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FTR #1137 Lyme Disease and Biological Warfare, Part 3

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FTR #1137 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

NB: This descrip­tion con­tains mate­r­i­al not con­tained in the orig­i­nal pro­gram.

Intro­duc­tion: 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. ” . . . 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.  . .”

Much of the pro­gram is devot­ed to excerpt­ing and analy­sis of a 2013 post­ing by Ele­na Cook. This dis­cus­sion of “Spiro­chete War­fare,” in turn, makes lib­er­al use of mate­r­i­al from a 1944 text about Japan’s bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram. This book “Japan’s Secret Weapon,” con­tains a great deal of infor­ma­tion about Japan­ese pio­neer­ing of the use of spiro­chetes as bio­log­i­cal war­fare organ­isms.

This mate­r­i­al is to be con­sid­ered in the his­tor­i­cal and polit­i­cal con­text of the incor­po­ra­tion of the key per­son­nel and files of the noto­ri­ous Japan­ese Unit 731 bio­log­i­cal war­fare divi­sion into the U.S. BW pro­gram after World War II.

Appar­ent­ly decades ahead of their Allied coun­ter­parts, Japan­ese use of spiro­chetes encom­passed a num­ber of impor­tant points to con­sid­er:

  1. The Japan­ese under­stood that “cell-wall defi­cient spiro­chetes, ” “gran­ule” and “L‑forms” had tremen­dous sig­nif­i­cance for bio­log­i­cal war­fare. ” . . . This WW2-era book helps to con­firm what some inves­ti­gat­ing the his­to­ry of Lyme dis­ease have long sus­pect­ed; that the offi­cial denial of the dev­as­tat­ing path­o­gen­ic nature of the gran­ule and oth­er ‘L‑forms’(1) of Lyme-caus­ing Bor­re­lia, is relat­ed to their bio­log­i­cal war­fare sig­nif­i­cance. . .”
  2. ” . . . To put it blunt­ly, New­man’s book pro­vides cogent cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence that many Cell-wall defi­cient forms of Bor­re­lia are in fact weaponized spiro­chetes, nur­tured, cul­tured and opti­mized for aerosol deliv­ery. . .” 
  3. Accord­ing to author Bar­clay New­man, a com­bined Japan­ese and Nazi bio­log­i­cal war­fare offen­sive against Hawaii using the spiro­chetal dis­ease lep­tospiro­sis against Hawaii two or three years before the attack on Pearl Har­bor: ” . . . . ‘Nazi and Japan­ese sci­en­tists coop­er­at­ed in war­fare against or with spiro­chetes — in Hawaii.’ (orig­i­nal author’s ital­ics). What he is refer­ring to is an excep­tion­al­ly vir­u­lent out­break of the spiro­chetal dis­ease lep­tospiro­sis, also known as Weil’s dis­ease, and known at the time in Ger­many as ‘slime fever’. With offi­cial reports of 44% mor­tal­i­ty from the out­break, New­man states: Con­sult the author­i­ties, and you will find out that, very def­i­nite­ly, so high a mor­tal­i­ty is attained only by Japan­ese strains of spiro­chetes of slime fever. . . .”
  4. Accord­ing to New­man, the Japan­ese had con­clud­ed that spiro­chetes, although very close to bac­te­ria in form, were not actu­al­ly bac­te­ria and there­fore: ” . . . . a spiro­chete can also break itself into many tiny gran­ules, each as small as the invis­i­ble mol­e­cule of a virus, and each capa­ble of recre­at­ing a new spiro­chete. . . .”
  5. Again, accord­ing to New­man: ” . . . The Japan­ese have report­ed that you can increase the vir­u­lence, or killing pow­er, of these spi­rals by grow­ing them in flesh and blood, of guinea pig or man. . .” This is inter­est­ing to con­sid­er in light of the evi­dence of Lyme Dis­ease as the prod­uct of bio­log­i­cal war­fare. Might some of the “tests” have had the goal of “grow­ing” such organ­isms in humans? ” . . . The resis­tance of many spiro­chetes, includ­ing bor­re­lia, to cul­ture in vit­ro remains a prob­lem for lab sci­en­tists even today. . .”
  6. The “gran­ule” spiro­chete form was found by the Japan­ese to have great val­ue for aerosolized BW appli­ca­tions: ” . . . Ina­da has report­ed that the Japan­ese know how to get virus-like, quite invis­i­ble par­ti­cles or spiro­chete-frag­ments from spe­cial cul­tures of spiro­chetes of infec­tious jaun­dice. The Japan­ese say that such infin­i­tes­i­mals can be used to infect ani­mals and men, by spray­ing droplets con­tain­ing these spiro­chete-cre­at­ing bits into the air, or spread­ing them through water, or scat­ter­ing them in mud or damp soil. . . .”
  7. The above-men­tioned lep­tospiro­sis or “slime fever” may have been used as a “soft­en­ing-up” agent pri­or to Japan­ese inva­sions in World War II” ” . . . ‘Imme­di­ate­ly before the Japan­ese inva­sions of Chi­na, Indo-Chi­na, the Dutch East Indies, and the Malay States, and short­ly before the Japan­ese inva­sion of India and the Japan­ese strokes at Aus­tralia, the very first out­breaks of slime fever were report­ed from every one of these areas’ . . .”
  8. The Japan­ese had dis­cov­ered the appli­ca­tion of infec­tion via mul­ti­ple pathogens. This may have fig­ured into the devel­op­ment of Lyme Dis­ease as well. ” . . . Fuji­mori (sic) was test­ing out the effects of spread­ing two dif­fer­ent par­a­sites into the same guinea pig at the same time. The Japan­ese dis­cov­ered that one par­a­site pro­motes the lethal action of the oth­er. . . .”
  9. The Japan­ese devel­oped with spread­ing spiro­chetal dis­ease via spray­ing droplets into the eyes of tar­gets. We won­der if Willy Burgdor­fer­’s pos­si­ble Lyme infec­tion from dis­eased Rab­bit-urine may have stemmed from this tech­nol­o­gy? This is dis­cussed below. ” . . . ‘Some­times the Japan­ese think up the damnedest exper­i­ments, such as the trans­mis­sion of syphilis by spray­ing the spiro­chetes into the air or into the eyes of ani­mals or vol­un­teers. Infec­tion is thus accom­plished. . . . if you want to spec­u­late fur­ther about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of spiro­chete war­fare, you can be sure that the Japan­ese know how to spread any spiro­chete dis­ease . . . by spray­ing droplets laden with spe­cial­ly cul­tured spiro­chetes. . . .”
  10. Among the dis­eases appar­ent­ly har­nessed for BW use by the Japan­ese was African relaps­ing fever. Willy Burgdor­fer did his grad­u­ate the­sis about this tick-borne spiro­chetal dis­ease and it was researched at length by his men­tor Rudolf Geigy. (Geigy’s pos­si­ble role as an I.G. Far­ben intel­li­gence agent and Paper­clip recruiter is dis­cussed in FTR #1135. Note that some forms of Bor­re­lia Burgdorferi–a pri­ma­ry causative agent of Lyme Disease–resemble the spiro­chete that caus­es relaps­ing fever. ” . . . Relaps­ing fever is caused by the Bor­re­lia genus of bac­te­ria, and is gen­er­al­ly trans­mit­ted to man either by lice, or by the bite of a tick. It is worth not­ing, too, that recent inves­ti­ga­tions into the genet­ic make-up of Lyme bor­re­lia have found some strains appar­ent­ly more close­ly relat­ed to relaps­ing fever Bor­re­lia than to Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri, long con­sid­ered the only bor­re­lia capa­ble of caus­ing Lyme dis­ease. . . .”

Next, the pro­gram details Rudolf Geigy’s work on relaps­ing fever. We sus­pect that his inter­est in such afflic­tions was not as benign and altru­is­tic as his defend­ers main­tain. As men­tioned above, Lyme Dis­ease “dis­cov­er­er” and bio­log­i­cal war­fare vet­er­an Willy Burgdor­fer did his grad­u­ate the­sis on relaps­ing fever.

Again, as men­tioned above, Willy Burgdor­fer con­tract­ed what he felt was Lyme Dis­ease after urine from an infect­ed rab­bit splashed into his eyes. We won­der if some of the tech­niques of using aerosolized spiro­chete gran­ules might have been involved in Willy’s acci­den­tal infec­tion? ” . . . .While he was rins­ing off one of the trays in the sink, Lyme-infect­ed rab­bit urine splashed into his eyes. A few weeks lat­er, on April 13, he noticed five Lyme bul­l’s-eye rash­es under his armpit and on his tor­so. . . .”

In an unpub­lished man­u­script, Willy Burgdor­fer not­ed not only the per­sis­tence of Lyme Dis­ease but its abil­i­ty to remain dor­mant in the ner­vous sys­tem: “. . . . It is now clear that Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri can per­sist with­in the ner­vous sys­tem for years, caus­ing pro­gres­sive ill­ness, and increas­ing evi­dence sug­gests also that the spiro­chete can remain latent there for years before pro­duc­ing clin­i­cal symp­toms. . . .”

Lyme dis­ease is dif­fi­cult to diag­nose, anoth­er fac­tor that makes it ide­al for BW use. Might the Japan­ese Unit 731 research into spiro­chetal war­fare described by Bar­clay New­man have fig­ured into some of the boil­er-plate research that went into the devel­op­ment of Lyme Dis­ease? ” . . . Lyme’s abil­i­ty to evade detec­tion on rou­tine med­ical tests, its myr­i­ad pre­sen­ta­tions which can baf­fle doc­tors by mim­ic­k­ing 100 dif­fer­ent dis­eases, its amaz­ing abil­i­ties to evade the immune sys­tem and antibi­ot­ic treat­ment, would make it an attrac­tive choice to bioweaponeers look­ing for an inca­pac­i­tat­ing agent. Lyme’s abil­i­ties as ‘the great imi­ta­tor’ might mean that an attack could be mis­in­ter­pret­ed as sim­ply a rise in the inci­dence of dif­fer­ent, nat­u­ral­ly-occur­ring dis­eases. . . .”

There is exper­i­men­tal evi­dence that infec­tion with Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri can pro­duce the amy­loid plaques symp­to­matic of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease. ” . . . Here is hypoth­e­sized a tru­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary notion that round­ed cys­tic forms of Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri are the root cause of the round­ed struc­tures called plaques in the Alzheimer brain. Round­ed “plaques’ in high den­si­ty in brain tis­sue are emblem­at­ic of Alzheimer’s dis­ease (AD). . . .”

The pro­gram con­cludes with more exper­i­men­tal evi­dence of the pro­duc­tion of amy­loid deposits char­ac­ter­is­tic of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease: ” . . . To deter­mine whether an anal­o­gous host reac­tion to that occur­ring in AD could be induced by infec­tious agents, we exposed mam­malian glial and neu­ronal cells in vit­ro to Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri spiro­chetes . . . Mor­pho­log­i­cal changes anal­o­gous to the amy­loid deposits of AD brain were observed fol­low­ing 2–8 weeks of expo­sure to the spiro­chetes. . . These obser­va­tions indi­cate that, by expo­sure to bac­te­ria or to their tox­ic prod­ucts, host respons­es sim­i­lar in nature to those observed in AD may be induced. . . .”

1. 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. . . .

2. 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. . . .

3. Much of the pro­gram is devot­ed to excerpt­ing and analy­sis of a 2013 post­ing by Ele­na Cook. This dis­cus­sion of “Spiro­chete War­fare,” in turn, makes lib­er­al use of mate­r­i­al from a 1944 text about Japan’s bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram. This book “Japan’s Secret Weapon,” con­tains a great deal of infor­ma­tion about Japan­ese pio­neer­ing of the use of spiro­chetes as bio­log­i­cal war­fare organ­isms.

This mate­r­i­al is to be con­sid­ered in the his­tor­i­cal and polit­i­cal con­text of the incor­po­ra­tion of the key per­son­nel and files of the noto­ri­ous Japan­ese Unit 731 bio­log­i­cal war­fare divi­sion into the U.S. BW pro­gram after World War II.

Appar­ent­ly decades ahead of their Allied coun­ter­parts, Japan­ese use of spiro­chetes encom­passed a num­ber of impor­tant points to con­sid­er:

  1. The Japan­ese under­stood that “cell-wall defi­cient spiro­chetes, ” “gran­ule” and “L‑forms” had tremen­dous sig­nif­i­cance for bio­log­i­cal war­fare. ” . . . This WW2-era book helps to con­firm what some inves­ti­gat­ing the his­to­ry of Lyme dis­ease have long sus­pect­ed; that the offi­cial denial of the dev­as­tat­ing path­o­gen­ic nature of the gran­ule and oth­er ‘L‑forms’(1) of Lyme-caus­ing Bor­re­lia, is relat­ed to their bio­log­i­cal war­fare sig­nif­i­cance. . .”
  2. ” . . . To put it blunt­ly, New­man’s book pro­vides cogent cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence that many Cell-wall defi­cient forms of Bor­re­lia are in fact weaponized spiro­chetes, nur­tured, cul­tured and opti­mized for aerosol deliv­ery. . .” 
  3. Accord­ing to author Bar­clay New­man, a com­bined Japan­ese and Nazi bio­log­i­cal war­fare offen­sive against Hawaii using the spiro­chetal dis­ease lep­tospiro­sis against Hawaii two or three years before the attack on Pearl Har­bor: ” . . . . ‘Nazi and Japan­ese sci­en­tists coop­er­at­ed in war­fare against or with spiro­chetes — in Hawaii.’ (orig­i­nal author’s ital­ics). What he is refer­ring to is an excep­tion­al­ly vir­u­lent out­break of the spiro­chetal dis­ease lep­tospiro­sis, also known as Weil’s dis­ease, and known at the time in Ger­many as ‘slime fever’. With offi­cial reports of 44% mor­tal­i­ty from the out­break, New­man states: Con­sult the author­i­ties, and you will find out that, very def­i­nite­ly, so high a mor­tal­i­ty is attained only by Japan­ese strains of spiro­chetes of slime fever. . . .”
  4. Accord­ing to New­man, the Japan­ese had con­clud­ed that spiro­chetes, although very close to bac­te­ria in form, were not actu­al­ly bac­te­ria and there­fore: ” . . . . a spiro­chete can also break itself into many tiny gran­ules, each as small as the invis­i­ble mol­e­cule of a virus, and each capa­ble of recre­at­ing a new spiro­chete. . . .”
  5. Again, accord­ing to New­man: ” . . . The Japan­ese have report­ed that you can increase the vir­u­lence, or killing pow­er, of these spi­rals by grow­ing them in flesh and blood, of guinea pig or man. . .” This is inter­est­ing to con­sid­er in light of the evi­dence of Lyme Dis­ease as the prod­uct of bio­log­i­cal war­fare. Might some of the “tests” have had the goal of “grow­ing” such organ­isms in humans? ” . . . The resis­tance of many spiro­chetes, includ­ing bor­re­lia, to cul­ture in vit­ro remains a prob­lem for lab sci­en­tists even today. . .”
  6. The “gran­ule” spiro­chete form was found by the Japan­ese to have great val­ue for aerosolized BW appli­ca­tions: ” . . . Ina­da has report­ed that the Japan­ese know how to get virus-like, quite invis­i­ble par­ti­cles or spiro­chete-frag­ments from spe­cial cul­tures of spiro­chetes of infec­tious jaun­dice. The Japan­ese say that such infin­i­tes­i­mals can be used to infect ani­mals and men, by spray­ing droplets con­tain­ing these spiro­chete-cre­at­ing bits into the air, or spread­ing them through water, or scat­ter­ing them in mud or damp soil. . . .”
  7. The above-men­tioned lep­tospiro­sis or “slime fever” may have been used as a “soft­en­ing-up” agent pri­or to Japan­ese inva­sions in World War II” ” . . . ‘Imme­di­ate­ly before the Japan­ese inva­sions of Chi­na, Indo-Chi­na, the Dutch East Indies, and the Malay States, and short­ly before the Japan­ese inva­sion of India and the Japan­ese strokes at Aus­tralia, the very first out­breaks of slime fever were report­ed from every one of these areas’ . . .”
  8. The Japan­ese had dis­cov­ered the appli­ca­tion of infec­tion via mul­ti­ple pathogens. This may have fig­ured into the devel­op­ment of Lyme Dis­ease as well. ” . . . Fuji­mori (sic) was test­ing out the effects of spread­ing two dif­fer­ent par­a­sites into the same guinea pig at the same time. The Japan­ese dis­cov­ered that one par­a­site pro­motes the lethal action of the oth­er. . . .”
  9. The Japan­ese devel­oped with spread­ing spiro­chetal dis­ease via spray­ing droplets into the eyes of tar­gets. We won­der if Willy Burgdor­fer­’s pos­si­ble Lyme infec­tion from dis­eased Rab­bit-urine may have stemmed from this tech­nol­o­gy? This is dis­cussed below. ” . . . ‘Some­times the Japan­ese think up the damnedest exper­i­ments, such as the trans­mis­sion of syphilis by spray­ing the spiro­chetes into the air or into the eyes of ani­mals or vol­un­teers. Infec­tion is thus accom­plished. . . . if you want to spec­u­late fur­ther about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of spiro­chete war­fare, you can be sure that the Japan­ese know how to spread any spiro­chete dis­ease . . . by spray­ing droplets laden with spe­cial­ly cul­tured spiro­chetes. . . .”
  10. Among the dis­eases appar­ent­ly har­nessed for BW use by the Japan­ese was African relaps­ing fever. Willy Burgdor­fer did his grad­u­ate the­sis about this tick-borne spiro­chetal dis­ease and it was researched at length by his men­tor Rudolf Geigy. (Geigy’s pos­si­ble role as an I.G. Far­ben intel­li­gence agent and Paper­clip recruiter is dis­cussed in FTR #1135. Note that some forms of Bor­re­lia Burgdorferi–a pri­ma­ry causative agent of Lyme Disease–resemble the spiro­chete that caus­es relaps­ing fever. ” . . . Relaps­ing fever is caused by the Bor­re­lia genus of bac­te­ria, and is gen­er­al­ly trans­mit­ted to man either by lice, or by the bite of a tick. It is worth not­ing, too, that recent inves­ti­ga­tions into the genet­ic make-up of Lyme bor­re­lia have found some strains appar­ent­ly more close­ly relat­ed to relaps­ing fever Bor­re­lia than to Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri, long con­sid­ered the only bor­re­lia capa­ble of caus­ing Lyme dis­ease. . . .”

“Spiro­chete War­fare” by Ele­na Cook; 8/20/2013.

Intro­duc­tion

Bor­re­lia, the microbes which cause Lyme dis­ease, are a sub-type of the wider bio­log­i­cal clas­si­fi­ca­tion of spiro­chetes. Now it has become appar­ent that the spiro­chetes were weaponized over 75 years ago.

That knowl­edge comes to us from a book pub­lished in 1944. The title of the book is “Japan’s Secret Weapon”, by Bar­clay New­man, a lead­ing sci­ence writer of the time, as well as for­mer US Navy malar­ia sci­en­tist.

For decades the pub­lic health agen­cies of the US and oth­er NATO coun­tries have denied the exis­tence of vir­u­lent cell-wall defi­cient forms of spiro­chetes. The lack of a cell wall ren­ders microbes resis­tant to peni­cillin and relat­ed antibi­otics, as these work pre­cise­ly by dis­rupt­ing the for­ma­tion of new cell walls dur­ing bac­te­r­i­al repli­ca­tion. The minute size and pleo­mor­phic nature of these forms, in con­trast to the strik­ing spi­ral shape of a typ­i­cal spiro­chete as fea­tured in mod­ern micro­bi­ol­o­gy text­books, made these microbes appear “invis­i­ble” — above all to those who did not wish, or did not wish oth­ers, to see them.

This WW2-era book helps to con­firm what some inves­ti­gat­ing the his­to­ry of Lyme dis­ease have long sus­pect­ed; that the offi­cial denial of the dev­as­tat­ing path­o­gen­ic nature of the gran­ule and oth­er “L‑forms”(1) of Lyme-caus­ing Bor­re­lia, is relat­ed to their bio­log­i­cal war­fare sig­nif­i­cance.

To put it blunt­ly, New­man’s book pro­vides cogent cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence that many Cell-wall defi­cient forms of Bor­re­lia are in fact weaponized spiro­chetes, nur­tured, cul­tured and opti­mized for aerosol deliv­ery.

The fol­low­ing essay is based on the infor­ma­tion in Chap­ter IV of New­man’s book. The title of the chap­ter is sim­ply “Spiro­chete War­fare”.

Back­ground

For many decades it was assumed that the hor­rors of the Sec­ond World War did not include the use of bio­log­i­cal weapons. Final­ly, in the 1980’s, thanks to the dili­gent efforts of his­to­ri­ans and inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ists, the bar­bar­ic crimes of the Japan­ese Unit 731 were revealed to the gen­er­al pub­lic.

Unit 731 and relat­ed units prac­tised mass med­ical exper­i­men­ta­tion, includ­ing the cut­ting open of liv­ing human beings, who endured grotesque sur­gi­cal oper­a­tions with­out anaes­thet­ic. Often the pur­pose was to observe direct­ly the hem­or­rhag­ing and oth­er changes in the organs of the vic­tim — man, woman or child — as he or she died in agony from a delib­er­ate­ly-induced infec­tious dis­ease.

As well as human exper­i­men­ta­tion, the Japan­ese sci­en­tists launched attacks with plague and oth­er weapons of mass destruc­tion, killing many thou­sands of Chi­nese and oth­er vic­tims. The true death toll of these atroc­i­ties is not yet known out­side of clas­si­fied cir­cles.

Though the US gov­ern­ment has long denied it, not only were they ful­ly aware of the Japan­ese and Nazi biowar­fare pro­grams, but also, incred­i­bly, after the War, they pro­tect­ed the archi­tects of these pro­grams of death from pros­e­cu­tion as war crim­i­nals. This was in order to recruit them for the Amer­i­can bio­log­i­cal weapons pro­gram against the Sovi­et bloc, which they duly did.

We now know, for exam­ple, that the US allowed lead­ing Nazi bioweaponeer Erich Traub to play a major role in set­ting up research at their biowar­fare lab on Plum Island, a stone’s throw away from Lyme, Con­necti­cut, where the first record­ed out­break of Lyme dis­ease in Amer­i­ca occurred in the 1970’s. Traub’s germ war­fare knowl­edge was con­sid­ered so impor­tant that, his Nazi past notwith­stand­ing, he was invit­ed to take charge of sci­en­tif­ic research on the Island in the 1950’s.

Like Traub, Japan­ese biowar­fare men were sim­i­lar­ly greet­ed with open arms, their wartime atroc­i­ties hushed up. In return for their co-oper­a­tion, the US allowed these mon­sters to occu­py some of the most pres­ti­gious and influ­en­tial posts in Japan­ese med­i­cine, till their retire­ment decades lat­er.

New­man’s Fear

Dur­ing the War, Bar­clay New­man, lead­ing sci­ence writer and for­mer malar­i­ol­o­gist with the US Navy became aware that the Japan­ese were build­ing up a pro­gram of dead­ly bio­log­i­cal weapon­ry. Des­per­ate to warn his coun­try­men of what he believed was an impend­ing Armaged­don, he wrote a book enti­tled “Japan’s Secret Weapon”.

At the time, the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary author­i­ties want­ed to ban his book, but lat­er decid­ed that to do so would call too much atten­tion to the very issues they con­sid­ered it nec­es­sary to cov­er up. Instead they resort­ed to arrang­ing a smear cam­paign against the author, and unfa­vor­able reviews dis­miss­ing New­man’s rev­e­la­tions as alarmist fan­ta­sy were pub­lished in the press. Today, thanks to the efforts of lead­ing his­to­ri­ans, we know that New­man’s fears regard­ing a Japan­ese bio­log­i­cal pro­gram of mass destruc­tion were sound­ly-based, and indeed, one of the most author­i­ta­tive works on the his­to­ry  of biowar­fare Unit 731 relies on infor­ma­tion found in New­man’s book.(2)

“Japan’s Secret Weapon” con­tains no less than 28 pages on one aspect of the Japan­ese bioweapon pro­gram — “Spiro­chete War­fare”. New­man begins his chap­ter of the same name by lament­ing the wide­spread dis­be­lief, in his era, of the true dev­as­tat­ing poten­tial of germ war­fare. He then alleges that two to three years before Pearl Har­bor, “Nazi and Japan­ese sci­en­tists coop­er­at­ed in war­fare against or with spiro­chetes — in Hawaii.” (orig­i­nal author’s ital­ics). What he is refer­ring to is an excep­tion­al­ly vir­u­lent out­break of the spiro­chetal dis­ease lep­tospiro­sis, also known as Weil’s dis­ease, and known at the time in Ger­many as “slime fever”. With offi­cial reports of 44% mor­tal­i­ty from the out­break, New­man states: Con­sult the author­i­ties, and you will find out that, very def­i­nite­ly, so high a mor­tal­i­ty is attained only by Japan­ese strains of spiro­chetes of slime fever.

In his char­ac­ter­is­tic tongue-in-cheek style, New­man goes on to say the fol­low­ing:

Sup­pose you con­sult a spiro­chete spe­cial­ist in his lab­o­ra­to­ry at an insti­tute devot­ed to research on trop­i­cal dis­eases. This spe­cial­ist is busy, of course. But not so busy as he ought to be or as he will be later...“It is dif­fi­cult, even for an expert tech­ni­cian, to catch and rec­og­nize a spiro­chete,” the spe­cial­ist informs you. “So here are some pic­tures from the gallery of the world’s worst rogues.”

New­man goes on to describe a pic­ture of a typ­i­cal syphilis spiro­chete, in a man­u­al offered by the hypo­thet­i­cal spiro­chetol­o­gist to the read­er, and then says:

“Bac­teri­um?” you ask.

“No, accord­ing to the Japan­ese, who know the most about spiro­chetes, they are like bac­te­ria in being low forms of plant life — that is, fun­gi. The Japan­ese claim that spiro­chetes are close­ly relat­ed to bac­te­ria but are not bac­te­ria, among which spi­ral forms are found. Like bac­te­ria, spiro­chetes repro­duce by split­ting across the mid­dle. But the Japan­ese think that a spiro­chete can also break itself into many tiny gran­ules, each as small as the invis­i­ble mol­e­cule of a virus, and each capa­ble of recre­at­ing a new spiro­chete. Bac­te­ria do not seem to mul­ti­ply in this odd way...The Japan­ese say that there is no drug effec­tive against this spiro­chete.”

(Empha­sis mine. It is impor­tant to bear in mind that these words were writ­ten at the dawn of the antibi­ot­ic era. Today many patients who have been lucky enough to receive a cor­rect diag­no­sis of their Lyme dis­ease have been cured, or had their symp­toms alle­vi­at­ed, by mod­ern ther­a­peu­tic agents.)

The imag­i­nary spiro­chetol­o­gist goes on to explain that much of the research on spiro­chetes cur­rent at that time, and even the man­u­als in use by US forces and the Pub­lic Health Ser­vice, are based on Japan­ese find­ings. In New­man’s sce­nario, the read­er goes on to exam­ine pic­tures of syphilis, bor­re­lia and oth­er spiro­chetes, in the US mil­i­tary man­u­al, all orig­i­nat­ing from Japan­ese draw­ings:

You find out that Ina­da and Ito were the great inves­ti­ga­tors of the spiro­chetes of slime fever. When you peer close­ly at the dain­ty Japan­ese pic­tures of this spiro­chete, you per­ceive that, although at first sight it seems to be a chain of bright dots, it is real­ly a slen­der thread whose spi­ralling gives the impres­sion of bead­ing. The thread is curved or hooked at one or both ends. The liv­ing spi­ral pro­pels itself by rotary motion of the hook, as the Japan­ese dis­cov­ered.

New­man then describes how the work of Hideyo Noguchi, acclaimed world­wide for his dis­cov­ery of the syphilis spiro­chete as the cause of gen­er­al pare­sis in 1913, was con­tin­ued in Japan­ese labs.

Japan­ese tech­ni­cians took a hint from Noguchi and forced the spiro­chete to mul­ti­ply on spe­cial jel­lies. The Japan­ese have report­ed that you can increase the vir­u­lence, or killing pow­er, of these spi­rals by grow­ing them in flesh and blood, of guinea pig or man.

(Empha­sis mine.) It is use­ful to remem­ber at this point that the dif­fi­cul­ty in cul­tur­ing spiro­chetes using nor­mal, eth­i­cal meth­ods, was not just a pit­fall of WW2-era tech­nol­o­gy. The resis­tance of many spiro­chetes, includ­ing bor­re­lia, to cul­ture in vit­ro remains a prob­lem for lab sci­en­tists even today.

In Japan, vac­cines for pro­phy­lax­is have long been in use. But non-Japan­ese work­ers can­not make such vac­cines. None but the Japan­ese seems to know how to use spiro­chete vac­cines to pre­vent the spread of an epi­dem­ic.

New­man goes on to dis­cuss the Japan­ese dis­cov­er­ies of spiro­chetal agents of nanukaya­mi (“sev­en-day fever”) and akiya­mi (“autumn fever”)and then, refer­ring to one of the orig­i­nal dis­cov­er­ers of the causative agent of lep­tospiro­sis, states:

Ina­da has report­ed that the Japan­ese know how to get virus-like, quite invis­i­ble par­ti­cles or spiro­chete-frag­ments from spe­cial cul­tures of spiro­chetes of infec­tious jaun­dice. The Japan­ese say that such infin­i­tes­i­mals can be used to infect ani­mals and men, by spray­ing droplets con­tain­ing these spiro­chete-cre­at­ing bits into the air, or spread­ing them through water, or scat­ter­ing them in mud or damp soil.

(Empha­sis mine.)

New­man then dis­cuss­es the preva­lence of lep­tospiro­sis world­wide, and his imag­i­nary spiro­chete expert notes:

“...Imme­di­ate­ly before the Japan­ese inva­sions of Chi­na, Indo-Chi­na, the Dutch East Indies, and the Malay States, and short­ly before the Japan­ese inva­sion of India and the Japan­ese strokes at Aus­tralia, the very first out­breaks of slime fever were report­ed from every one of these areas...”

After an enig­mat­ic dis­cus­sion about Amer­i­can and British out­breaks of lep­tospiro­sis, and the tick-borne dis­ease tularemia in the US (the lat­ter New­man’s sci­en­tist describes as hav­ing “some­how got in acci­den­tal­ly from Japan”), the read­er, in the hypo­thet­i­cal dis­cus­sion, asks about antibi­otics: . . .

. . . .“They [ie the Japan­ese] find spiro­chetes espe­cial­ly fas­ci­nat­ing?”

“And they nev­er give up. In 1940, Masao Muji­mori report­ed new suc­cess­es in trans­mit­ting syphilis spiro­chetes from cul­tures grown for many years in the lab­o­ra­to­ries of Tokyo Impe­r­i­al Uni­ver­si­ty — doubt­less the very cul­tures start­ed in a small way by Noguchi. Fuji­mori (sic) was test­ing out the effects of spread­ing two dif­fer­ent par­a­sites into the same guinea pig at the same time. The Japan­ese dis­cov­ered that one par­a­site pro­motes the lethal action of the oth­er. He demon­strat­ed that diph­the­ria bacil­li are more vir­u­lent when used along with syphilis ...

“Some­times the Japan­ese think up the damnedest exper­i­ments, such as the trans­mis­sion of syphilis by spray­ing the spiro­chetes into the air or into the eyes of ani­mals or vol­un­teers. Infec­tion is thus accom­plished. Japan­ese tech­ni­cians have been not only the out­stand­ing­ly suc­cess­ful cul­ti­va­tors of spiro­chetes and many oth­er very dead­ly germs but also the sole suc­cess­ful mass pro­duc­ers of the most dan­ger­ous and hor­ri­ble microbes....Some of the appar­ent­ly fan­tas­tic claims of new meth­ods of trans­mis­sion by Japan­ese spe­cial­ists have been inves­ti­gat­ed and their truth estab­lished in Amer­i­can lab­o­ra­to­ries years after the claims were first made. There­fore, if you want to spec­u­late fur­ther about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of spiro­chete war­fare, you can be sure that the Japan­ese know how to spread any spiro­chete dis­ease — slime fever, syphilis, yaws, sodoku (3), relaps­ing fever — by spray­ing droplets laden with spe­cial­ly cul­tured spiro­chetes. So they do not have to drop infect­ed fleas, rats or even leop­ards from planes, as sug­gest­ed by pop­u­lar writ­ers.

Relaps­ing fever is caused by the Bor­re­lia genus of bac­te­ria, and is gen­er­al­ly trans­mit­ted to man either by lice, or by the bite of a tick. It is worth not­ing, too, that recent inves­ti­ga­tions into the genet­ic make-up of Lyme bor­re­lia have found some strains appar­ent­ly more close­ly relat­ed to relaps­ing fever Bor­re­lia than to Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri, long con­sid­ered the only bor­re­lia capa­ble of caus­ing Lyme dis­ease. . . .

. . . . “Hun­dreds of thou­sands, pos­si­bly mil­lions — where?”

“In Africa today, where it is spread among tens of mil­lions by ticks, lice and bed­bugs. The spiro­chete of relaps­ing fever is almost as impor­tant a killer as malar­ia and try­panoso­mi­a­sis, or sleep­ing sickness...The spiro­chete vir­u­lence varies widely...Only a small per cent may suc­cumb, but in a few epi­demics the mor­tal­i­ty has attained 75 per cent. In West Africa in a recent epi­dem­ic extend­ing through sev­er­al years, prob­a­bly 10 per cent of the entire pop­u­la­tion was killed off by spiro­chetes run­ning wild from Moroc­co and Algiers down the Niger to Sene­gal and the French Sudan, south­ward to the Gold Coast and Nige­ria. Per­haps a mil­lion natives died in this one epi­dem­ic...”

4a. Next, the pro­gram details Rudolf Geigy’s work on relaps­ing fever. We sus­pect that his inter­est in such afflic­tions was not as benign and altru­is­tic as his defend­ers main­tain.

Bit­ten: The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons by Kris New­by; Harper­Collins [HC]; Copy­right 2019 by Kris New­by; ISBN 9780062896728; pp. 21–22.

. . . . Willy peered into the sand and saw nothing–until Geigy shook the dish: sud­den­ly, the sand crawled to life with soft-body ticks. They looked like tiny, shriv­eled gold­en raisins with spi­dery black legs.

Geigy explained that in East Africa, these ticks bury them­selves under the dirt floors of huts, patient­ly wait­ing for a blood meal. They spring to life when the scent organs in the tips of their front legs detect  car­bon diox­ide from a near­by farm ani­mal or human. Swift­ly crawl­ing onto a sleep­ing vic­tim, they sink their saw­tooth mouth­parts into a vein and suck in warm blood for a few min­utes before drop­ping off. Dur­ing the blood meal, the tick can trans­mit the two poten­tial­ly dead­ly dis­eases that Geigy was study­ing: relaps­ing fever and African swine fever. . . .

4b. As men­tioned above, Willy Burgdor­fer did his grad­u­ate the­sis on relaps­ing fever.

“Willy Burgdor­fer;” wikipedia.com.

. . . . As a research sub­ject for his the­sis he chose to study the devel­op­ment of the African relaps­ing fever spiro­chete, Bor­re­lia dut­tonii, in its tick vec­tor Ornithodor­os mouba­ta, and to eval­u­ate this tick­’s effi­cien­cy in trans­mit­ting spiro­chetes dur­ing feed­ing on ani­mal hosts. . . .

5. Again, as men­tioned above, Willy Burgdor­fer con­tract­ed what he felt was Lyme Dis­ease after urine from an infect­ed rab­bit splashed into his eyes. We won­der if some of the tech­niques of using aerosolized spiro­chete gran­ules might have been involved in Willy’s acci­den­tal infec­tion? ” . . . .While he was rins­ing off one of the trays in the sink, Lyme-infect­ed rab­bit urine splashed into his eyes. A few weeks lat­er, on April 13, he noticed five Lyme bul­l’s-eye rash­es under his armpit and on his tor­so. . . .”

Bit­ten: The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons by Kris New­by; Harper­Collins [HC]; Copy­right 2019 by Kris New­by; ISBN 9780062896728; pp. 203–205.

. . . . One Sun­day in March [of 1983], he went to the lab to clean the cages of his test rab­bits. The rab­bits had been inoc­u­lat­ed with cul­tured spiro­chetes, and now ticks were being allowed to feed on the ani­mals. To pre­vent the ticks from escap­ing, the rab­bits’ wire cages had been mount­ed over large porce­lain trays filled with water. These trays had to be cleaned dai­ly with boil­ing water, but because it was his lab tech­ni­cian’s day off, Willy had to do it. While he was rins­ing off one of the trays in the sink, Lyme-infect­ed rab­bit urine splashed into his eyes. A few weeks lat­er, on April 13, he noticed five Lyme bul­l’s-eye rash­es under his armpit and on his tor­so. The fam­i­ly physi­cian diag­nosed the rash­es as an ini­tial reac­tion to a Lyme dis­ease infec­tion, after a test for fun­gi came back neg­a­tive. The lab was unable to iso­late an infec­tious organ­ism from Willy’s blood or from a skin biop­sy. Willy took a tetra­cy­cline antibi­ot­ic for twen­ty days before the rash dis­ap­peared. He sent a let­ter to Allen Steere at Yale ask­ing for treat­ment advice. Always the metic­u­lous sci­en­tist, he includ­ed a detailed sketch of his rash­es, which looked very sim­i­lar to those on his infect­ed rab­bits.

When the Lyme anti­body test came back neg­a­tive, Willy’s co-work­ers were divid­ed on whether he tru­ly had Lyme dis­ease. Co-dis­cov­er­er Alan Bar­bour, who had been trained as a physi­cian, thought the rash­es looked like a ring­worm fun­gal infec­tion. Willy insist­ed it was Lyme dis­ease, explain­ing that the Lyme anti­body test was neg­a­tive only because his ear­ly dose of antibi­otics may have halt­ed the immune sys­tem reac­tion the test mea­sured.

“The lesions resem­bled the ini­tial skin reac­tion report­ed for Lyme dis­ease,” he wrote. “Even though sero­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tion and attempts to iso­late from blood or skin biop­sy the causative agent, there appears to be no doubt at the diag­no­sis. Past expe­ri­ence has shown that patients with ini­tial Lyme dis­ease man­i­fes­ta­tions (lesions do not con­vert sero­log­i­cal­ly when treat­ed ear­ly with antibi­otics.” . . . .

6. In an unpub­lished man­u­script, Willy Burgdor­fer not­ed not only the per­sis­tence of Lyme Dis­ease but its abil­i­ty to remain dor­mant in the ner­vous sys­tem: “. . . . It is now clear that Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri can per­sist with­in the ner­vous sys­tem for years, caus­ing pro­gres­sive ill­ness, and increas­ing evi­dence sug­gests also that the spiro­chete can remain latent there for years before pro­duc­ing clin­i­cal symp­toms. . . .”

Bit­ten: The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons by Kris New­by; Harper­Collins [HC]; Copy­right 2019 by Kris New­by; ISBN 9780062896728; p. 203.

. . . . It is now clear that Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri can per­sist with­in the ner­vous sys­tem for years, caus­ing pro­gres­sive ill­ness, and increas­ing evi­dence sug­gests also that the spiro­chete can remain latent there for years before pro­duc­ing clin­i­cal symp­toms. . . .

7. Lyme dis­ease is dif­fi­cult to diag­nose, anoth­er fac­tor that makes it ide­al for BW use. Might the Japan­ese Unit 731 research into spiro­chetal war­fare described by Bar­clay New­man have fig­ured into some of the boil­er-plate research that went into the devel­op­ment of Lyme Dis­ease? ” . . . Lyme’s abil­i­ty to evade detec­tion on rou­tine med­ical tests, its myr­i­ad pre­sen­ta­tions which can baf­fle doc­tors by mim­ic­k­ing 100 dif­fer­ent dis­eases, its amaz­ing abil­i­ties to evade the immune sys­tem and antibi­ot­ic treat­ment, would make it an attrac­tive choice to bioweaponeers look­ing for an inca­pac­i­tat­ing agent. Lyme’s abil­i­ties as ‘the great imi­ta­tor’ might mean that an attack could be mis­in­ter­pret­ed as sim­ply a rise in the inci­dence of dif­fer­ent, nat­u­ral­ly-occur­ring dis­eases. . . .”

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

. . . Lyme’s abil­i­ty to evade detec­tion on rou­tine med­ical tests, its myr­i­ad pre­sen­ta­tions which can baf­fle doc­tors by mim­ic­k­ing 100 dif­fer­ent dis­eases, its amaz­ing abil­i­ties to evade the immune sys­tem and antibi­ot­ic treat­ment, would make it an attrac­tive choice to bioweaponeers look­ing for an inca­pac­i­tat­ing agent. Lyme’s abil­i­ties as ‘the great imi­ta­tor’ might mean that an attack could be mis­in­ter­pret­ed as sim­ply a rise in the inci­dence of dif­fer­ent, nat­u­ral­ly-occur­ring dis­eases such as autism, MS, lupus and chron­ic fatigue syn­drome (M.E.).

Borrelia’s inher­ent abil­i­ty to swap out­er sur­face pro­teins, which may also vary wide­ly from strain to strain, would make the pro­duc­tion of an effec­tive vac­cine extreme­ly dif­fi­cult. (A vac­cine devel­oped for the pub­lic by the Steere camp in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Glaxo Smithk­line was pulled from the mar­ket a few years ago amid class action law­suits [xxxvi].) Final­ly, the delay before the appear­ance of the most inca­pac­i­tat­ing symp­toms would allow plen­ty of time for an attack­er to move away from the scene, as well as pre­vent­ing peo­ple in a con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed zone from real­iz­ing they had been infect­ed and seek­ing treat­ment. Often in the ear­ly peri­od there is no rash, only vague flu-like or oth­er non-spe­cif­ic symp­toms which might be dis­missed by GP’s, or ignored by the patient. . . .

8. Lyme Dis­ease can pro­duce symp­toms that can be eas­i­ly con­fused with oth­er dis­eases.

“Spiro­chete War­fare” by Ele­na Cook; 8/20/2013.

. . . . Lyme dis­ease, like that oth­er spiro­chetal dis­ease, syphilis, is known as a “Great Imi­ta­tor”. It is believed to be able to mim­ic dozens of con­di­tions, includ­ing Amy­otroph­ic Lat­er­al Scle­ro­sis (Lou Gehrig’s Dis­ease), Chron­ic Fatigue Syn­drome or M.E., Atten­tion Deficit Dis­or­der, Mul­ti­ple Scle­ro­sis, Autism, Rheuma­toid Arthri­tis, Lupus, and many more. Recent evi­dence has even linked it with the dev­as­tat­ing plague of Alzheimers. (4)(5) . . .

  1. See “Plaques of Alzheimer’s dis­ease orig­i­nate from cysts of Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri, the Lyme dis­ease spiro­chete” Mac­Don­ald AB., Med Hypothe­ses. 2006;67(3):592–600. Epub 2006.
  2. See also “Beta-amy­loid depo­si­tion and Alzheimer’s type changes induced by Bor­re­lia spiro­chetes”. Mik­lossy et al, Neu­ro­bi­ol Aging. 2006 Feb;27(2):228–36.

9a. There is exper­i­men­tal evi­dence that infec­tion with Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri can pro­duce the amy­loid plaques symp­to­matic of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease. ” . . . Here is hypoth­e­sized a tru­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary notion that round­ed cys­tic forms of Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri are the root cause of the round­ed struc­tures called plaques in the Alzheimer brain. Round­ed “plaques’ in high den­si­ty in brain tis­sue are emblem­at­ic of Alzheimer’s dis­ease (AD). . . .”

“Plaques of Alzheimer’s dis­ease orig­i­nate from cysts of Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri, the Lyme dis­ease spiro­chete” Mac­Don­ald AB., Med Hypothe­ses. 2006;67(3):592–600. Epub 2006.

Sum­ma­ry

Here is hypoth­e­sized a tru­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary notion that round­ed cys­tic forms of Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri are the root cause of the round­ed struc­tures called plaques in the Alzheimer brain. Round­ed “plaques’ in high den­si­ty in brain tis­sue are emblem­at­ic of Alzheimer’s dis­ease (AD). Plaques may be con­cep­tu­al­ized as round­ed “pock mark-like” areas of brain tis­sue injury. In this cen­tu­ry, in brain tis­sue of AD, plaques are Amy­loid Plaques accord­ing to the most up to date text­books. . . .

. . . . Fur­ther­more, there is “plaque diver­si­ty” in Alzheimer’s; small, medi­um and large plaques par­al­lel vari­able cys­tic diam­e­ters for Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri. . . .

. . . . In the “anato­my is des­tiny” mod­el, cysts of bor­re­lia are always round. Why then not accept round­ness as a fun­da­men­tal “struc­ture deter­mines func­tion” argu­ment for the answer to the mys­tery of why Alzheimer plaques are always round? . . .

9b. More about exper­i­men­tal evi­dence of the pro­duc­tion of amy­loid deposits char­ac­ter­is­tic of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease: ” . . . To deter­mine whether an anal­o­gous host reac­tion to that occur­ring in AD could be induced by infec­tious agents, we exposed mam­malian glial and neu­ronal cells in vit­ro to Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri spiro­chetes . . . Mor­pho­log­i­cal changes anal­o­gous to the amy­loid deposits of AD brain were observed fol­low­ing 2–8 weeks of expo­sure to the spiro­chetes. . . These obser­va­tions indi­cate that, by expo­sure to bac­te­ria or to their tox­ic prod­ucts, host respons­es sim­i­lar in nature to those observed in AD may be induced. . . .”

“Beta-amy­loid depo­si­tion and Alzheimer’s type changes induced by Bor­re­lia spiro­chetes”. Mik­lossy et al, Neu­ro­bi­ol Aging. 2006 Feb;27(2):228–36.

Abstract

The patho­log­i­cal hall­marks of Alzheimer’s dis­ease (AD) con­sist of β‑amyloid plaques and neu­rofib­ril­lary tan­gles in affect­ed brain areas. The process­es, which dri­ve this host reac­tion are unknown. To deter­mine whether an anal­o­gous host reac­tion to that occur­ring in AD could be induced by infec­tious agents, we exposed mam­malian glial and neu­ronal cells in vit­ro to Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri spiro­chetes and to the inflam­ma­to­ry bac­te­r­i­al lipopolysac­cha­ride (LPS). Mor­pho­log­i­cal changes anal­o­gous to the amy­loid deposits of AD brain were observed fol­low­ing 2–8 weeks of expo­sure to the spiro­chetes. Increased lev­els of β‑amyloid pre­cur­sor pro­tein (AβPP) and hyper­phos­pho­ry­lat­ed tau were also detect­ed by West­ern blots of extracts of cul­tured cells that had been treat­ed with spiro­chetes or LPS. These obser­va­tions indi­cate that, by expo­sure to bac­te­ria or to their tox­ic prod­ucts, host respons­es sim­i­lar in nature to those observed in AD may be induced.

Discussion

3 comments for “FTR #1137 Lyme Disease and Biological Warfare, Part 3”

  1. Well, I guess the ghosts of Kurt Blome, Erich Traub, Masaji Kitano and Shirō Ishii are com­ing home to roost:

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-53303457

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/world/asia/china-bubonic-plague-inner-mongolia.html

    Posted by Robert Ward Montenegro | July 6, 2020, 8:50 am
  2. This next arti­cle reveals that doc­tors may be miss­ing signs of seri­ous and poten­tial­ly fatal brain dis­or­ders trig­gered by coro­n­avirus, in mild­ly affect­ed or recov­er­ing patients. UK Neu­rol­o­gists have doc­u­ment­ed over 40 UK Covid-19 cas­es with com­pli­ca­tions relat­ed to brain inflam­ma­tion and delir­i­um to nerve dam­age and stroke:
    • 12 had inflam­ma­tion of the cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem,
    • 10 had brain dis­ease with delir­i­um or psy­chosis,
    • 8 had strokes and a fur­ther eight had periph­er­al nerve prob­lems, most­ly diag­nosed as Guil­lain-Bar­ré syn­drome, an immune reac­tion that attacks the nerves and caus­es paral­y­sis (it is fatal in 5% of cas­es).
    The full range of brain dis­or­ders caused by Covid-19 may not have been yet iden­ti­fied, because many patients in hos­pi­tals are too sick to exam­ine in brain scan­ners or with oth­er pro­ce­dures. One con­cern is that the virus could leave a minor­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion with sub­tle brain dam­age that only becomes appar­ent in years to come. This may have also have hap­pened in the wake of the 1918 flu pan­dem­ic, when up to a mil­lion peo­ple appeared to devel­op brain dis­ease.

    Warn­ing of seri­ous brain dis­or­ders in peo­ple with mild coro­n­avirus symp­toms
    — UK neu­rol­o­gists pub­lish details of mild­ly affect­ed or recov­er­ing Covid-19 patients with seri­ous or poten­tial­ly fatal brain con­di­tions
    Wed 8 Jul 2020 03.44 EDT
    Ian Sam­ple Sci­ence edi­tor Guardian, UK @iansample

    Doc­tors may be miss­ing signs of seri­ous and poten­tial­ly fatal brain dis­or­ders trig­gered by coro­n­avirus, as they emerge in mild­ly affect­ed or recov­er­ing patients, sci­en­tists have warned.
    Neu­rol­o­gists are on Wednes­day pub­lish­ing details of more than 40 UK Covid-19 patients whose com­pli­ca­tions ranged from brain inflam­ma­tion and delir­i­um to nerve dam­age and stroke. In some cas­es, the neu­ro­log­i­cal prob­lem was the patient’s first and main symp­tom.

    The cas­es, pub­lished in the jour­nal Brain, revealed a rise in a life-threat­en­ing con­di­tion called acute dis­sem­i­nat­ed encephalomyelitis (Adem), as the first wave of infec­tions swept through Britain. At UCL’s Insti­tute of Neu­rol­o­gy, Adem cas­es rose from one a month before the pan­dem­ic to two or three per week in April and May. One woman, who was 59, died of the com­pli­ca­tion.

    A dozen patients had inflam­ma­tion of the cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem, 10 had brain dis­ease with delir­i­um or psy­chosis, eight had strokes and a fur­ther eight had periph­er­al nerve prob­lems, most­ly diag­nosed as Guil­lain-Bar­ré syn­drome, an immune reac­tion that attacks the nerves and caus­es paral­y­sis. It is fatal in 5% of cas­es.

    “We’re see­ing things in the way Covid-19 affects the brain that we haven’t seen before with oth­er virus­es,” said Michael Zan­di, a senior author on the study and a con­sul­tant at the insti­tute and Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don Hos­pi­tals NHS foun­da­tion trust.

    “What we’ve seen with some of these Adem patients, and in oth­er patients, is you can have severe neu­rol­o­gy, you can be quite sick, but actu­al­ly have triv­ial lung dis­ease,” he added.

    “Bio­log­i­cal­ly, Adem has some sim­i­lar­i­ties with mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis, but it is more severe and usu­al­ly hap­pens as a one-off. Some patients are left with long-term dis­abil­i­ty, oth­ers can make a good recov­ery.”

    The cas­es add to con­cerns over the long-term health effects of Covid-19, which have left some patients breath­less and fatigued long after they have cleared the virus, and oth­ers with numb­ness, weak­ness and mem­o­ry prob­lems.

    One coro­n­avirus patient described in the paper, a 55-year-old woman with no his­to­ry of psy­chi­atric ill­ness, began to behave odd­ly the day after she was dis­charged from hos­pi­tal.

    She repeat­ed­ly put her coat on and took it off again and began to hal­lu­ci­nate, report­ing that she saw mon­keys and lions in her house. She was read­mit­ted to hos­pi­tal and grad­u­al­ly improved on antipsy­chot­ic med­ica­tion.

    Anoth­er woman, aged 47, was admit­ted to hos­pi­tal with a headache and numb­ness in her right hand a week after a cough and fever came on. She lat­er became drowsy and unre­spon­sive and required an emer­gency oper­a­tion to remove part of her skull to relieve pres­sure on her swollen brain.

    “We want clin­i­cians around the world to be alert to these com­pli­ca­tions of coro­n­avirus,” Zan­di said. He urged physi­cians, GPs and health­care work­ers with patients with cog­ni­tive symp­toms, mem­o­ry prob­lems, fatigue, numb­ness, or weak­ness, to dis­cuss the case with neu­rol­o­gists.

    “The mes­sage is not to put that all down to the recov­ery, and the psy­cho­log­i­cal aspects of recov­ery,” he said. “The brain does appear to be involved in this ill­ness.”

    The full range of brain dis­or­ders caused by Covid-19 may not have been picked up yet, because many patients in hos­pi­tals are too sick to exam­ine in brain scan­ners or with oth­er pro­ce­dures. “What we real­ly need now is bet­ter research to look at what’s real­ly going on in the brain,” Zan­di said.
    One con­cern is that the virus could leave a minor­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion with sub­tle brain dam­age that only becomes appar­ent in years to come. This may have hap­pened in the wake of the 1918 flu pan­dem­ic, when up to a mil­lion peo­ple appeared to devel­op brain dis­ease.

    “It’s a con­cern if some hid­den epi­dem­ic could occur after Covid where you’re going to see delayed effects on the brain, because there could be sub­tle effects on the brain and slow­ly things hap­pen over the com­ing years, but it’s far too ear­ly for us to judge now,” Zan­di said.

    “We hope, obvi­ous­ly, that that’s not going to hap­pen, but when you’ve got such a big pan­dem­ic affect­ing such a vast pro­por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion it’s some­thing we need to be alert to.”

    David Strain, a senior clin­i­cal lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Exeter Med­ical School, said that only a small num­ber of patients appeared to expe­ri­ence seri­ous neu­ro­log­i­cal com­pli­ca­tions and that more work was need­ed to under­stand their preva­lence.

    “This is very impor­tant as we start to pre­pare post-Covid-19 reha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grams,” he said. “We’ve already seen that some peo­ple with Covid-19 may need a long reha­bil­i­ta­tion peri­od, both phys­i­cal reha­bil­i­ta­tion such as exer­cise, and brain reha­bil­i­ta­tion. We need to under­stand more about the impact of this infec­tion on the brain.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/08/warning-of-serious-brain-disorders-in-people-with-mild-covid-symptoms?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

    Posted by Mary Benton | July 11, 2020, 12:26 pm
  3. Most strange­ly, no men­tion can be found about New­man’s book on the inter­net. Per­haps Cook has the only extant copy but, just the same, this appears to be a high­ly suc­cess­ful sup­pres­sion of a book that would have Orwell shak­ing his head in dis­be­lief.

    Posted by Brad | September 16, 2020, 1:54 pm

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