. "That includes a registration card to correspond to their original birth certificate, a new driver's license, passport, and any other form of identification."

The Bureau will also employ counsellors trained to help swapees adapt to their new roles.

"Something we stress is that when you swap into a new body, you are not that person," says Dr. Howard Bergman, head of psychology for BISA, "You remain yourself, only in a new context."

Beaulieu notes that there are certain exceptions. "While we will be attempting to keep people in circumstances as similar as possible to their original selves, a grown man in a three-year-old's body, for instance, will not be permitted to drive or buy alcohol. This situations will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis."

BISA will be taking appointments, but unfortunately, are taksed with a three-month backlog of appointments, totally some 1500 swapees.

Laughs Beaulieu, "The paperwork is going to be insane."

BISA's other function will be to study and observe the swaps, and attempt to crack the mystery of their origins. Joining Beaulieu and Bergman in this capacity will be two neurologists, American Arthur Gulf and Russian Pavel Alexiev, Scottish sociologist Katherine Duncan-Stuart, and Japanese engineer Osamu Fujiwara, who is "fascinated by the technology that must be involved."

"As a man of science, I can't literally believe the force behind this is, for example, supernatural or extraterrestrial," said Fujiwara, "But it seems beyond any technology we currently have to dig in to a person's brain and remove the data in there."

"After observing only three months of cases," says Gulf, "It would be difficult for anyone to believe these things are absolutely random. The patterns are there, but not clearly defined. If they were random there would be a smaller concentration of swaps in a single nation and an even distribution between genders. What we're seeing is a lot of Americans for only a few Europeans and Asians. There is a direct force selecting who is swapped, where and when."

Adds Alexiev, "We also cannot rule this out as a form of global terrorism, although it is not our leading theory."

Alexiev and Gulf say that they are still far from determining a cause or cure, but that every reported swap they study gives them a better understanding.

The first BISA office is based in Bethesda, MD, and will open on Mar 21. April will see the opening of offices in Chicago, Dallas-Ft. Worth and San Francisco. The Bureau also hopes to have offices in Toronto, London, Paris, and Kyoto by the end of May. By the end of 2007, 28 of the 50 American states, five Canadian provinces, three counties in the U.K. and seven European nations will have BISAs. New York City will be home to the privately-owned SwapCentre, a $3.5 million complex that will serve a similar function to BISA.

"I don't see it as a competition," says Robert Kleinberg, who is the primary backer behind the venture, "We are very interested in this matter and want to contribute."

Until more BISA offices are established, the senior staff offers a few tips to anyone who is swapped:

Get in contact with your previous body as soon as possible. Discuss the situation, get all the information you need.

Arrange to exchange clothes and any necessary personal items. This also includes medicine and personal grooming.

Come clean. As embarrassing as it might be for you to call up friends and family and utter the phrase, "I've been swapped," the sooner you get through with it, the sooner you can get on with your life.

Make an appointment. Even if there isn't a BISA opening in your area soon, many therapists, doctors and counsellors are prepared to help.

Adapt. The most important thing is to continue living your life as best you can.

"Every swap occurs with a different degree of magnitude," says Gulf, "Sometimes it's as if the swaps are designed to leave vital information, food preferences, sense memory, and so forth. People find their own behavioral patterns altered, and that often bothers them more than their new physiology."