Lyme Disease: Conspiracy Theory or Conspiracy Fact?

“Before the Cold War, scientists from different countries who studied tick-borne diseases didn't worry about politics or borders. They were all professionally rewarded for sharing new knowledge in journals and at conferences: publish or perish. Once ticks and their parasites became potential weapons, though, this changed. Many studies were classified by the countries’ respective militaries.” – Bitten

COVID conspiracy theories swirled both during and after the 2020 pandemic.  From its origin in a wet market or a Chinese lab, to its efficacy and resulting injuries.  Promising to shine a light on this and other pharmaceutical schemes, the New HHS Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has also weighed in on the origins of Lyme disease, suggesting the high probability it came from tick experiments on Plum Island, only a dozen miles from the epicenter of Lyme disease. 

Lyme disease is the 6^th most commonly reported infectious disease in the United States, with 1.3 billion in direct medical costs.  It is a disease contracted through tick bites, with nearly 500,000 Americans suffering from the disease in a given year.  Its primary symptoms are skin rash, headaches, swollen joints, fatigue, fever, and facial paralysis.  In 60-80 percent of all cases, a red bullseye ring is seen.  Lyme disease began with a three tick-borne outbreak in Long Island Sound in 1968 that resulted in a diagnosis of Lyme arthritis, before another outbreak in 1975 would bring about Lyme disease. 

In Kris Newby’s 2019 book, “Bitten,” Newby recounts the history of Lyme disease, drawing on her own experience with the disease in 2002. At the time, there was little scientific data available to doctors regarding the disease's origin or treatment. A Montana researcher, Willy Burgdorfer, would go on to discover the bacterial pathogen that causes Lyme Disease in 1981, a disease named for its city of origin, Lyme, Connecticut. 

Plum Island, also known as Lab 257, was an Army biological warfare laboratory that conducted deadly virus experiments, including tick trials in the 1950s, and is believed to be the cradle of several ailments, including Lyme disease and the West Nile virus.  It was notoriously founded by a former Nazi scientist, Erich Traub, the virologist who created bioweapons for Germany during World War II.  Initially founded as an Animal Disease Center to protect wildlife through the research and eradication of diseases, Plum Island began experimenting with the Lone Stone ticks and Cayenne ticks, feeding them viruses during the ground zero years of Lyme disease, based on reporting in Michael Christopher Carroll’s book, “Lab 257”.  A tick hatchery and open-air testing may be the culprit for outbreaks along the eastern coast of New England in the months and years that followed. 

In her investigation of the mystery surrounding Lyme Disease, Newby was given access to Burgdorfer’s files, including materials hidden in a second garage.  During her research, she found a Post-it note in his handwriting that said, “I wondered why somebody didn’t do something.  Then I realized that I am somebody.”  Shortly before his death, a 1981 videotape has Burgdorfer not only acknowledging that Lyme Disease was likely caused by a bioweapons release, but when asked point-blank if the same pathogen that was used in the 1950s was the same as that found following the Lyme, Connecticut outbreak, he said yes. 

Further, a first-hand account was also provided by a former Plum Island employee, Frances Demorest, who came to Plum Island in 1954 when she was hired as a librarian.  After writing a letter to Congressman George Hochbrueckner, a correspondence that was never acknowledged, Demorest was ordered to incinerate files in 1990, permanently destroying evidence from the past three decades, based on information disseminated by Paranormal Reports, a YouTube channel. 

During a 2013 interview with Newby, Burgdorfer verbally acknowledged that he had worked on tick-borne bioweapons during the Cold War.  Arriving at the Rocky Mountain lab in Montana in 1951, a lab that was initially commissioned to study Rocky Mountain spotted fever, also known as black measles, Willy Bergdorfer oversaw the mass production of ticks as an aid in researching infectious diseases. 

If that wasn’t enough to raise questions, evidence that Burgdorfer had acquired a secret Swiss bank account in 1974, following his attendance at a conference in Austria, allowed him to relieve himself of the financial problem that had plagued him for years. 

Just like the false claims of the COVID vaccine, for example, that you can't spread it and you can't catch it, so too has Lyme disease been politicized to stop those who would question its origin.   To speak out is to put oneself at risk, and this may be the reason why Lyme disease has been so difficult to treat.