WEBVTT - Did Lyme Disease Start as a Bioweapon? 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:07.040 Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain Stuff, 0:00:07.120 --> 0:00:10.840 Lauren Vogel bomb here. Ticks are vectors for all sorts 0:00:10.880 --> 0:00:14.720 of unpleasant germs, notably lined sas, which is the sixth 0:00:14.760 --> 0:00:18.279 most commonly reported infectious disease in the United States, according 0:00:18.320 --> 0:00:22.000 to these Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Decades after 0:00:22.040 --> 0:00:26.400 it was first identified, it's still often misdiagnosed. Symptoms include 0:00:26.400 --> 0:00:30.200 an expanding body, rash, joint pains, fatigue, chills, and fever. 0:00:30.960 --> 0:00:33.560 But could the spread of line disease be attributable to 0:00:33.600 --> 0:00:38.000 a classified, decades old bioweapons program as some people claim, 0:00:38.120 --> 0:00:41.560 or are ticks just as good for spreading misinformation as 0:00:41.560 --> 0:00:45.040 they are for germs. The ticks as weapons issue made 0:00:45.040 --> 0:00:48.120 headlines back in July nineteen thanks to the U. S. 0:00:48.120 --> 0:00:51.960 House of Representatives Chris Smith, who introduced legislation directing the 0:00:52.000 --> 0:00:54.920 Department of Defense to review claims that the Pentagon researched 0:00:54.960 --> 0:00:58.520 tick based bioweapons in the mid twentieth century. The amendment 0:00:58.600 --> 0:01:01.960 past told the House he was inspired to do this 0:01:02.040 --> 0:01:05.000 by quote a number of books and articles suggesting that 0:01:05.080 --> 0:01:08.080 significant research had been done at U. S government facilities, 0:01:08.080 --> 0:01:10.960 including Fort Dietrich, Maryland, and Plumb Island, New York, to 0:01:11.160 --> 0:01:15.800 turn ticks and other insects into bio weapons. Smith explained 0:01:15.880 --> 0:01:18.520 during a debate on the House floor quote with lime 0:01:18.560 --> 0:01:21.560 disease and other tipboorn diseases exploding in the United States, 0:01:21.720 --> 0:01:24.240 with an estimated three hundred thousand to four hundred thirty 0:01:24.319 --> 0:01:27.440 seven hundred thousand new cases diagnosed each year and ten 0:01:27.520 --> 0:01:30.480 to twenty of all patients suffering from chronic lime disease, 0:01:30.800 --> 0:01:32.880 Americans have a right to know whether any of this 0:01:33.000 --> 0:01:36.720 is true and have these experiments caused lime disease and 0:01:36.720 --> 0:01:41.120 other tickborn diseases to mutate and to spread. Congressman Smith's 0:01:41.160 --> 0:01:44.720 legislative actions were also inspired partly by the book Bitten, 0:01:44.920 --> 0:01:48.000 The Secret History of Lime Disease and Biological Weapons, written 0:01:48.040 --> 0:01:51.400 by Chris Nuby, a Stanford University science writer who also 0:01:51.440 --> 0:01:54.320 served as a senior producer on a lime disease documentary 0:01:54.520 --> 0:01:58.720 titled Under Our Skin. In the book, Nuby points out 0:01:58.800 --> 0:02:02.320 that in nine three, the Biological Warfare Laboratories at Fort 0:02:02.360 --> 0:02:06.320 Dietrich created a program investigating ways to spread anti personnel 0:02:06.360 --> 0:02:10.920 agents via arthropods, that is, insects, crustaceans and arachnids, with 0:02:11.080 --> 0:02:15.480 the idea that slow acting agents wouldn't immediately incapacitated soldiers, 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:18.200 but rather make the area dangerous for a long period 0:02:18.240 --> 0:02:22.040 of time. We spoke with newbi via email. She said, 0:02:22.360 --> 0:02:24.760 the premise of my book is that weaponized ticks full 0:02:24.800 --> 0:02:27.760 of who knows what, were accidentally released in the region 0:02:27.880 --> 0:02:31.600 of Long Island Sound. While she notes that she was 0:02:31.680 --> 0:02:36.200 unable to prove definitively line bacteria was used as a bioweapon, quote, 0:02:36.520 --> 0:02:39.680 there are plenty of shocking discoveries and scientific leads to 0:02:39.720 --> 0:02:42.520 lift the veil on the mysteries surrounding tick diseases and 0:02:42.600 --> 0:02:46.440 the government's response to them. Her book says that scientist 0:02:46.440 --> 0:02:50.120 Willie Bergdorfer, who is credited with discovering the specific bacterium 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:53.240 that causes line disease, was directly involved in a number 0:02:53.240 --> 0:02:56.720 of bioweapons programs, but she stopped short of saying that 0:02:56.760 --> 0:02:59.720 his research was necessarily related to a lime disease weapon 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:04.080 was accidentally released into the wild. Given America's ugly history 0:03:04.120 --> 0:03:07.560 regarding unethical research, it's fair to ask whether lyme disease 0:03:07.600 --> 0:03:12.919 was inadvertently or advertently introduced into the general population. After all, 0:03:12.960 --> 0:03:16.160 the government conducted hundreds of germ warfare tests and unethical 0:03:16.200 --> 0:03:19.959 experiments on civilians in the mid twentieth century, and other 0:03:20.000 --> 0:03:24.399 examples of similar biological warfare do exist. During World War Two, 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:29.120 Japan notoriously used plague infested insects to spread disease, particularly 0:03:29.120 --> 0:03:32.320 in China. Some twenty thousand Chinese people died from this 0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:35.680 type of etymological warfare, which was carried out primarily by 0:03:35.720 --> 0:03:39.720 the infamous Unit seven thirty one, But most experts say 0:03:39.720 --> 0:03:43.240 there's nothing to investigate regarding ticks in the US today. 0:03:43.480 --> 0:03:47.000 Philip J. Baker, executive director at the American Lime Disease Foundation, 0:03:47.240 --> 0:03:51.680 wrote a lengthy document debunking claims regarding lime disease bioweapons research. 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:55.040 In it, he established that both lime and the tics 0:03:55.040 --> 0:03:57.600 that spread it were prevalent in the Northeast thousands of 0:03:57.680 --> 0:04:02.160 years before Europeans colonized the continent. Baker told us via email, 0:04:02.600 --> 0:04:04.360 I think it would be a complete waste of the 0:04:04.400 --> 0:04:08.480 taxpayer's money for Congress to waste its time investigating science fiction. 0:04:09.640 --> 0:04:12.880 His article notes that pathogens considered for bioweapons are usually 0:04:12.920 --> 0:04:15.480 ones that caused death or serious illness. In a short 0:04:15.520 --> 0:04:18.839 period of time after release that does not describe the 0:04:18.880 --> 0:04:22.760 lime disease pathogen. Also, the idea that the government tried 0:04:22.800 --> 0:04:25.080 to weaponize ticks with lime in the nineteen fifties and 0:04:25.120 --> 0:04:29.080 sixties doesn't fit the disease timeline, and an article published 0:04:29.120 --> 0:04:32.800 in The Conversation, Sam Telford, a professor of infectious disease 0:04:32.800 --> 0:04:35.760 and global health at Tufts University, pointed out that lime 0:04:35.880 --> 0:04:41.240 wasn't even discovered into that's when Willie Bergdorfer finally pinpointed 0:04:41.279 --> 0:04:45.240 spiral shaped bacteria called spiro keets, which were ultimately named 0:04:45.279 --> 0:04:49.240 as the cause of lime. Telford wrote the real mail 0:04:49.279 --> 0:04:51.200 in the Coffin for the idea that lime disease in 0:04:51.240 --> 0:04:54.880 the US was somehow accidentally released from military bioweapons research 0:04:55.240 --> 0:04:56.880 is to be found in the fact that the first 0:04:56.920 --> 0:04:59.560 American case of lime disease turns out not to have 0:04:59.640 --> 0:05:02.800 been for old lime Connecticut in the early nineteen seventies. 0:05:03.200 --> 0:05:06.520 In nineteen sixty nine, a physician identified a case in Spooner, 0:05:06.560 --> 0:05:09.040 Wisconsin and a patient who had never traveled out of 0:05:09.080 --> 0:05:12.240 that area, and lime disease was found infecting people in 0:05:12.320 --> 0:05:15.960 nineteen seventy eight in northern California. How could an accidental 0:05:16.000 --> 0:05:21.080 release take place over three distant locations, it couldn't. Telford 0:05:21.120 --> 0:05:25.880 said that growing dear populations which spread deer ticks carrying lime, reforestation, 0:05:25.960 --> 0:05:28.960 particularly in the northeastern United States where most cases of 0:05:29.000 --> 0:05:32.520 lime are reported, and suburbs encroaching on those forests, which 0:05:32.560 --> 0:05:36.279 brings humans into close contact with ticks and tick invested wildlife, 0:05:36.440 --> 0:05:39.200 are the primary reasons that lime is becoming more prevalent. 0:05:39.640 --> 0:05:45.120 Not a top secret bioweapons program, however, provided an organization 0:05:45.279 --> 0:05:49.960 wanted to weaponize ticks, it's certainly possible, but it's not easy. 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:53.120 We also spoke via email with Carry Clark, a professor 0:05:53.120 --> 0:05:56.679 of epidemiology and environmental health at the University of North Florida. 0:05:57.360 --> 0:06:00.679 He said weaponizing almost any type of bio logical agent 0:06:00.760 --> 0:06:04.400 takes a great deal of expertise. How much expertise depends 0:06:04.400 --> 0:06:08.560 on the specific agent, It's entire ecology and epidemiology, including 0:06:08.600 --> 0:06:13.800 pathogenic properties, infectivity, pathogenicity, virulence, and in this case, its 0:06:13.839 --> 0:06:18.599 ability to survive in and be transmitted by ticks. Clark 0:06:18.640 --> 0:06:21.280 adds that ticks aren't an ideal choice as a biological 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:25.560 weapons delivery system. Ticks don't typically thrive in urban environments 0:06:25.560 --> 0:06:28.599 where people are concentrated and they are slow feeders, so 0:06:28.720 --> 0:06:30.960 someone might notice and remove them before they can do 0:06:31.040 --> 0:06:35.039 their job. Clark explained one would also have to rear 0:06:35.120 --> 0:06:38.040 and infect a large number of ticks and then somehow 0:06:38.080 --> 0:06:40.040 deliver them to a group of humans in a way 0:06:40.080 --> 0:06:43.240 that large numbers of people are exposed and actually bitten 0:06:43.240 --> 0:06:46.640 in a short period of time. Dropping infected ticks from 0:06:46.640 --> 0:06:49.200 an airplane or drone doesn't sound like an efficient way 0:06:49.200 --> 0:06:53.560 to incapacity to population with a bioweapon. He noted that 0:06:53.640 --> 0:06:57.400 lime disease isn't quick or efficient at incapacitating people, that 0:06:57.480 --> 0:06:59.840 it wouldn't be likely to cause a large number of deaths, 0:07:00.000 --> 0:07:02.560 and that it might take months to cause even serious illness. 0:07:03.880 --> 0:07:06.520 Clark further explained that even though there's an epidemic of 0:07:06.600 --> 0:07:09.520 lime like illnesses in the United States and that many 0:07:09.600 --> 0:07:12.840 may result from tick bites, infections from tick bites aren't 0:07:12.840 --> 0:07:15.880 necessarily lyme disease. They could be caused by other tickborn 0:07:15.960 --> 0:07:19.840 pathogens or by infectious agents encountered in our environment in 0:07:19.920 --> 0:07:24.120 other ways besides tick bites. Perhaps the takeaway is that 0:07:24.280 --> 0:07:27.640 given the seriousness of tick borne illnesses, the existence or 0:07:27.800 --> 0:07:30.880 non existence of a murky government conspiracy and cover up 0:07:31.240 --> 0:07:33.680 doesn't really matter as much as the fact that patients 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:37.000 are still sick and the disease is still spreading. What 0:07:37.000 --> 0:07:40.520 we really need, says Clark, is to invest significant additional 0:07:40.520 --> 0:07:43.760 funding to investigate the true causes of these illnesses and 0:07:43.760 --> 0:07:52.360 to develop better diagnostics and treatments. Today's episode was written 0:07:52.360 --> 0:07:55.080 by Nathan Chandler and produced by Tyler clang. A brain 0:07:55.080 --> 0:07:57.360 Stuff is a production of I Heart Radios Has Stuff Works. 0:07:57.640 --> 0:07:59.520 For more in this and lots of other topics, visit 0:07:59.520 --> 0:08:02.120 our home in it how stuffworks dot com and for 0:08:02.200 --> 0:08:04.880 more podcast from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, 0:08:05.080 --> 0:08:07.720 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.