Lyme disease: Rooted in CT or bioweapon started in government lab?

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NEW HAVEN — Lyme disease bears its name from a Connecticut town, but a U.S. representative from New Jersey has questioned whether the disease has its origin in government laboratories — a claim experts say is a conspiracy theory that has been debunked repeatedly.

According to Roll Call, U.S. Rep. Christopher Smith, a Republican from New Jersey, introduced an amendment to the House’s defense authorization bill on July 11 calling for the Pentagon inspector general to investigate whether the Department of Defense experimented with ticks for potential use as weapons of biological warfare between 1950 and 1975. Smith’s amendment was added to the final bill, which passed the next day by a voice vote.

In a news release, Smith said he drafted the amendment after reading “a number of books and articles suggesting that significant research had been done at U.S. government facilities including Fort Detrick, Maryland and Plum Island, New York to turn ticks and other insects into bioweapons.”

“[H]ave these experiments caused Lyme disease and other tick-borne disease to mutate and to spread?” he said in the release.

Phillip J. Baker, executive director of the American Lyme Disease Foundation, said the notion that ticks would be attractive hosts for weapons of biological warfare is laughable, and that theories tying Lyme disease to government intervention is something experts have heard before.

“It’s not new; the issue was raised before,” Baker said.

ALDF’s website has information debunking the Plum Island and Fort Detrick theory as a source for the spread of Lyme disease. The specific strain that some claim was made by the government and escaped from a high-containment biological warfare laboratory — Borrelia burgdorferi — was identified in museum specimens of ticks showing the presence of the strain.

“More recent studies revealed that Ixodes ticks and B. burgdorferi were present in the northeastern and Midwestern regions of the U.S. in pre-colonial times and many thousands of years before European settlements were established in the U.S.,” reads the ALDF’s section on the government creation theory. “Lyme disease certainly existed in the U.S. long before anyone knew how to diagnose and treat it.”

The website gives the historical information the Plum Island Animal Disease Center was managed by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps as a component of its biological warfare program in 1952. The biowarfare program was abolished by President Richard Nixon in 1969, and the PIADC program was transferred to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Baker said that information on ALDF’s website dates back to when former Minnesota governor and retired professional wrestler Jesse Ventura visited Plum Island in a 2010 episode of his television show “Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura.”

Baker rejected the idea of ticks being used as carriers for weapons of biowarfare for several reasons: first, an agent of biowarfare should be capable of creating “chaos and havoc.” He said smallpox, ebola and anthrax could be used to quickly incapacitate targets or cause rapid illness. Lyme disease “doesn’t fit into that category,” he said.

“I wouldn’t consider using Borrelia,” he said. “It’s not life-threatening or lethal at all.”

Additionally, Baker said, 95 percent of Lyme disease cases are reported in 12 states, because ticks cannot survive in dry climates. That makes ticks weak candidates to cause a devastating blow to a population, he said.

Baker, a bacteriologist by training who was a program officer for the government’s Lyme disease basic program and anthrax basic program, said he has seen public interest in weapons of biowarfare rise and fall, especially after 9/11.

U.S. Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro, D-3, said in a statement that she is not against any investigation that may produce information that could be helpful to the public, including a Pentagon investigation into the potential history of experiments conducted on ticks.

“I welcome studies that deal with the health and welfare of the public. If enacted, the Department of Defense should be responsive to the Inspector General and give people the facts,” she said.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., serves on the conference committee that will determine whether the final version of the defense authorization bill carries Smith’s amendment as a provision. Blumenthal said his primary concern is with Lyme disease research, and he hopes to see an increase in funding for the program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Lyme research is certainly absolutely necessary,” he said. “It is a scourge in Connecticut.”

Blumenthal said he was not very familiar with the details of Smith’s amendment and, while he welcomes evidence and research, he is more concerned with preventing and curing the disease.

“I have no objection to that kind of investigation, but my focus is really on preventing the disease from spreading now and curing it now and developing better diagnosis and treatment now, because in 2019 it is a public health scourge that destroys lives, and we need to fight it more effectively now and going forward,” he said.

The press office for U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., did not return a request for comment.

brian.zahn@hearstmediact.com