- In her book, “Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons,” Kris Newby reviews the circumstantial evidence suggesting the organism that causes Lyme disease may originally have been developed as a biological weapon
- An estimated 476,000 Americans are diagnosed with and treated for Lyme disease each year, and prevalenc…
According to a prominent American specialist, all the viruses that appeared in the last half century were biological weapons. The same apparently applies to bacteria. How far these new diseases can be considered as accidental escapes from laboratories and how far as deliberate infections is probably only up to the imagination of each of us.
One of the most widespread diseases worldwide, which has also long been referred to as a laboratory leak, is Lyme disease, which is also relatively widespread in Europe.
However, the first occurrences were recorded in the USA, from where the disease later spread to the rest of the world.
Lyme disease is an infectious disease transmitted by ticks. A typical early symptom is reddening of the skin where the tick has attached, and this reddening slowly spreads. But it can also be absent, so this symptom may or may not appear.
Imagine having multiple sclerosis, joint and muscle pain, chronic fatigue and Alzheimer’s all at the same time. This is what it can look like when Lyme disease goes undetected and untreated.
Investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker interviews award-winning author Krise Newby about the US government’s history of manipulating pathogens to make them more deadly, and the mysterious federal research being conducted into the Lyme disease outbreak.
Newby, who educates health care providers about vector-borne diseases, is the author of Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons. She also produced the 2008 Lyme disease documentary Under Our Skin, which was nominated for an Academy Award the following year. A follow-up film, Under Our Skin 2: Emergence, was released in 2014.
Like many people who become experts on a disease, Newby and her husband contracted Lyme disease while vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard in 2002. “We were desperately ill and went undiagnosed for a year. I thought this was the end of my life as I knew it. It took us four or five years to fully recover,” he tells Thacker.
Lyme disease background
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 476,000 Americans are diagnosed and treated for Lyme disease each year. Although exact numbers are difficult to obtain, the prevalence is known to be increasing worldwide. Outbreaks are also becoming more frequent in northern regions with less temperate climates.
Lyme disease is transmitted by ticks (and sometimes other biting insects) infected with the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi. There are about two dozen species of B. burgdorferi worldwide, with hundreds of strains, many of which are resistant to antibiotics. Research suggests that one reason may be that B. burgdorferi forms protective biofilms around itself that increase antibiotic resistance.
Another feature that makes B. burgdorferi such a fearsome enemy is its ability to take on different forms in the body depending on the conditions. This nimble maneuverability helps him hide and survive. Its corkscrew shape also allows it to nest and hide in various body tissues, which is why it causes such extensive multisystem involvement.
“Ticks can also carry other pathogens, and co-infections are another reason why Lyme disease is so difficult to treat.”
Ticks can also carry other pathogens, and new infections are another reason Lyme disease is so difficult to treat because symptoms can vary widely. New infections also often do not respond to B. burgdorferi treatment and often require a multi-step approach to control all infections.
Lyme disease is often disabling
A “typical” case usually begins with a spreading rash, fever, fatigue, chills, and headache. As the disease progresses, other symptoms may appear, such as muscle spasms, loss of motor coordination, arthritic pain, debilitating fatigue, heart problems, psychiatric symptoms, cognitive difficulties, and vision and hearing problems.
The main problem with Lyme disease is that its symptoms mimic many other diseases including multiple sclerosis (MS), arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia (a chronic pain disorder characterized by pain in various parts of the body, muscle and joint pain) and even Alzheimer’s disease, so correct identification is difficult and time-consuming.
To make matters worse, many patients with Lyme disease look very healthy on the outside and their blood counts often do not give cause for concern, which is why Lyme disease is also referred to as the “invisible disease.”
In the past, patients with this disease were often told that their problem was psychiatric; they were basically just imagining the symptoms. Today, Lyme disease is increasingly recognized as a real disease, but sufferers still often face skepticism and opposition from the medical community and insurance companies.
Imitator of Lyme disease
To make matters worse, there is another tick-borne disease circulating. Scientists have identified a tick-borne disease very similar to Lyme disease, which is caused by Borrelia miyamotoi.
The CDC describes B. miyamotoi as a distant relative of B. burgdorferi, which is more closely related to the bacteria that cause tick-borne relapsing fever. This disease is characterized by recurrent episodes of fever, headache, nausea, and muscle or joint pain.
This bacterium was first detected in Japanese ticks in 1995. It has since been found in several species of rodents (and the ticks that feed on them) in the US, as well as in ticks that feed on red deer, domestic ruminants, and white-tailed deer.
Is Lyme disease a biological weapon that has gotten out of control?
According to Newby, there is good reason to suspect Lyme disease could be a biological weapon. There is no definite proof, only circumstantial evidence. But when you put them together, a highly suspicious picture emerges.
She describes being at a party where a former CIA agent bragged about a Cold War operation that dropped infected ticks on Cuba. “That’s when I knew I wasn’t done with the story,” she tells Thacker. Her book Bitten is the result of her research into the military use of infectious biological weapons.
“By the time we started the film, Lyme disease was already too controversial to treat the disease as a bioweapon, so we focused on the human toll and the corruption in the medical system that allowed this epidemic to become so out of control,” she told Thacker.
“The CIA guy was a little over the top, but what he said was true. I started researching, I interviewed him several times, and I found out that it is a verifiable story.”
Newby also received a tip from Willy Burgdorfer while filming Under Our Skin. Burgdorfer, a Swiss medical zoologist, is credited as the discoverer of Lyme disease. He worked his entire career at Rocky Mountain Labs — a Biosafety Level 4 (BSL4) facility in Montana operated by the National Institutes of Health — and had contracts with the Fort Detrick lab that oversees America’s chemical and biological weapons programs.
He made some important admissions during that interview, but at the very end he parted with a mischievous little smile and said, “I haven’t told you everything.” Was he implying that Lyme disease was a bioweapon?
“He began to suggest to a number of people the unnatural origin of the epidemic,” Newby told Thacker. “When I asked him about the book, he said, ‘Yeah, I was in the biological weapons program. I was in charge of the mass production of ticks and mosquitoes.’
He also told me at the time that he had been called in to investigate an outbreak of a disease that had been called ‘Lyme disease’ but could have been caused by one or more organisms. Army documents say they conducted early experiments to improve function by mixing pathogens — bacteria and viruses — into ticks to create more effective bioweapons.
The official story
As she described to Newby, the official story is that Burgdorfer was sent to investigate an outbreak of a new disease in Lyme, Connecticut, and Long Island. In 1980, he discovered the bacterium that now bears his name, Borrelia burgdorferi, and found it to be the cause of the disease.
He then published an article stating that the organism could easily be killed with penicillin. The perception that Lyme disease is easy to diagnose and treat has persisted ever since, although the reality often shows otherwise.
Newby agrees that many cases, if caught early, can actually be cured with a cheap doxycycline regimen. Two other antibiotics, ceftriaxone and vancomycin, can also clear a B. burgdorferi infection in cases where doxycycline fails. Unfortunately, patients with Lyme disease often go undiagnosed for years, and by the time a diagnosis is made, the infection is already well advanced and difficult to treat.
Gaps in official history
In her research for the book, Newby created an animation of the original eruption, which is said to have started at the mouth of the Connecticut River near Long Island. This turned out to be very revealing. She told Thacker:
“When I drew 50 miles from that point, three new, highly virulent tick-borne diseases appeared at the same time in the late 1960s. This was 13 years before it was declared the cause of “Lyme disease” in 1981.
I began scouring the military to see if the outbreak could be related to biological weapons accidents. In doing so, I discovered an extensive program to develop weapons against insects, as well as a program in which aircraft sprayed bacteria over large areas, the so-called Project 112.
Some of those germs were tick-borne diseases that were freeze-dried and sprayed in the spray… Whatever happened in Lyme, Connecticut, we don’t know all the details. But I have put together a solid circumstantial case based on the available evidence…
Burgdorfer… worked with Q fever and ticks, experience needed at Rocky Mountain Labs for their biological weapons work. Once he was cleared, he began infecting fleas with plague and mosquitoes with deadly yellow fever, then mixed viruses and bacteria into ticks to increase the virulence of these living weapons.
The weapons designers at Detrick were looking for ticks that could be dropped on an enemy without arousing suspicion, and that would be loaded with agents to which the target population had no natural immunity… The ticks were the perfect secret weapon, untraceable and long-lasting…
Much evidence suggests that Lyme disease isn’t the big problem—that is, a bacteria called Borrelia burgdorferi.
Burgdorfer said they are trying to cover up: 1) that another bacteria, possibly a rickettsiae (rickettsiae are bacterial organisms found worldwide in many ticks, fleas, mites, lice that serve as vectors) that is related to Rocky Mountain spotted fever, has been developed as a biological weapon during the Cold War; 2) that maybe it’s a combination of germs in ticks that make people sick.”
The most problematic hosts are mice and rats
Since the late 1970s, deer have been primarily blamed for the spread of Lyme disease. However, more recent evidence suggests that rodents such as mice and rats pose a much greater threat. Ticks are not born with the Lyme spirochete. They ingest the bacteria when they feed on an infected host.
Research shows that white-footed mice infect 75% to 95% of the tick larvae that feed on them, while deer infect only about 1%. According to a 1996 study, rats are even more contagious than mice, noting that “the ability of rats to serve as reservoir hosts for the Lyme disease spirochete therefore increases the risk of infection for visitors to urban parks.”
Another study published the following year also found that brown rats and black rats are exceptionally efficient hosts, infecting nearly every tick that feeds on them.
The main predators of small rodents such as mice and rats are foxes, raptors, skunks and snakes. Agriculture and urban sprawl have decimated the habitat of these natural predators, mice and rats, allowing the population of disease-carrying rodents to grow unfettered….
It’s time to ban feature profitability research
In summary, both the Lyme disease epidemic and COVID-19 appear to be the result of the development of bioweapons, and the real-world impact clearly demonstrates the associated risks. They cannot guarantee containment of established pathogens, and sometimes no attempt is made to contain them. In the case of Lyme disease, it is possible that live testing led to an outbreak.
And while we don’t know whether SARS-CoV-2 was released intentionally or simply escaped, the end result is the same. The virus has spread all over the world. Unless the world comes to its senses and realizes how suicidal these biological weapons programs are, humanity could end up being wiped out by one of our own creations…
by Dr. Joseph Mercola
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