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FTR #1136 Lyme Disease and Biological Warfare, Part 2

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FTR #1136 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

” . . . . if Willy’s claim was true, a crime against human­i­ty had been com­mit­ted by the U.S. gov­ern­ment, and then cov­ered up. . . ” Bit­ten, p. 103.

Intro­duc­tion: A recent book about Lyme Dis­ease sets forth cred­i­ble infor­ma­tion that the dis­ease is an out­growth of U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare research.

Bit­ten, The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons chron­i­cles the career of Willy Burgdor­fer, a Swiss-born expert on tick and flea-borne dis­eases who spent most of his career research­ing those areas as a U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare sci­en­tist.

Lis­ten­ers are emphat­i­cal­ly encour­aged to pur­chase and read this book, as well as shar­ing it with oth­ers.

Author Kris New­by presents sub­stan­tive evi­dence that the dis­ease stems from BW research done by Burgdor­fer and asso­ciates. (Burgdor­fer was the sci­en­tist who “dis­cov­ered” the organ­ism that caus­es Lyme Dis­ease.)

 NB: The mate­r­i­al in this broad­cast is delib­er­ate­ly over­lapped with that in the last pro­gram.

In this post, we high­light infor­ma­tion about what Willy termed “the Swiss Agent”–a rick­ettsia that was present in the vast major­i­ty of Lyme suf­fer­ers test­ed ear­ly in research into the dis­ease.

Even­tu­al­ly, dis­cus­sion of the pos­si­ble role of Swiss Agent dropped out of dis­cus­sion. The dis­ap­pear­ance of the Swiss Agent from the sci­en­tif­ic ana­lyt­i­cal lit­er­a­ture coin­cid­ed with Willy’s tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions with bio­log­i­cal war­fare research vet­er­ans.

Key points of dis­cus­sion:

  1. ” . . . . I would engage the sci­en­tif­ic part of his brain in answer­ing my two ques­tions: why the Lyme dis­cov­ery files were miss­ing from the Nation­al Archives, and why images of the organ­ism labeled ‘Swiss Agent’ were locat­ed in the archive fold­ers in the time-frame where one would expect the Lyme spiro­chete pic­tures to be. . . .”
  2. ” . . . . He told me that in late 1979, he had test­ed ‘over one hun­dred ticks’ from Shel­ter Island, locat­ed about twen­ty miles from the Lyme out­break, and all but two had an uniden­ti­fied rick­ettsial species inside. It looked like Rick­ettsia mon­tana (now called Rick­ettsia mon­ta­nen­sis) under a micro­scope, a non-dis­ease-caus­ing cousin of the dead­ly Rick­ettsia rick­et­sii, but it was a dif­fer­ent species. . . .”
  3. ” . . . .‘You say they’re not look­ing for it any­more?’ I asked. ‘They prob­a­bly paid peo­ple off,’ he said. ‘There are folks up there who have a way to enable that.’ . . .”
  4. ” . . . . Next, I showed Willy an unla­beled image of a microbe and asked him what it was. ‘That is a Swiss Agent,’ said Willy. I asked him a series of ques­tions on this microbe and he recit­ed what seemed like well-rehearsed lines: the Swiss Agent is a Rick­ettsia mon­tana-like organ­ism found in the Euro­pean sheep tick, Ixodes Rici­nus, and it doesn’t cause dis­ease in humans. . . .”
  5. ” . . . . Then I asked him why he brought sam­ples of it from Switzer­land back to his lab. He replied with the response that he often used when he seemed to know the answer but wasn’t going to divulge it: ‘Ques­tion mark.’. . .”
  6. ” . . . . The real ‘smok­ing gun,’ though, was Willy’s hand­writ­ten lab notes on the patient blood tests from the dis­ease out­break in Con­necti­cut. These tests showed the proof-of-pres­ence of what I named ‘Swiss Agent USA,’ the mys­tery rick­ettsia present in most of the patients from the orig­i­nal Lyme out­break, a fact that was nev­er dis­closed in jour­nal arti­cles. It didn’t take a PhD in micro­bi­ol­o­gy to see that almost all the patient blood had react­ed strong­ly to an anti­gen test for a Euro­pean rick­ettsia that Willy had called the Swiss Agent. . . .”
  7. ” . . . . In March, he wrote to Ander­son and Steere again: ‘Most spec­i­mens, with a few excep­tions, react­ed only against anti­gens pre­pared from the Swiss Agent.’ In short, the dis­ease clus­ters in Con­necti­cut and Long Island seemed to have been caused by Swiss Agent USA. Then, in April, the Swiss Agent USA rick­ettsia van­ished. It was nev­er again men­tioned in talks, let­ters, inter­views, or jour­nal arti­cles. . . .  There is, with­out a doubt, some­thing sus­pi­cious about the sud­den dis­ap­pear­ance of the Swiss Agent USA from all cor­re­spon­dence. . . .”
  8. The dis­ap­pear­ance of the Swiss Agent USA from the lit­er­a­ture on Lyme Dis­ease cor­re­spond­ed with an impor­tant con­ver­sa­tion that Willy had: ” . . . . It was in the begin­ning of 1980—two years before the first Lyme spiro­chetes were found—that the Swiss Agent USA dis­ap­peared. This about-face coin­cid­ed with a series of dis­cus­sions Willy had with old bioweapons devel­op­ers on the Rick­ettsial Com­mis­sion of the Armed Forces Epi­demi­o­log­i­cal Board, as record­ed in his per­son­al phone log. These sci­en­tists were most cer­tain­ly famil­iar with the secret his­to­ry of inca­pac­i­tat­ing rick­ettsial and viral agent test­ing, and they may have dis­cussed with Willy the pos­si­bil­i­ty of there hav­ing been an undis­closed field test in the Long Island region. . . .”
  9. Round­worms sim­i­lar to organ­isms stud­ied by Willy at the Naval Research Unit in Cairo turned up in some of the ticks: ” . . . . That’s when Willy found par­a­sitic round­worm lar­vae in the main body cav­i­ty of two of the ticks. They were sim­i­lar to the deer worms he’d found in ticks on his 1978 trip to Switzer­land, and sim­i­lar to the round­worms that he, Sonen­shine, and the Naval Research Unit in Cairo had worked with for a project explor­ing the ‘rel­a­tive­ly new field of endo-par­a­sitic trans­mis­sion of dis­ease agents.’ In these exper­i­ments, mul­ti­ple dis­ease agents were put inside mos­qui­to-borne round­worms, accord­ing to an NIH research report from 1961. . . .”
  10. Numer­i­cal­ly, it appears that the Swiss Agent rick­ettsias out­num­bered the spiro­chetes that ulti­mate­ly were tabbed as the causative agent for Lyme Dis­ease: ” . . . . When Willy dis­sect­ed 124 more Shel­ter Island deer ticks, 98 per­cent had the new rick­ettsias in them and only 60 per­cent car­ried the new spiro­chetes. Willy thought that either microbe might be caus­ing Lyme dis­ease, but, for unknown rea­sons, this alter­na­tive the­o­ry fell into a black hole. . . .”

Piv­ot­ing to dis­cus­sion of the pol­i­tics of Lyme Dis­ease treat­ment, we note that legal and reg­u­la­to­ry rul­ings have enabled the patent­ing of liv­ing organ­isms and that has exac­er­bat­ed the mon­e­tiz­ing of Lyme Dis­ease treat­ment. That mon­e­ti­za­tion, in turn, has adverse­ly affect­ed the qual­i­ty of care for afflict­ed patients. As we will see lat­er, Willy Burgdor­fer was not the only Lyme Dis­ease researcher to become involved with bio­log­i­cal war­fare research. ” . . . . All of a sud­den, the insti­tu­tions that were sup­posed to be pro­tec­tors of pub­lic health became busi­ness part­ners with Big Phar­ma. The uni­ver­si­ty researchers who had pre­vi­ous­ly shared infor­ma­tion on dan­ger­ous emerg­ing dis­eases were now delay­ing pub­lish­ing their find­ings so they could become entre­pre­neurs and prof­it from patents through their uni­ver­si­ty tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer groups. We essen­tial­ly lost our sys­tem of sci­en­tif­ic checks and bal­ances. And this, in turn, has under­mined patient trust in the insti­tu­tions that are sup­posed to ‘do no harm.’ . . .”

Ms. New­by went up against the “Lyme Dis­ease estab­lish­ment” in an attempt to find out why the dis­ease was being mis-diag­nosed and inef­fec­tive­ly treat­ed. Strik­ing­ly, a FOIA suit she filed was stonewalled for five years, before final­ly yield­ing the doc­u­ments she had so long sought.

The “experts” and their agen­da was neat­ly, and alarm­ing­ly, summed up by Ms. New­by:

” . . . . The emails revealed a dis­turb­ing pic­ture of a nonof­fi­cial group of gov­ern­ment employ­ees and guide­lines authors that had been set­ting the nation­al Lyme dis­ease research agen­da with­out pub­lic over­sight or trans­paren­cy. . . . Bot­tom line, the guide­lines authors reg­u­lar­ly con­vened in gov­ern­ment-fund­ed, closed-door meet­ings with hid­den agen­das that lined the pock­ets of aca­d­e­m­ic researchers with sig­nif­i­cant com­mer­cial inter­ests in Lyme dis­ease tests and vac­cines. A large per­cent­age of gov­ern­ment grants were award­ed to the guide­line authors and/or researchers in their labs. Part of the group’s stat­ed mis­sion, culled from these FOIA emails, was to run a covert ‘dis­in­for­ma­tion war’ and a ‘sociopo­lit­i­cal offen­sive’ to dis­cred­it Lyme patients, physi­cians, and jour­nal­ists who ques­tioned the group’s research and motives. In the FOIA-obtained emails, Lyme patients and their treat­ing physi­cians were called ‘loonies’ and ‘quacks’ by Lyme guide­lines authors and NIH employ­ees. . . .”

Fur­ther devel­op­ing the links between bio­log­i­cal war­fare research and the Lyme Dis­ease estab­lish­ment, we review infor­ma­tion from FTR #585.

At every turn, Lyme dis­ease research is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with bio­log­i­cal war­fare research. Divid­ed into the “Steere” and “ILADS” camps, the Lyme dis­ease research com­mu­ni­ty is split between the view that the dis­ease is “hard-to-catch, easy-to-cure” and the dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed view that the dis­ease is very seri­ous and pro­duces long-term neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­der. The Steere camp dimin­ish­es the sig­nif­i­cance of the dis­ease and is close­ly iden­ti­fied with bio­log­i­cal war­fare research. At the epi­cen­ter of Lyme dis­ease research (and the Steere camp) are mem­bers of the Epi­dem­ic Intel­li­gence Ser­vice, or EIS. EIS per­son­nel are to be found at every bend in the road of Lyme dis­ease research.

The Bor­re­lia genus has long been researched as a bio­log­i­cal war­fare vec­tor.

” . . . . The Bor­re­lia genus of bac­te­ria, which encom­pass­es the Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri species-group (to which Lyme dis­ease is attrib­uted), was stud­ied by the infa­mous WW2 Japan­ese biowar Unit 731, who car­ried out hor­rif­ic exper­i­ments on pris­on­ers in Manchuria, includ­ing dis­sec­tion of live human beings. [iii] Unit 731 also worked on a num­ber of oth­er tick-borne pathogens. . . . . bor­re­lia were known for their abil­i­ty to adopt dif­fer­ent forms under con­di­tions of stress (such as expo­sure to antibi­otics). Shed­ding their out­er wall, (which is the tar­get of peni­cillin and relat­ed drugs), they could ward off attack and con­tin­ue to exist in the body. . . .”

Note that Unit 731 per­son­nel and their files were put to work for the Unit­ed States after World War II, much like the Project Paper­clip sci­en­tists from Ger­many.

1. We begin  with dis­cus­sion and analy­sis of the mys­te­ri­ous “Swiss Agent” and its appar­ent cousin “Swiss Agent USA.”

  1. ” . . . . I would engage the sci­en­tif­ic part of his brain in answer­ing my two ques­tions: why the Lyme dis­cov­ery files were miss­ing from the Nation­al Archives, and why images of the organ­ism labeled ‘Swiss Agent’ were locat­ed in the archive fold­ers in the time-frame where one would expect the Lyme spiro­chete pic­tures to be. . . .”
  2. ” . . . . He told me that in late 1979, he had test­ed ‘over one hun­dred ticks’ from Shel­ter Island, locat­ed about twen­ty miles from the Lyme out­break, and all but two had an uniden­ti­fied rick­ettsial species inside. It looked like Rick­ettsia mon­tana (now called Rick­ettsia mon­ta­nen­sis) under a micro­scope, a non-dis­ease-caus­ing cousin of the dead­ly Rick­ettsia rick­et­sii, but it was a dif­fer­ent species. . . .”
  3. ” . . . .‘You say they’re not look­ing for it any­more?’ I asked. ‘They prob­a­bly paid peo­ple off,’ he said. ‘There are folks up there who have a way to enable that.’ . . .”
  4. ” . . . . Next, I showed Willy an unla­beled image of a microbe and asked him what it was. ‘That is a Swiss Agent,’ said Willy. I asked him a series of ques­tions on this microbe and he recit­ed what seemed like well-rehearsed lines: the Swiss Agent is a Rick­ettsia mon­tana-like organ­ism found in the Euro­pean sheep tick, Ixodes Rici­nus, and it doesn’t cause dis­ease in humans. . . .”
  5. ” . . . . Then I asked him why he brought sam­ples of it from Switzer­land back to his lab. He replied with the response that he often used when he seemed to know the answer but wasn’t going to divulge it: ‘Ques­tion mark.’. . .”

Bit­ten: The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons by Kris New­by; Harper­Collins [HC]; Copy­right 2019 by Kris New­by; ISBN 9780062896728; pp. 114–115.

. . . . I would engage the sci­en­tif­ic part of his brain in answer­ing my two ques­tions: why the Lyme dis­cov­ery files were miss­ing from the Nation­al Archives, and why images of the organ­ism labeled “Swiss Agent” were locat­ed in the archive fold­ers in the time-frame where one would expect the Lyme spiro­chete pic­tures to be. Could this mys­te­ri­ous Swiss Agent, which was nev­er men­tioned in any pub­li­ca­tions asso­ci­at­ed with the Lyme out­break, also be a bio­log­i­cal weapon?

After a few warm-up ques­tions, I start­ed ask­ing specifics about the ticks and the patient blood sam­ples col­lect­ed around the time of the dis­cov­ery. He told me that in late 1979, he had test­ed “over one hun­dred ticks” from Shel­ter Island, locat­ed about twen­ty miles from the Lyme out­break, and all but two had an uniden­ti­fied rick­ettsial species inside. It looked like Rick­ettsia mon­tana (now called Rick­ettsia mon­ta­nen­sis) under a micro­scope, a non-dis­ease-caus­ing cousin of the dead­ly Rick­ettsia rick­et­sii, but it was a dif­fer­ent species. He said that a sim­i­lar rick­ettsia had also been found in the lone star ticks, and that there was quite a bit of “excite­ment” over that dis­cov­ery.

I kept ask­ing Willy about the mys­tery rick­ettsia, but his answers were gar­bled, and all I could glean from him was that he had stopped inves­ti­gat­ing it for rea­sons unknown.

“You say they’re not look­ing for it any­more?” I asked.

“They prob­a­bly paid peo­ple off,” he said. “There are folks up there who have a way to enable that.”

Next, I showed Willy an unla­beled image of a microbe and asked him what it was.

“That is a Swiss Agent,” said Willy.

I asked him a series of ques­tions on this microbe and he recit­ed what seemed like well-rehearsed lines: the Swiss Agent is a Rick­ettsia mon­tana-like organ­ism found in the Euro­pean sheep tick, Ixodes Rici­nus, and it doesn’t cause dis­ease in humans.

Then I asked him why he brought sam­ples of it from Switzer­land back to his lab.

He replied with the response that he often used when he seemed to know the answer but wasn’t going to divulge it: “Ques­tion mark.”. . .

2. Sup­ple­ment­ing dis­cus­sion of the Swiss Agent is what Ms. New­by called “The real ‘smok­ing gun’ . . .Willy’s hand­writ­ten lab notes on the patient blood tests from the dis­ease out­break in Con­necti­cut. . . .”

” . . . . The real ‘smok­ing gun,’ though, was Willy’s hand­writ­ten lab notes on the patient blood tests from the dis­ease out­break in Con­necti­cut. These tests showed the proof-of-pres­ence of what I named ‘Swiss Agent USA,’ the mys­tery rick­ettsia present in most of the patients from the orig­i­nal Lyme out­break, a fact that was nev­er dis­closed in jour­nal arti­cles. It didn’t take a PhD in micro­bi­ol­o­gy to see that almost all the patient blood had react­ed strong­ly to an anti­gen test for a Euro­pean rick­ettsia that Willy had called the Swiss Agent. . . .”

Bit­ten: The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons by Kris New­by; Harper­Collins [HC]; Copy­right 2019 by Kris New­by; ISBN 9780062896728; pp. 130–131.

. . . . For two days, we dug through box­es of Willy’s lab note­book slides, research report, and a tat­tered brown file fold­er labeled “Det­rick 1954–56.” The fold­er was stuffed with fad­ed car­bon copies of let­ters doc­u­ment­ing Willy’s bioweapons work infect­ing fleas, mos­qui­toes, and ticks with lethal agents. There were reports on his plague-laden flea exper­i­ments, and they con­firmed what Willy had told me in our last (2013) inter­view. Let­ters and reports detailed his efforts to infect mos­qui­toes to deliv­er lethal dos­es of the “Trinidad Agent,” a dead­ly strain of yel­low fever virus extract­ed from the liv­er of a deceased per­son. Lin­dorf had also found some deposit slips from two dif­fer­ent Swiss bank accounts, tucked into a stack of unre­lat­ed doc­u­ments.

The real “smok­ing gun,” though, was Willy’s hand­writ­ten lab notes on the patient blood tests from the dis­ease out­break in Con­necti­cut. These tests showed the proof-of-pres­ence of what I named “Swiss Agent USA,” the mys­tery rick­ettsia present in most of the patients from the orig­i­nal Lyme out­break, a fact that was nev­er dis­closed in jour­nal arti­cles. It didn’t take a PhD in micro­bi­ol­o­gy to see that almost all the patient blood had react­ed strong­ly to an anti­gen test for a Euro­pean rick­ettsia that Willy had called the Swiss Agent. Even more sur­pris­ing, all this work was done in 1978, about two years before Willy, the lead author, pub­lished the arti­cle report­ing that a spiro­chete was the only cause of Lyme dis­ease. . . .

3. Despite the “smok­ing gun” described above, the dis­cus­sion of the “Swiss Agent” as a pos­si­ble cause of Lyme dis­ease, dis­cus­sion of it dropped pre­cip­i­tous­ly from the lit­er­a­ture and research. 

” . . . . In March, he wrote to Ander­son and Steere again: ‘Most spec­i­mens, with a few excep­tions, react­ed only against anti­gens pre­pared from the Swiss Agent.’ In short, the dis­ease clus­ters in Con­necti­cut and Long Island seemed to have been caused by Swiss Agent USA. Then, in April, the Swiss Agent USA rick­ettsia van­ished. It was nev­er again men­tioned in talks, let­ters, inter­views, or jour­nal arti­cles. . . .  There is, with­out a doubt, some­thing sus­pi­cious about the sud­den dis­ap­pear­ance of the Swiss Agent USA from all cor­re­spon­dence. . . .”

Bit­ten: The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons by Kris New­by; Harper­Collins [HC]; Copy­right 2019 by Kris New­by; ISBN 9780062896728; pp. 201–202.

. . . . On Jan­u­ary 3 [1980], Willy wrote to [Swiss pro­fes­sor Andre] Aeschli­mann about test­ing he’d done on the Lyme arthri­tis patients: “I have done some pre­lim­i­nary serol­o­gy with sera from patients and have found very strong reac­tions against the ‘Swiss Agent.’” In Feb­ru­ary, his phone log read, “Steere patient sera test­ed again: Still very pos­i­tive for Swiss Agent.” In March, he wrote to Ander­son and Steere again: “Most spec­i­mens, with a few excep­tions, react­ed only against anti­gens pre­pared from the Swiss Agent.” In short, the dis­ease clus­ters in Con­necti­cut and Long Island seemed to have been caused by Swiss Agent USA.

Then, in April, the Swiss Agent USA rick­ettsia van­ished. It was nev­er again men­tioned in talks, let­ters, inter­views, or jour­nal arti­cles. . . .

. . . . There is, with­out a doubt, some­thing sus­pi­cious about the sud­den dis­ap­pear­ance of the Swiss Agent USA from all cor­re­spon­dence. None of the liv­ing researchers involved in the Swiss Agent dis­cov­ery seem to recall or know why exact­ly it fell off the radar. Its absence from the sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture is equiv­a­lent to the miss­ing eigh­teen and a half min­utes from Nixon’s White House tapes. And it leaves us with the impor­tant ques­tion: Why? . . . .

4. In addi­tion to the fact that the Lyme Dis­ease out­break occurred ear­li­er than is thought to have hap­pened, Ms. New­by fur­ther devel­oped the path of inquiry lead­ing in the direc­tion of the Swiss Agent as a fac­tor in the devel­op­ment of the ail­ment.

Bit­ten: The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons by Kris New­by; Harper­Collins [HC]; Copy­right 2019 by Kris New­by; ISBN 9780062896728; pp. 218–220.

. . . . Toward the end of my inves­ti­ga­tion, I reex­am­ined the his­to­ry of Lyme dis­ease through the eyes of an arson inves­ti­ga­tor, stand­ing knee-deep in the ash­es of the bioweapons pro­gram. The first thing I noticed was that the out­break began ear­li­er than most peo­ple real­ized, in the late 1960s, when the mil­i­tary was con­duct­ing many open-air tests of aerosolized bac­te­ria and aggres­sive lone star ticks. . . .

. . . . Willy’s inves­ti­ga­tion was inter­rupt­ed by his Swiss tick-col­lect­ing trip in 1978, and upon his return, he began ana­lyz­ing Jorge Benach’s Long Island ticks. That’s when he rec­og­nized that there was some­thing dif­fer­ent about the rick­ettsias he was see­ing. Under a micro­scope, they looked like spot­ted fever rick­ettsias, but they didn’t show up on the stan­dard tests and they didn’t always cause the expect­ed pin­prick rash­es. These rick­ettsias caused a spot-free spot­ted fever.

Why did Willy go on an NIH-fund­ed Swiss sab­bat­i­cal in the mid­dle of the U.S. rick­ettsial out­break? And why did the new­ly dis­cov­ered Long Island rick­ettsia test pos­i­tive to the Euro­pean Swiss Agent tests? Answer unknown.

Based on his let­ters to Steere, Benach, and oth­ers, in 1979, Willy seemed con­vinced that a new rick­ettsia could be a causative agent of “Lyme dis­ease.” The pos­si­bil­i­ty was reflect­ed in a project report from the Nation­al Insti­tute of Aller­gy and Infec­tious Dis­eases (NIAID) for the peri­od end­ing Sep­tem­ber 30, 1979: “Only R. rick­ettsii has thus far been eti­o­log­i­cal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with human ill­ness, and indi­ca­tions are that the oth­er three are avir­u­lent for man (as well as for exper­i­men­tal ani­mals), although tan­ta­liz­ing evi­dence based on sero­log­ic respons­es in res­i­dents from Long Island and Cal­i­for­nia sug­gests that inap­par­ent or missed infec­tion may some­times occur. . . .”

There was noth­ing in the offi­cial NIH progress reports of 1979 and 1980 about the Long Island and Con­necti­cut blood sam­ples test­ing pos­i­tive for Euro­pean Swiss Agent anti­gens. And in the 1979 report, Willy wrote, “The ‘Swiss Agent’ is path­o­gen­ic to mead­ow voles, chick embryos, and sev­er­al lines of tis­sue cul­ture cells, but not for guinea pigs,” a find­ing that con­tra­dict­ed lat­er claims that it was harm­less. . . .

5. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that either rick­ettsias and/or new­ly dis­cov­ered spiro­chetes might be caus­ing Lyme Dis­ease also fell into what Ms. New­by called “a black hole.” Recall that, as dis­cussed in sec­tion 6, Willy’s bio­log­i­cal war­fare research was involved with the simul­ta­ne­ous infec­tion of ticks with both viral and bac­te­r­i­al agents, tak­ing advan­tage of the virus’s abil­i­ty to mutate the genes of bac­te­ria.

  1. The dis­ap­pear­ance of the Swiss Agent USA from the lit­er­a­ture on Lyme Dis­ease cor­re­spond­ed with an impor­tant con­ver­sa­tion that Willy had: ” . . . . It was in the begin­ning of 1980—two years before the first Lyme spiro­chetes were found—that the Swiss Agent USA dis­ap­peared. This about-face coin­cid­ed with a series of dis­cus­sions Willy had with old bioweapons devel­op­ers on the Rick­ettsial Com­mis­sion of the Armed Forces Epi­demi­o­log­i­cal Board, as record­ed in his per­son­al phone log. These sci­en­tists were most cer­tain­ly famil­iar with the secret his­to­ry of inca­pac­i­tat­ing rick­ettsial and viral agent test­ing, and they may have dis­cussed with Willy the pos­si­bil­i­ty of there hav­ing been an undis­closed field test in the Long Island region. . . .”
  2. Round­worms sim­i­lar to organ­isms stud­ied by Willy at the Naval Research Unit in Cairo turned up in some of the ticks: ” . . . . That’s when Willy found par­a­sitic round­worm lar­vae in the main body cav­i­ty of two of the ticks. They were sim­i­lar to the deer worms he’d found in ticks on his 1978 trip to Switzer­land, and sim­i­lar to the round­worms that he, Sonen­shine, and the Naval Research Unit in Cairo had worked with for a project explor­ing the ‘rel­a­tive­ly new field of endo-par­a­sitic trans­mis­sion of dis­ease agents.’ In these exper­i­ments, mul­ti­ple dis­ease agents were put inside mos­qui­to-borne round­worms, accord­ing to an NIH research report from 1961. . . .”
  3. Numer­i­cal­ly, it appears that the Swiss Agent rick­ettsias out­num­bered the spiro­chetes that ulti­mate­ly were tabbed as the causative agent for Lyme Dis­ease: ” . . . . When Willy dis­sect­ed 124 more Shel­ter Island deer ticks, 98 per­cent had the new rick­ettsias in them and only 60 per­cent car­ried the new spiro­chetes. Willy thought that either microbe might be caus­ing Lyme dis­ease, but, for unknown rea­sons, this alter­na­tive the­o­ry fell into a black hole. . . .”

Bit­ten: The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons by Kris New­by; Harper­Collins [HC]; Copy­right 2019 by Kris New­by; ISBN 9780062896728; pp. 220–223.

. . . . It was in the begin­ning of 1980—two years before the first Lyme spiro­chetes were found—that the Swiss Agent USA dis­ap­peared. This about-face coin­cid­ed with a series of dis­cus­sions Willy had with old bioweapons devel­op­ers on the Rick­ettsial Com­mis­sion of the Armed Forces Epi­demi­o­log­i­cal Board, as record­ed in his per­son­al phone log. These sci­en­tists were most cer­tain­ly famil­iar with the secret his­to­ry of inca­pac­i­tat­ing rick­ettsial and viral agent test­ing, and they may have dis­cussed with Willy the pos­si­bil­i­ty of there hav­ing been an undis­closed field test in the Long Island region.

His on-the-record time­line of the Lyme spiro­chete dis­cov­ery didn’t start until Octo­ber 1981, when Jorge Benach [also with a bio­log­i­cal war­fare research CV—D.E.] sent a new batch of Shel­ter Island deer ticks to him. That’s when Willy found par­a­sitic round­worm lar­vae in the main body cav­i­ty of two of the ticks. They were sim­i­lar to the deer worms he’d found in ticks on his 1978 trip to Switzer­land, and sim­i­lar to the round­worms that he, Sonen­shine, and the Naval Research Unit in Cairo had worked with for a project explor­ing the “rel­a­tive­ly new field of endo-par­a­sitic trans­mis­sion of dis­ease agents.” In these exper­i­ments, mul­ti­ple dis­ease agents were put inside mos­qui­to-borne round­worms, accord­ing to an NIH research report from 1961.

When Willy dis­sect­ed 124 more Shel­ter Island deer ticks, 98 per­cent had the new rick­ettsias in them and only 60 per­cent car­ried the new spiro­chetes. Willy thought that either microbe might be caus­ing Lyme dis­ease, but, for unknown rea­sons, this alter­na­tive the­o­ry fell into a black hole. . . .

. . . . Omit­ting the Swiss Agent USA find­ings from the Lyme dis­cov­ery arti­cles rep­re­sent­ed a seri­ous breach of sci­en­tif­ic ethics on Willy’s part. Willy was the lead researcher and he was the one who pos­sessed direct knowl­edge of the test results show­ing rick­ettsias resem­bling the Swiss Agent. At this ear­ly stage of research, Willy should have men­tioned all poten­tial pathogens.

Did Willy feel guilty about going along with a cov­er-up of a bio­log­i­cal weapons release? Was he wor­ried about vio­lat­ing his secre­cy oath? My instincts say that he knew when and where the agents got out but was afraid to tell me the details.

And final­ly, was there a dark­er secret Willy felt guilty about? There was his claim that he’d twice been ques­tioned by the feds about miss­ing bio­log­i­cal agents. . . .

6. Piv­ot­ing to dis­cus­sion of the pol­i­tics of Lyme Dis­ease treat­ment, we note that legal and reg­u­la­to­ry rul­ings have enabled the patent­ing of liv­ing organ­isms and that has exac­er­bat­ed the mon­e­tiz­ing of Lyme Dis­ease treat­ment. That mon­e­ti­za­tion, in turn, has adverse­ly affect­ed the qual­i­ty of care for afflict­ed patients. As we will see lat­er, Willy Burgdor­fer was not the only Lyme Dis­ease researcher to become involved with bio­log­i­cal war­fare research. ” . . . . All of a sud­den, the insti­tu­tions that were sup­posed to be pro­tec­tors of pub­lic health became busi­ness part­ners with Big Phar­ma. The uni­ver­si­ty researchers who had pre­vi­ous­ly shared infor­ma­tion on dan­ger­ous emerg­ing dis­eases were now delay­ing pub­lish­ing their find­ings so they could become entre­pre­neurs and prof­it from patents through their uni­ver­si­ty tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer groups. We essen­tial­ly lost our sys­tem of sci­en­tif­ic checks and bal­ances. And this, in turn, has under­mined patient trust in the insti­tu­tions that are sup­posed to ‘do no harm.’ . . .”

Bit­ten: The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons by Kris New­by; Harper­Collins [HC]; Copy­right 2019 by Kris New­by; ISBN 9780062896728; pp. 229–230.

. . . . Think­ing back on my research for the Lyme doc­u­men­tary Under Our Skin, I con­clud­ed that there was much more mon­ey at stake with Lyme Dis­ease. It was the first major new dis­ease dis­cov­ered after the Bayh-Dole Act and the Dia­mond v. Chakrabar­ty Supreme Court deci­sion made it pos­si­ble for the NIH, the CDC, and uni­ver­si­ties to patent and prof­it from “own­er­ship” of live organ­isms. When the causative organ­ism behind Lyme dis­ease was announced, some­thing akin to the Okla­homa Land Rush of 1889 began, as sci­en­tists with­in these insti­tu­tions began furi­ous­ly fil­ing patents on the sur­face pro­teins and DNA of the Lyme spiro­chete, hop­ing to prof­it from future vac­cines and diag­nos­tic tests that used these markers–for exam­ple, an NIH employ­ee who patents a bac­te­r­i­al sur­face pro­tein used in a com­mer­cial test kit or a vac­cine could receive up to $150,000 in roy­al­ty pay­ments a year, an amount that might dou­ble his or her annu­al salary. All of a sud­den, the insti­tu­tions that were sup­posed to be pro­tec­tors of pub­lic health became busi­ness part­ners with Big Phar­ma. The uni­ver­si­ty researchers who had pre­vi­ous­ly shared infor­ma­tion on dan­ger­ous emerg­ing dis­eases were now delay­ing pub­lish­ing their find­ings so they could become entre­pre­neurs and prof­it from patents through their uni­ver­si­ty tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer groups. We essen­tial­ly lost our sys­tem of sci­en­tif­ic checks and bal­ances. And this, in turn, has under­mined patient trust in the insti­tu­tions that are sup­posed to “do no harm.”

With Lyme dis­ease, there’s no prof­it incen­tive for proac­tive­ly treat­ing some­one with a few weeks of inex­pen­sive, off-patent antibi­otics. It’s the patentable vac­cines and manda­to­ry tests-before-treat­ment that bring in the steady rev­enues year after year. . . . 

7. Ms. New­by went up against the “Lyme Dis­ease estab­lish­ment” in an attempt to find out why the dis­ease was being mis-diag­nosed and inef­fec­tive­ly treat­ed. Strik­ing­ly, a FOIA suit she filed was stonewalled, before final­ly yield­ing the doc­u­ments she had so long sought.

The “experts” and their agen­da was neat­ly, and alarm­ing­ly, summed up by Ms. New­by:

” . . . . The emails revealed a dis­turb­ing pic­ture of a nonof­fi­cial group of gov­ern­ment employ­ees and guide­lines authors that had been set­ting the nation­al Lyme dis­ease research agen­da with­out pub­lic over­sight or trans­paren­cy. . . . Bot­tom line, the guide­lines authors reg­u­lar­ly con­vened in gov­ern­ment-fund­ed, closed-door meet­ings with hid­den agen­das that lined the pock­ets of aca­d­e­m­ic researchers with sig­nif­i­cant com­mer­cial inter­ests in Lyme dis­ease tests and vac­cines. A large per­cent­age of gov­ern­ment grants were award­ed to the guide­line authors and/or researchers in their labs. Part of the group’s stat­ed mis­sion, culled from these FOIA emails, was to run a covert ‘dis­in­for­ma­tion war’ and a ‘sociopo­lit­i­cal offen­sive’ to dis­cred­it Lyme patients, physi­cians, and jour­nal­ists who ques­tioned the group’s research and motives. In the FOIA-obtained emails, Lyme patients and their treat­ing physi­cians were called ‘loonies’ and ‘quacks’ by Lyme guide­lines authors and NIH employ­ees. . . .”

Bit­ten: The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons by Kris New­by; Harper­Collins [HC]; Copy­right 2019 by Kris New­by; ISBN 9780062896728; pp. 121–124.

. . . . In the IDSA [Infec­tious Dis­eases Soci­ety of Amer­i­ca] guide­lines, chron­ic Lyme isn’t clas­si­fied as an ongo­ing, per­sis­tent infec­tion; it’s con­sid­ered either an autoim­mune syn­drome (in which a body’s immune sys­tem attacks itself) or a psy­cho­log­i­cal con­di­tion caused by “the aches and pains of dai­ly liv­ing” or “pri­or trau­mat­ic psy­cho­log­i­cal events.” These guide­lines were often used by med­ical insur­ers to deny treat­ment, and many of its authors are paid con­sult­ing fees to tes­ti­fy as expert wit­ness­es in these insur­ance cas­es. In some states, the guide­line rec­om­men­da­tions take on the force of law, so that Lyme physi­cians who prac­tice out­side them are at risk of los­ing their med­ical licens­es.

The pro­tes­tors were angry because, as part of a 2008 antitrust set­tle­ment brought by Con­necti­cut attor­ney gen­er­al Richard Blu­men­thal (now a sen­a­tor), the IDSA guide­lines were sup­posed to appoint an expert pan­el with­out bias­es or con­flicts to do a re-review of the guide­lines. In the set­tle­ment press release, Blu­men­thal had writ­ten, “My office uncov­ered undis­closed finan­cial inter­ests held by sev­er­al of the most pow­er­ful IDSA pan­elists. The IDSA’s guide­line pan­el improp­er­ly ignored or min­i­mized con­sid­er­a­tion of alter­na­tive med­ical opin­ion and evi­dence regard­ing chron­ic Lyme dis­ease, poten­tial­ly rais­ing seri­ous ques­tions about whether the rec­om­men­da­tions reflect­ed all rel­e­vant sci­ence.”

In response, the IDSA lead­er­ship select­ed a review pan­el of doc­tors and sci­en­tists, and they deter­mined that “No changes or revi­sions to the 2006 Lyme guide­lines are nec­es­sary at this time.”

Lor­raine John­son, JD, MBA, the chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of LymeDisease.org, and a cham­pi­on of the IDSA antitrust suit, main­tains that the review pan­el was stacked with like-mind­ed cronies of the orig­i­nal guide­lines’ authors and was there­fore biased. She cites the recent arti­cle by research qual­i­ty expert and Stan­ford pro­fes­sor John Ioan­ni­dis, MD, DSc, who rec­om­mends that “Pro­fes­sion­al soci­eties should con­sid­er dis­en­tan­gling their spe­cial­ists from guide­lines and dis­ease def­i­n­i­tions and lis­ten to what more impar­tial stake­hold­ers think about their prac­tices.”

Today, in 2019, these con­tro­ver­sial guide­lines and dis­put­ed tests are still influ­enc­ing Lyme patient care.

Peo­ple often ask me why the IDSA and CDC would sup­port the prob­lem­at­ic two-tier Lyme test. Dur­ing my doc­u­men­tary research, I tried to get an answer to this ques­tion with a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act (FOIA) request that solicit­ed emails between three CDC employ­ees and the IDSA guide­lines authors. For five years the CDC strung me along with friv­o­lous denials, unex­plained delays, and false promis­es. In essence, the delays became an ille­gal, off-the-books FOIA denial. Some delays were attrib­uted to under­staffing, year-end dead­lines, and CDC per­son­nel out for vaca­tion. At one point, my unan­swered calls were blamed on a phone “dead zone” in the CDC’s new FOIA office. After the Lyme doc­u­men­tary Under Our Skin was released, I decid­ed to dou­ble-down on my efforts to dis­lodge the FOIA request. My con­gressper­son sent sev­er­al let­ters to the CDC. The direc­tor of the doc­u­men­tary wrote a let­ter to Pres­i­dent Oba­ma. The FOIA ombuds­man in the Office of Gov­ern­ment Infor­ma­tion Ser­vices repeat­ed­ly pres­sured the CDC to ful­fill my request. I pub­lished blog posts about my plight and enlist­ed the sup­port of a num­ber of orga­ni­za­tions ded­i­cat­ed to ensur­ing gov­ern­ment trans­paren­cy. Final­ly, the CDC sent three-thou­sand-plus FOIA pages, and I then under­stood its moti­va­tion for hav­ing delayed their release.

The emails revealed a dis­turb­ing pic­ture of a nonof­fi­cial group of gov­ern­ment employ­ees and guide­lines authors that had been set­ting the nation­al Lyme dis­ease research agen­da with­out pub­lic over­sight or trans­paren­cy. Inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Mary Beth Pfeif­fer of the Pough­keep­sie Jour­nal was giv­en access to these emails, and on May 20, 2013. She pub­lished an expose on this group’s abuse of pow­er.

Bot­tom line, the guide­lines authors reg­u­lar­ly con­vened in gov­ern­ment-fund­ed, closed-door meet­ings with hid­den agen­das that lined the pock­ets of aca­d­e­m­ic researchers with sig­nif­i­cant com­mer­cial inter­ests in Lyme dis­ease tests and vac­cines. A large per­cent­age of gov­ern­ment grants were award­ed to the guide­line authors and/or researchers in their labs.

Part of the group’s stat­ed mis­sion, culled from these FOIA emails, was to run a covert “dis­in­for­ma­tion war” and a “sociopo­lit­i­cal offen­sive” to dis­cred­it Lyme patients, physi­cians, and jour­nal­ists who ques­tioned the group’s research and motives. In the FOIA-obtained emails, Lyme patients and their treat­ing physi­cians were called “loonies” and “quacks’ by Lyme guide­lines authors and NIH employ­ees.

Because my FOIA request end­ed up tak­ing five years to process, Under Our Skin had been made and released with­out answer­ing an impor­tant ques­tion: Were the gov­ern­ment offi­cials respon­si­ble for man­ag­ing Lyme dis­ease health pol­i­cy being inap­pro­pri­ate­ly influ­enced by out­side com­mer­cial inter­ests?

Through my FOIA request, I found that a major­i­ty of the authors of the 2006 IDSA Lyme diag­no­sis and treat­ment guide­lines held direct or indi­rect com­mer­cial inter­ests relat­ed to Lyme dis­ease. By defin­ing the dis­ease and endors­ing tests or vac­cines for which they were patent hold­ers, they and their insti­tu­tions made more mon­ey.

Yet, now Willy’s con­fes­sion had added anoth­er poten­tial dimen­sion to the sto­ry, anoth­er rea­son for the CDC to be under­count­ing Lyme cases—maybe gov­ern­ment offi­cials knew that some­thing else, a pathogen in addi­tion to Bor­re­lia, pos­si­bly a bio-weapon, was caus­ing the prob­lems, and they want­ed to keep a lid on it. . . .

8. Fur­ther devel­op­ing the links between bio­log­i­cal war­fare research and the Lyme Dis­ease estab­lish­ment, we review infor­ma­tion from FTR #585.

At every turn, Lyme dis­ease research is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with bio­log­i­cal war­fare research. Divid­ed into the “Steere” and “ILADS” camps, the Lyme dis­ease research com­mu­ni­ty is split between the view that the dis­ease is “hard-to-catch, easy-to-cure” and the dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed view that the dis­ease is very seri­ous and pro­duces long-term neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­der. The Steere camp dimin­ish­es the sig­nif­i­cance of the dis­ease and is close­ly iden­ti­fied with bio­log­i­cal war­fare research. At the epi­cen­ter of Lyme dis­ease research (and the Steere camp) are mem­bers of the Epi­dem­ic Intel­li­gence Ser­vice, or EIS. EIS per­son­nel are to be found at every bend in the road of Lyme dis­ease research.

The Bor­re­lia genus has long been researched as a bio­log­i­cal war­fare vec­tor. Note that Unit 731 per­son­nel and their files were put to work for the Unit­ed States after World War II, much like the Project Paper­clip sci­en­tists from Ger­many.

“His­to­ry of Lyme dis­ease as a Bioweapon: Lyme is a Biowar­fare Issue” by Ele­na Cook.

 . . . The Bor­re­lia genus of bac­te­ria, which encom­pass­es the Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri species-group (to which Lyme dis­ease is attrib­uted), was stud­ied by the infa­mous WW2 Japan­ese biowar Unit 731, who car­ried out hor­rif­ic exper­i­ments on pris­on­ers in Manchuria, includ­ing dis­sec­tion of live human beings. [iii] Unit 731 also worked on a num­ber of oth­er tick-borne pathogens. After the war, the butch­ers of Unit 731 were shield­ed from pros­e­cu­tion by the US author­i­ties, who want­ed their exper­tise for the Cold War. [iv] The US gov­ern­ment also pro­tect­ed and recruit­ed Ger­man Nazi bioweaponeers under the aegis of the top-secret Oper­a­tion Paper­clip. . . .

9. The Bor­re­lia genus is well suit­ed to bio­log­i­cal war­fare research.

“His­to­ry of Lyme dis­ease as a Bioweapon: Lyme is a Biowar­fare Issue” by Ele­na Cook.

. . . bor­re­lia were known for their abil­i­ty to adopt dif­fer­ent forms under con­di­tions of stress (such as expo­sure to antibi­otics). Shed­ding their out­er wall, (which is the tar­get of peni­cillin and relat­ed drugs), they could ward off attack and con­tin­ue to exist in the body. Lyme dis­ease is not usu­al­ly fatal, and it is some­times argued that, with rapid­ly lethal agents like small­pox and plague avail­able, an army would have no inter­est in it. How­ev­er, what is impor­tant to under­stand here is that inca­pac­i­tat­ing or ‘non-lethal’ bioweapons are a major part of biowar­fare R&D [vi], and have been for decades. . . . Mil­i­tary strate­gists under­stand that dis­abling an enemy’s sol­diers can some­times cause more dam­age than killing them, as large amount of resources are then tied up in car­ing for the casu­al­ties. An effi­cient inca­pac­i­tat­ing weapon dis­persed over a civil­ian pop­u­la­tion could destroy a country’s econ­o­my and infra­struc­ture with­out fir­ing a shot. Peo­ple would either be too sick to work, or too busy look­ing after those who were. . . .

10. Research into Lyme dis­ease has been dom­i­nat­ed by per­son­nel from the Epi­dem­ic Intel­li­gence Ser­vice, whose mem­bers are the pre­mier bio­log­i­cal war­fare experts in the coun­try. The EIS per­son­nel make up the Steere Camp. EIS per­son­nel admin­is­tered Lyme dis­ease research from the begin­ning:

“His­to­ry of Lyme dis­ease as a Bioweapon: Lyme is a Biowar­fare Issue” by Ele­na Cook.

 . . . When Pol­ly Mur­ray made her now-famous call to the Con­necti­cut health depart­ment to report the strange epi­dem­ic among chil­dren and adults in her town, her ini­tial recep­tion was luke­warm. How­ev­er, some weeks lat­er, she got an unex­pect­ed call from a Dr David Sny­d­man, of the Epi­dem­ic Intel­li­gence Ser­vice (EIS), who was very inter­est­ed. He arranged for fel­low EIS offi­cer Dr Allen Steere to get involved. By the time Mrs. Mur­ray turned up for her appoint­ment at Yale, the doc­tor she had expect­ed to see had been rel­e­gat­ed to the role of an onlook­er. Allen Steere had tak­en charge – and his views were to shape the course of Lyme med­i­cine for the next thir­ty years, up till today. [x] . . .

11. More about the EIS and its impor­tance to the inter­na­tion­al bio­log­i­cal war­fare research com­mu­ni­ty:

“His­to­ry of Lyme dis­ease as a Bioweapon: Lyme is a Biowar­fare Issue” by Ele­na Cook.

. . . . The EIS is an elite, qua­si-mil­i­tary unit of Infec­tious Dis­ease experts set up in the 1950’s to devel­op an [alleged­ly] offen­sive biowar­fare capa­bil­i­ty. Despite the ban­ning of offen­sive biowar in the 1970’s, the crack troops of the EIS con­tin­ue to exist, osten­si­bly for non-offen­sive research into ‘emerg­ing dis­ease’ threats, a blan­ket phrase cov­er­ing both bioweapon attacks and nat­ur­al epi­demics at the same time. Grad­u­ates of the EIS train­ing pro­gram are sent in to occu­py strate­gic posi­tions in the US health infra­struc­ture, tak­ing lead­er­ship at fed­er­al and state health agen­cies, in acad­e­mia, indus­try and the media. The orga­ni­za­tion also extends its influ­ence abroad, train­ing offi­cers for pub­lic health agen­cies in Britain, France, the Nether­lands etc. [xi] [xii] . . .

. . . . In fact a high pro­por­tion of Steere camp Lyme experts are involved with the EIS. Giv­en that the EIS is a small, elite force, (in 2001 the CDC revealed there were less than 2500 EIS offi­cers in exis­tence since the unit was first cre­at­ed in 1951 [xiii]), it seems incred­i­ble that so many of America’s top Infec­tious Dis­ease experts would devote their careers to what they them­selves claim is a ‘hard-to-catch, eas­i­ly-cured’ dis­ease. . . .

12. Two of the peo­ple with whom Burgdor­fer worked in the ear­ly phas­es of Lyme research (Jorge Benach and Alan Bar­bour) were also BW [bio­log­i­cal war­fare] spe­cial­ists.

“His­to­ry of Lyme dis­ease as a Bioweapon: Lyme is a Biowar­fare Issue” by Ele­na Cook.

. . . The microbe was acci­den­tal­ly found by biowar­fare sci­en­tist Willy Burgdor­fer and was sub­se­quent­ly named for him. [Empha­sis added.] Burgdor­fer has cham­pi­oned the Lyme patients’ move­ment and is not sus­pect­ed of any wrong­do­ing. How­ev­er it is not impos­si­ble that he was unwit­ting­ly caught up in a chain of events that were not as ran­dom as they might have seemed. [Burgdor­fer was a Swiss sci­en­tist who had been recruit­ed by the US Pub­lic Health Ser­vice in the 1950’s. He was high­ly expe­ri­enced with both ticks and bor­re­lia, but after being told that the gov­ern­ment was not inter­est­ed in fund­ing work with the lat­ter, he switched to work with Rick­ettsia and oth­er pathogens. [xiv] In 1981, Burgdor­fer was sent a batch of deer ticks by a team study­ing Rocky Moun­tain Spot­ted Fever on the East Coast.

In charge of the team was one Dr Jorge Benach. [xv] Benach sub­se­quent­ly spent much of his career as a Steere camp Lyme researcher. In 2004 he was cho­sen as recip­i­ent for a $3 mil­lion biowar­fare research grant. [xvi] [Empha­sis added.] Cut­ting open some of Benach’ ticks, Burgdor­fer noticed micro­fi­lar­ia (micro­scop­ic worm young). This was a sub­ject he had been study­ing recent­ly, only these micro­fi­lar­ia were dif­fer­ent. They were excep­tion­al­ly large, large enough to be seen with the naked eye.[xvii] His curios­i­ty nat­u­ral­ly piqued, he opened up sev­er­al more ticks. There he was sur­prised to find the spi­ral-shaped germs of bor­re­lia. Cul­ti­va­tion is nec­es­sary in order to iso­late bac­te­ria for study, so that diag­nos­tic tests, vac­cines or cures can be devel­oped. Bor­re­lia are very dif­fi­cult to grow in cul­ture.

How­ev­er, by ‘lucky coin­ci­dence’, anoth­er sci­en­tist had recent­ly joined the lab where he worked, and had appar­ent­ly been involved in an amaz­ing break­through in this area. So nat­u­ral­ly Burgdor­fer hand­ed the infect­ed ticks over to him. [xvi­ii] That sci­en­tist was Dr. Alan Bar­bour, an offi­cer, like Steere and Sny­d­man, of the Epi­dem­ic Intel­li­gence Ser­vice, with a back­ground in work on anthrax, one of the most ter­ri­fy­ing biowar­fare agents known. [xix] [Empha­sis added.] . . . 

13. Set­ting the tem­plate for future Lyme research, EIS researcher Alan Barbour’s work on bor­re­lia deter­mined the nature of sub­se­quent Lyme dis­ease test­ing. Bar­bour has gone on to the top posi­tion in a bio­log­i­cal war­fare research facil­i­ty at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Irvine, where he is work­ing with anoth­er “Steerite,” Jonas Bunikis.

“His­to­ry of Lyme dis­ease as a Bioweapon: Lyme is a Biowar­fare Issue” by Ele­na Cook.

. . . EIS man Bar­bour there­fore became the first to iso­late the pro­to­type organ­ism on which all sub­se­quent Lyme dis­ease blood tests would be based. [xx] This is very sig­nif­i­cant, as a huge body of evi­dence [xxi] indi­cates the unre­li­a­bil­i­ty of these tests, which are rou­tine­ly used to rule out the dis­ease. Addi­tion­al­ly, all DNA detec­tion of the Lyme agent in ticks and ani­mals is ulti­mate­ly based, direct­ly or indi­rect­ly, on the genet­ic pro­file of the strain first iso­lat­ed by Bar­bour.

Short­ly after Barbour’s dis­cov­ery, oth­er species and strains of the Lyme-caus­ing bac­te­ria were iso­lat­ed, espe­cial­ly in Europe. They were all clas­si­fied based on their resem­blance to Barbour’s organ­ism, and have been grouped into a cat­e­go­ry called Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri sen­su lato or ‘Bbsl’ for short. . . . In 2005 Bar­bour, who spent much of his career study­ing the ‘hard-to-catch, easy-to-cure’ Lyme dis­ease, was placed in charge of the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar new biowar­fare mega-com­plex based at Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Irvine (UCI). [xxiv] Bar­bour is joined there by his close col­league and fel­low Steerite Jonas Bunikis, author of recent papers call­ing for a restric­tive approach to Lyme diag­no­sis. [Empha­sis added.] . . .

 

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