You’re so full of crap, your eyes are brown. Why are you so obsessed with conspiracy theories? Is that your entertainment Bruh?
The book that Rep. Smith references is Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons, which attempts to link Lyme disease to biological weapons. The author of the book bases her claims on an interview with Willy Burgdorfer, PhD, the researcher who first identified the bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi, that causes Lyme disease in 1981. Within this interview, she loosely claims that he suggests Lyme disease might have originated as a biological weapon.
Unfortunately, Burgdorfer was interviewed in the last period of his life, while he was suffering from Parkinson’s disease. Although he was a well-respected investigator who had extensive knowledge of Lyme disease and the ticks that transmit the disease, the merit of this interview is highly debatable. The book does not provide any additional solid evidence, or even circumstantial evidence, linking Lyme disease to biological warfare.
Indeed, as Koblentz points out, Bitten does not try to explain how the United States could have studied Borrelia burgdorferi for the purpose of developing a biological weapon since the pathogen was not identified until 1981, 12 years after the program ended. Bitten also completely ignores the fact that genetic testing of Borrelia burgdorferi has demonstrated that Lyme disease has actually been around and circulating in forests in North America for at least 60,000 years.
Secondly, the theories within the book that triggered this investigation have varied from hypothesizing that Lyme disease was accidentally released from a government lab or the result of the intentional testing of biological weapons, to the theory that the agent was stolen from American scientists or the result of a Soviet biological weapons attack. Not one of those notions quite seems to stick, but that doesn’t appear to deter the author.
The issue though, lies more in that it has been widely known that Plum Island has been a source for researching animal diseases, both during the offensive (pre-1969) and defensive periods of American bio-research. There are documented tick colonies within the research labs of Plum Island, just as other vectors were likely a component of the work on animal infectious diseases. But that’s where the truth tends to stop. Security measures are tight and biosafety is taken seriously at the facility. Moreover, one has to question, if building a biological weapon, why would Borrelia burgdorferi be considered an attractive agent given the long incubation period of Lyme disease, the relatively mild symptoms in the majority of cases, and the availability of antibiotics to treat the disease? Especially in light of the agents developed by previous biological warfare programs—such as anthrax, plague, smallpox, tularemia, and Marburg—Lyme disease, in the words of Koblentz, “would be the least attractive type of disease to weaponize.”
Lastly, it’s important to note that the Smith Amendment does not call on investigations into Lyme disease specifically, but rather focuses on whether the DoD conducted any offensive bioweapons work with vectors, such as ticks. Although Koblentz is in favor of the DoD providing a deeper history of its past bioweapon research activities, including that involving ticks and insects, he expressed skepticism that it would shed any additional light on the origins of Lyme disease: “For some reason some people want to blame public health problems they don’t understand on grandiose government conspiracies instead of acknowledging the fact that our society is creating these problems due to urbanization, climate change, and disruption of ecosystems.”
