With COVID’s man-made origins being revealed, it’s worth re-examining the dark origins of Lyme disease, another bioweapon leak that continues to infect millions of Americans. THREAD on Lyme’s origins, Cold War bioweapons, and why this will happen again:
Lyme disease being a government bioweapon is *not* a conspiracy theory.
It’s one of the *leading mainstream theories* about the origins of the disease.
So much so that in 2019 a bipartisan majority in congress ordered the Pentagon to report on their weaponization of ticks.
So what is lyme disease?
It’s a bizarre tickborne illness that infects half a million Americans a year.
The spiral shaped borrelia bacteria is similar to syphilis. Besides fatigue and arthritis-like symptoms, it also delivers Alzheimer-like symptoms to some.
In 1975 Lyme disease was first recognized by scientists as a distinct illness. It wasn’t until 1981 that the famous medical entomologist and tick expert Willy Burgdorfer discovered the biological agent causing the disease.
Dr. Burgdorfer was hailed as a hero.
But he harbored a dark secret.
He wasn’t an ordinary scientist.
He was actually a biological weapons scientist who spent his career infecting insects with the worst diseases known to man.
n the 50s the Pentagon began a bio weapons program to weaponize insects.
The theory was that insects could get bypass protective gear and inject a disease directly into their victims.
Insects are hardy, and if dropped on an area, they'd turn wide swaths of terrain into hazards
To weaponize ticks Dr. Burgdorfer would force feed the ticks diseases through tiny glass tubes where they would waterboard these insects with diseases like Q fever, typhus, and even rabies.
Most of this weaponization of insects was happening at Camp Detrick where the CIA and the Pentagon worked together on these projects.
Side note: If you want to go down the Fort Detrick rabbit hole, look into how the Anthrax used in the 2002 terrorists attacks came from Fort Detrick. RFK Jr explains this well:
By 1962 the Pentagon began planning to use non-lethal insect-borne biological weapons to target Cuban workers before the 1962 sugar harvest.
In Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons, science journalist Kris Newby interviewed a CIA officer who attests that he participated in an aerial deployment of ticks over Cuba as part of Operation: Mongoose.
While the idea of ticks being airdropped on a country sounds wild, we know that years earlier the military was trying to do the same thing with fleas.
While ticks were being weaponized, Burgdorfer was busy infecting fleas with bubonic plague. To test how fleas could used in an attack against enemy battalions, in 1954 the Pentagon conducted Operation: Big Itch.
To test this, the government dropped bombs that opened 1,000 feet in the air and rained over 670,000 fleas over a test site. Even though 669,000 of the fleas were unaccounted for when the test ended, the 1,000 fleas they did find attacked the test animals, so it was considered 👍
By the 1960s, the theory of utilizing bioweapons had changed. Instead of killing the enemy, the focus became on making diseases that would incapacitate the enemy. The goal was so that vaccinated troops could safely capture weakened enemy cities.
To do this they needed to make brand new diseases where the enemy would have no natural immunity. And this is where Dr. Burgdorfer thrived.
He would start mixing both viruses and bacteria inside ticks in the hopes that the virus would manipulate the bacteria’s genes, triggering a mutation and thus giving birth to a novel disease.
It’s probably at this point where his mixing of pathogens probably created lyme disease
While Burgdorfer was busying Frankensteining new diseases in ticks, he also had the army gathering Lone Star ticks, which are super aggressive ticks native to northern Mexico, which he thought would be ideal carriers.
In order to test how they would travel if deployed in a conflict, the army decided to release these ticks in Virginia, along the paths of migratory birds fly, to see what would happen. To make sure they were tracking the right ticks they irradiated all the ticks with Carbon-14.
Ultimately, from 1966 to 1969 the government released 282,000 radioactive hyper aggressive ticks inside the United States.
The result? Well months later Lone Star ticks, which weren’t found north of the Mason-Dixon line, start showing up in Long Island.
From 1968 to 1976, the coastal regions from Long Island to Cape Cod saw a series of unusual tick-borne disease outbreaks. The first cases of human babesiosis in the Eastern U.S. appeared on Nantucket island. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever shows up around Cape Cod and Long Island.
Finally, in 1972, the first 51 documented cases of Lyme Arthritis appeared in Lyme, Connecticut.
So where did all these rare tick diseases in the Long Island Sound come from? Some theorized that they came from military experiments being conducted at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center of New York, only a few miles away from Lyme, Connecticut and Long Island.
DOD researchers there raised large quantities of ticks, and focused their research on some of the same diseases that were appearing. Deer from Lyme would swim to Plum Island, and local birds would fly there to feed on insects.
With Plum Island having a spotty safety record, many concluded that either a lab leak or an intentional release of the ticks on the island for experiments was the origin of these diseases.
While the theory that Lyme disease originated from a mutation related to the military’s biological weapons program was the most logical theory… nothing happened. The theory remained confined to the Lyme disease advocate community.
But in 2013 things changed. An indie filmmaker named Tim Grey was doing a documentary on Lyme disease. While deep diving through the data he uncovered the truth about Dr. Burgdorfer actually being a bioweapons scientist.
So he goes to interview him. After three hours of interviewing he asks Burgdorfer if the Lyme disease ticks he examined had the same, or similar, or a mutation of one of the bioweapons he created?
And Burgdoffer said…
“Yah”
Burgdoffer was at the end of his life and seemed to want to make amends for his creation, so he provides his lab notes, and we get documentation of him in the 70s realizing that he might have created Lyme disease.
In 2021 scientists did a genetic study of Lyme disease, where scientists were amazed by how unusual borrelia burgdorferi is (it has more diverse plasmids than any other bacteria). They determined that Lyme evolved violently likely through mutations, further supporting the theory.
So when you combine that:
1. The government infecting ticks with Burgdoffer’s mutated diseases on Plum island
2. The government releasing aggressive non-native radioactive ticks in the area
3. Willy Burgdoffer himself admitting that Lyme disease was related to his weapons testing
4. Genetic analysis of the Lyme disease bacteria showing that it’s an unusual disease that evolved violently…
The theory that the government is responsible for Lyme disease is strong.
The idea that multiple extremely rare tick diseases had outbreaks in the Long Island sound at the same time, and was completely unrelated to the government’s reckless bioweapon practices, defies logic to believe.
Yet, despite this solid body of evidence, there are still the “debookners” out there, who claim Lyme disease couldn’t possibly be man-made. They claim that Lyme Disease existed thousands of years before the 1970s.
This is incorrect. Yes, Borrelia bacteria has existed for 1,000s of years. The borrelia that causes what we know today as Lyme disease seems to be a new strain. The “lyme" found in old cases, such as the 5,300 year old Tyrolean Iceman, only corresponds 60% to borrelia burgdorferi
If you want to see an incredible take down, Kris Newby’s rebuttal to the Washington Posts condescending “No, Lyme disease is not an escaped military bioweapon, despite what conspiracy theorists say” is absolutely BRUTAL.
static1.squarespace.com/static/5d3e44b…
In fact, it was due to Kris Newby’s book “Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons” that Congress was persuaded to vote to order the DOD to investigate the Pentagon’s weaponization of ticks. The book is a magnificent example of research.
She gathered FOIA requests, interviewed Dr. Burgdoffer, and created a private archive of Burgdoffer’s Lyme disease research that exceeds the national archives. This story would be buried without @krisnewby efforts.
It’s maddening, when you see all the evidence, that people instinctively claim that this is a conspiracy theory. It gets even more maddening when you see outlets like Vice not only decrying the idea, but literally airing PR videos for Plum Island.
A biodefense lab and a bioweapons lab are the same thing. Both places are making diseases that are lethal to human. The only difference is the stated intent of what they will do with the pathogens.
Imagine if the cops search a man’s house and discover that he is making bombs in his basement. The man claims, “I’m only making these bombs, so I can make a bomb proof car.”
Do you believe him? Regardless, what he’s doing is potentially incredibly dangerous.
In light of Lyme Disease, the government’s support to the Wuhan lab, and the revelation of other American “biodefense” facilities in other countries… you’d think we'd re-evaluate the cost-benefit analysis of activities that have harmed millions of Americans.
Unfortunately, no such reforms seem to be taking place.
Between companies like Oxitec releasing genetically modified mosquitoes in Florida...
and suggestions that the Lone Star tick be used to get people to stop eating meat, it’s likely that people will continue to manipulate insects in such a way that it will damage our environment and ruin many lives in the process.
The government creation of Lyme disease isn’t a conspiracy theory… it’s a scandal.
In a post-justice world where the media and justice system no longer hold the powerful accountable, the responsibility has fallen on us to use our platforms to broadcast the truth, whether it’s about Lyme disease, COVID, or the many other scandals that gets hushed up.
The truth has a wildfire quality to it, where once people see that they are being lied to in one area, they begin to recognize the other lies told to them.
We might not see the justice we want immediately, but if we keep exposing the corruption, incompetence, and cover ups of our ruling class today, it paves the way for accountability in the future.
Until then, keep checking yourself for ticks.
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.