Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel bomb here. Ticks are vectors for all sorts
Speaker 1: of unpleasant germs, notably lined sas, which is the sixth
Speaker 1: most commonly reported infectious disease in the United States, according
Speaker 1: to these Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Decades after
Speaker 1: it was first identified, it's still often misdiagnosed. Symptoms include
Speaker 1: an expanding body, rash, joint pains, fatigue, chills, and fever.
Speaker 1: But could the spread of line disease be attributable to
Speaker 1: a classified, decades old bioweapons program as some people claim,
Speaker 1: or are ticks just as good for spreading misinformation as
Speaker 1: they are for germs. The ticks as weapons issue made
Speaker 1: headlines back in July nineteen thanks to the U. S.
Speaker 1: House of Representatives Chris Smith, who introduced legislation directing the
Speaker 1: Department of Defense to review claims that the Pentagon researched
Speaker 1: tick based bioweapons in the mid twentieth century. The amendment
Speaker 1: past told the House he was inspired to do this
Speaker 1: by quote a number of books and articles suggesting that
Speaker 1: significant research had been done at U. S government facilities,
Speaker 1: including Fort Dietrich, Maryland, and Plumb Island, New York, to
Speaker 1: turn ticks and other insects into bio weapons. Smith explained
Speaker 1: during a debate on the House floor quote with lime
Speaker 1: disease and other tipboorn diseases exploding in the United States,
Speaker 1: with an estimated three hundred thousand to four hundred thirty
Speaker 1: seven hundred thousand new cases diagnosed each year and ten
Speaker 1: to twenty of all patients suffering from chronic lime disease,
Speaker 1: Americans have a right to know whether any of this
Speaker 1: is true and have these experiments caused lime disease and
Speaker 1: other tickborn diseases to mutate and to spread. Congressman Smith's
Speaker 1: legislative actions were also inspired partly by the book Bitten,
Speaker 1: The Secret History of Lime Disease and Biological Weapons, written
Speaker 1: by Chris Nuby, a Stanford University science writer who also
Speaker 1: served as a senior producer on a lime disease documentary
Speaker 1: titled Under Our Skin. In the book, Nuby points out
Speaker 1: that in nine three, the Biological Warfare Laboratories at Fort
Speaker 1: Dietrich created a program investigating ways to spread anti personnel
Speaker 1: agents via arthropods, that is, insects, crustaceans and arachnids, with
Speaker 1: the idea that slow acting agents wouldn't immediately incapacitated soldiers,
Speaker 1: but rather make the area dangerous for a long period
Speaker 1: of time. We spoke with newbi via email. She said,
Speaker 1: the premise of my book is that weaponized ticks full
Speaker 1: of who knows what, were accidentally released in the region
Speaker 1: of Long Island Sound. While she notes that she was
Speaker 1: unable to prove definitively line bacteria was used as a bioweapon, quote,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of shocking discoveries and scientific leads to
Speaker 1: lift the veil on the mysteries surrounding tick diseases and
Speaker 1: the government's response to them. Her book says that scientist
Speaker 1: Willie Bergdorfer, who is credited with discovering the specific bacterium
Speaker 1: that causes line disease, was directly involved in a number
Speaker 1: of bioweapons programs, but she stopped short of saying that
Speaker 1: his research was necessarily related to a lime disease weapon
Speaker 1: was accidentally released into the wild. Given America's ugly history
Speaker 1: regarding unethical research, it's fair to ask whether lyme disease
Speaker 1: was inadvertently or advertently introduced into the general population. After all,
Speaker 1: the government conducted hundreds of germ warfare tests and unethical
Speaker 1: experiments on civilians in the mid twentieth century, and other
Speaker 1: examples of similar biological warfare do exist. During World War Two,
Speaker 1: Japan notoriously used plague infested insects to spread disease, particularly
Speaker 1: in China. Some twenty thousand Chinese people died from this
Speaker 1: type of etymological warfare, which was carried out primarily by
Speaker 1: the infamous Unit seven thirty one, But most experts say
Speaker 1: there's nothing to investigate regarding ticks in the US today.
Speaker 1: Philip J. Baker, executive director at the American Lime Disease Foundation,
Speaker 1: wrote a lengthy document debunking claims regarding lime disease bioweapons research.
Speaker 1: In it, he established that both lime and the tics
Speaker 1: that spread it were prevalent in the Northeast thousands of
Speaker 1: years before Europeans colonized the continent. Baker told us via email,
Speaker 1: I think it would be a complete waste of the
Speaker 1: taxpayer's money for Congress to waste its time investigating science fiction.
Speaker 1: His article notes that pathogens considered for bioweapons are usually
Speaker 1: ones that caused death or serious illness. In a short
Speaker 1: period of time after release that does not describe the
Speaker 1: lime disease pathogen. Also, the idea that the government tried
Speaker 1: to weaponize ticks with lime in the nineteen fifties and
Speaker 1: sixties doesn't fit the disease timeline, and an article published
Speaker 1: in The Conversation, Sam Telford, a professor of infectious disease
Speaker 1: and global health at Tufts University, pointed out that lime
Speaker 1: wasn't even discovered into that's when Willie Bergdorfer finally pinpointed
Speaker 1: spiral shaped bacteria called spiro keets, which were ultimately named
Speaker 1: as the cause of lime. Telford wrote the real mail
Speaker 1: in the Coffin for the idea that lime disease in
Speaker 1: the US was somehow accidentally released from military bioweapons research
Speaker 1: is to be found in the fact that the first
Speaker 1: American case of lime disease turns out not to have
Speaker 1: been for old lime Connecticut in the early nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty nine, a physician identified a case in Spooner,
Speaker 1: Wisconsin and a patient who had never traveled out of
Speaker 1: that area, and lime disease was found infecting people in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight in northern California. How could an accidental
Speaker 1: release take place over three distant locations, it couldn't. Telford
Speaker 1: said that growing dear populations which spread deer ticks carrying lime, reforestation,
Speaker 1: particularly in the northeastern United States where most cases of
Speaker 1: lime are reported, and suburbs encroaching on those forests, which
Speaker 1: brings humans into close contact with ticks and tick invested wildlife,
Speaker 1: are the primary reasons that lime is becoming more prevalent.
Speaker 1: Not a top secret bioweapons program, however, provided an organization
Speaker 1: wanted to weaponize ticks, it's certainly possible, but it's not easy.
Speaker 1: We also spoke via email with Carry Clark, a professor
Speaker 1: of epidemiology and environmental health at the University of North Florida.
Speaker 1: He said weaponizing almost any type of bio logical agent
Speaker 1: takes a great deal of expertise. How much expertise depends
Speaker 1: on the specific agent, It's entire ecology and epidemiology, including
Speaker 1: pathogenic properties, infectivity, pathogenicity, virulence, and in this case, its
Speaker 1: ability to survive in and be transmitted by ticks. Clark
Speaker 1: adds that ticks aren't an ideal choice as a biological
Speaker 1: weapons delivery system. Ticks don't typically thrive in urban environments
Speaker 1: where people are concentrated and they are slow feeders, so
Speaker 1: someone might notice and remove them before they can do
Speaker 1: their job. Clark explained one would also have to rear
Speaker 1: and infect a large number of ticks and then somehow
Speaker 1: deliver them to a group of humans in a way
Speaker 1: that large numbers of people are exposed and actually bitten
Speaker 1: in a short period of time. Dropping infected ticks from
Speaker 1: an airplane or drone doesn't sound like an efficient way
Speaker 1: to incapacity to population with a bioweapon. He noted that
Speaker 1: lime disease isn't quick or efficient at incapacitating people, that
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be likely to cause a large number of deaths,
Speaker 1: and that it might take months to cause even serious illness.
Speaker 1: Clark further explained that even though there's an epidemic of
Speaker 1: lime like illnesses in the United States and that many
Speaker 1: may result from tick bites, infections from tick bites aren't
Speaker 1: necessarily lyme disease. They could be caused by other tickborn
Speaker 1: pathogens or by infectious agents encountered in our environment in
Speaker 1: other ways besides tick bites. Perhaps the takeaway is that
Speaker 1: given the seriousness of tick borne illnesses, the existence or
Speaker 1: non existence of a murky government conspiracy and cover up
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter as much as the fact that patients
Speaker 1: are still sick and the disease is still spreading. What
Speaker 1: we really need, says Clark, is to invest significant additional
Speaker 1: funding to investigate the true causes of these illnesses and
Speaker 1: to develop better diagnostics and treatments. Today's episode was written
Speaker 1: by Nathan Chandler and produced by Tyler clang. A brain
Speaker 1: Stuff is a production of I Heart Radios Has Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: For more in this and lots of other topics, visit
Speaker 1: our home in it how stuffworks dot com and for
Speaker 1: more podcast from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.