Continuing the inquiry undertaken in FTR
480, this program explores the relationship between Lyme disease and
biological warfare research. After reviewing American employment of Nazi
biological warfare chief Erich Traub in the aftermath of World War II, the
broadcast notes that Traub may well have experimented with disease-infected
ticks on Plum Island. Circumstantial evidence suggests that Lyme disease
may have stemmed (accidentally or deliberately) from biological warfare
research experiments on Plum Island. 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.
Program Highlights Include: The discovery by Willy Burgdorfer of the microbe that causes Lyme disease; Burgdorfer’s work as a biological warfare (BW) researcher; Burgdorfer’s work on Lyme disease conducted in concert with BW researchers Jorge Benach and Alan Barbour; the appointment of BW researchers Edward McSweegan and Mark Klempner to head up official research into Lyme disease; the “accidental” classification of Lyme disease as a potential biological warfare weapon by both the NIH and the CDC; the Pentagon’s use of a real-time satellite system that enables troops in the field to assess the threat of Lyme-infected ticks in their area; the fact that Lyme disease sheds its outer coat in such a way as to be resistant to antibiotics; the difficulty in diagnosing Lyme disease; the designation of Lyme disease as a “sentinel” ailment to aid in the detection of biological warfare agents.
1. Side “A” of the broadcast consists of review of information from FTR 480. Highlighting an aspect of Project Paperclip (the importation of Nazi scientists to work for the U.S. after World War II), the program details the work of Eric Traub. In charge of bacteriological and virological warfare research for the Third Reich, he went to work for the U.S. after the conflict. Circumstantial evidence suggests he may have conducted biological warfare research on tick-borne diseases on, among other places, Plum Island, off the coast of Long Island. FTR 480 presents information suggesting that the spread of Lyme disease in this country may have originated from Plum Island BW tests.
2. The second half of the program sets forth a thought-provoking paper about the ubiquitous presence of biological warfare specialists in the Lyme disease research community. By the same token, the history of Lyme disease research is associated with biological warfare research at virtually every turn. Lyme research is controlled by the Steere Camp, whose members are inextricably linked to the biological warfare research community in this country. The opposing camp-the ILADS—contends that Lyme disease is a serious ailment that produces prolonged neurological symptoms. The Steere Camp maintains that Lyme is “hard-to-catch, easy-to-cure.” “The world of Lyme disease medicine is split into two camps – the US government-backed ‘Steere camp’, which maintains the disease is hard-to-catch, easily cured, and rarely causes chronic neurological damage, and the ‘ILADS camp’, which maintains the opposite. The Steere camp is intricately bound up with the American biowarfare establishment, as well as with giant insurance and other corporate interests with a stake in the issue. The ILADS doctors lack such connections, but are supported instead by tens of thousands of patients rallying behind them. Because the Steere camp has been massively funded and promoted by federal agencies, its view has dominated Lyme medicine not just in the US, but across much of the world. The result has been suffering on a grand scale. Below is a concise history of the military aspects of this cover-up.”
(“History of Lyme disease as a Bioweapon: Lyme is a Biowarfare Issue” by Elena Cook.)
3. 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. “ . . . 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. . . .” (Idem.)
4. The extraordinary mutability of borrelia bacteria makes that genus especially well-suited for biological warfare purposes. “ . . . 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.” (Idem.)
5. Research into Lyme disease has been dominated by personnel from the Epidemic Intelligence Service, whose members are the premier biological warfare experts in the country. The EIS personnel make up the Steere Camp. EIS personnel administered Lyme disease research from the beginning: “ . . . When Polly Murray made her now-famous call to the Connecticut health department to report the strange epidemic among children and adults in her town, her initial reception was lukewarm. However, some weeks later, she got an unexpected call from a Dr David Snydman, of the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), who was very interested. He arranged for fellow EIS officer Dr Allen Steere to get involved. By the time Mrs. Murray turned up for her appointment at Yale, the doctor she had expected to see had been relegated to the role of an onlooker. Allen Steere had taken charge – and his views were to shape the course of Lyme medicine for the next thirty years, up till today. [x]” (Idem.)
6. More about the EIS and its importance to the international biological warfare research community: “The EIS is an elite, quasi-military unit of Infectious Disease experts set up in the 1950’s to develop an offensive biowarfare capability. Despite the banning of offensive biowar in the 1970’s, the crack troops of the EIS continue to exist, ostensibly for non-offensive research into ‘emerging disease’ threats, a blanket phrase covering both bioweapon attacks and natural epidemics at the same time. Graduates of the EIS training program are sent in to occupy strategic positions in the US health infrastructure, taking leadership at federal and state health agencies, in academia, industry and the media. The organization also extends its influence abroad, training officers for public health agencies in Britain, France, the Netherlands etc. [xi] [xii]” (Idem.)
7. “In fact a high proportion of Steere camp Lyme experts are involved with the EIS. Given that the EIS is a small, elite force, (in 2001 the CDC revealed there were less than 2500 EIS officers in existence since the unit was first created in 1951 [xiii]), it seems incredible that so many of America’s top Infectious Disease experts would devote their careers to what they themselves claim is a ‘hard-to-catch, easily-cured’ disease. . . .” (Idem.)
8. The discoverer of the micro-organism that causes Lyme was a biological warfare expert—Willy Burgdorfer. Two of the people with whom Burgdorfer worked in the early phases of Lyme research (Jorge Benach and Alan Barbour) were also BW [biological warfare] specialists. “ . . . The microbe was accidentally found by biowarfare scientist Willy Burgdorfer and was subsequently named for him. [Italics are Mr. Emory’s.] Burgdorfer has championed the Lyme patients’ movement and is not suspected of any wrongdoing. However it is not impossible that he was unwittingly caught up in a chain of events that were not as random as they might have seemed. [Burgdorfer was a Swiss scientist who had been recruited by the US Public Health Service in the 1950’s. He was highly experienced with both ticks and borrelia, but after being told that the government was not interesting in funding work with the latter, he switched to work with Rickettsia and other pathogens. [xiv] In 1981, Burgdorfer was sent a batch of deer ticks by a team studying Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever on the East Coast. In charge of the team was one Dr Jorge Benach. [xv] Benach subsequently spent much of his career as a Steere camp Lyme researcher. In 2004 he was chosen as recipient for a $3 million biowarfare research grant. [xvi] [Italics are Mr. Emory’s.] Cutting open some of Benach’ ticks, Burgdorfer noticed microfilaria (microscopic worm young). This was a subject he had been studying recently, only these microfilaria were different. They were exceptionally large, large enough to be seen with the naked eye.[xvii] His curiosity naturally piqued, he opened up several more ticks. There he was surprised to find the spiral-shaped germs of borrelia. Cultivation is necessary in order to isolate bacteria for study, so that diagnostic tests, vaccines or cures can be developed. Borrelia are very difficult to grow in culture. However, by ‘lucky coincidence’, another scientist had recently joined the lab where he worked, and had apparently been involved in an amazing breakthrough in this area. So naturally Burgdorfer handed the infected ticks over to him. [xviii] That scientist was Dr. Alan Barbour, an officer, like Steere and Snydman, of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, with a background in work on anthrax, one of the most terrifying biowarfare agents known. [xix] [Italics are Mr. Emory’s.]” (Idem.)
9. Setting the template for future Lyme research, EIS researcher Alan Barbour’s work on borrelia determined the nature of subsequent Lyjme disease testing. Barbour has gone on to the top position in a biological warfare research facility at the University of California at Irvine, where he is working with another “Steerite,” Jonas Bunikis. “. . . EIS man Barbour therefore became the first to isolate the prototype organism on which all subsequent Lyme disease blood tests would be based. [xx] This is very significant, as a huge body of evidence [xxi] indicates the unreliability of these tests, which are routinely used to rule out the disease. Additionally, all DNA detection of the Lyme agent in ticks and animals is ultimately based, directly or indirectly, on the genetic profile of the strain first isolated by Barbour. Shortly after Barbour’s discovery, other species and strains of the Lyme-causing bacteria were isolated, especially in Europe. They were all classified based on their resemblance to Barbour’s organism, and have been grouped into a category called Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato or ‘Bbsl’ for short. . . . In 2005 Barbour, who spent much of his career studying the ‘hard-to-catch, easy-to-cure’ Lyme disease, was placed in charge of the multi-million new biowarfare mega-complex based at University of California at Irvine (UCI). [xxiv] Barbour is joined there by his close colleague and fellow Steerite Jonas Bunikis, author of recent papers calling for a restrictive approach to Lyme diagnosis. [Italics are Mr. Emory’s.]” (Idem.)
10. Edward McSweegan and Mark Klempner are two of the other BW experts to enter the Lyme disease research field. “ . . . The National Institute of Health (NIH) appointed biowarfare expert Edward McSweegan as Lyme Program officer. [xxv] [Italics are Mr. Emory’s.] Under his leadership the diagnostic criteria was skewed to exclude most sufferers, especially those with chronic neurological illness. McSweegan’s successor at NIH, Dr Phil Baker, is an anthrax expert [xxvi], and has continued his policies. . . . In 2001, responding to the protest of thousands of patients that standard two or three-week antibiotic courses were not sufficient, the NIH commissioned biowarfare scientist Mark Klempner to study persistence of Lyme infection. [Italics are Mr. Emory’s.] ILADS doctors had found that patients left untreated in the early phase often needed long courses of antibiotics, [xxix] sometimes for years. Klempner, however, concluded that persistent Lyme infection did not exist. In 2003 Klempner was appointed head of the new $1.6 billion biowarfare top-security facility being developed at Boston University. Shortly after, the news emerged that there had been an escape of the deadly bug tularemia, which was not properly reported to the authorities. [xxx] . . .” (Idem.)
11. Both the National Institute of Health and the Center for Disease Control “accidentally” listed Lyme as a potential bioterrorism vector. “In 2005 the author discovered a document on the NIH website listing Lyme as one of the potential bioterrorism agents studied in BSL-4 (top security) labs. After this was publicized, the NIH announced they had made a ‘mistake’, and removed the words ‘Lyme disease’ from the page. (At the time of writing, the original is still available in cached Internet archives. [xxxi]) However, at around the same time, a CDC source leaked the identical information to the Associated Press. [xxxii] Moreover, the Science Coalition, comprising entities as prestigious as the American Medical Association, Yale University, and the American Red Cross, maintain a website which, at the time of writing, also lists Lyme as a disease studied for its biowarfare potential. [xxxiii] Could these three major organizations all have, co-incidentally, made the same ‘mistake’? . . .” (Idem.)
12. Supplementing information in paragraph 4, the program notes that the Lyme disease is difficult to diagnose, another factor that makes it ideal for BW use. “ . . . 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. . . .” (Idem.)
13. Lyme disease has been proposed as a “sentinel” germ for biological warfare detection. A Department of Defense satellite system gives soldiers real-time data on the presence of Lyme-infected ticks in their vicinity. “ . . . The 2003 proposal for a rapid-detection method for biowarfare by Dr JJ Dunn of Brookhaven National Lab seems to add further grounds for suspicion. It is based on the use of two ‘sentinel’ germs – plague and Lyme. [xxxvii] In 1999 Lyme patient advocacy leader Pat Smith was amazed to find, on visiting an Army base at an old biowar testing ground in Maryland, that the US Dept. of Defense has developed a satellite-linked system that enables soldiers to read, in real-time, off a display on their helmet’s visor, information about the rate of Lyme-infected ticks wherever they may be on earth. Unit commanders could update the database using state-of-the-art portable PCR machines, which test for Lyme DNA in soldiers bitten by ticks. [xxxviii] The use of such cutting-edge technology for a supposedly ‘hard-to-catch, easy-to-cure’ illness seems odd, to say the least! . . .”(Idem.)
14. The conclusion to the essay encapsulates its working hypothesis: “ . . . It’s possible to see the modern history of Lyme as a string of events with an EIS member at every crucial node. . . .” (Idem.)
Program Highlights Include: The discovery by Willy Burgdorfer of the microbe that causes Lyme disease; Burgdorfer’s work as a biological warfare (BW) researcher; Burgdorfer’s work on Lyme disease conducted in concert with BW researchers Jorge Benach and Alan Barbour; the appointment of BW researchers Edward McSweegan and Mark Klempner to head up official research into Lyme disease; the “accidental” classification of Lyme disease as a potential biological warfare weapon by both the NIH and the CDC; the Pentagon’s use of a real-time satellite system that enables troops in the field to assess the threat of Lyme-infected ticks in their area; the fact that Lyme disease sheds its outer coat in such a way as to be resistant to antibiotics; the difficulty in diagnosing Lyme disease; the designation of Lyme disease as a “sentinel” ailment to aid in the detection of biological warfare agents.
1. Side “A” of the broadcast consists of review of information from FTR 480. Highlighting an aspect of Project Paperclip (the importation of Nazi scientists to work for the U.S. after World War II), the program details the work of Eric Traub. In charge of bacteriological and virological warfare research for the Third Reich, he went to work for the U.S. after the conflict. Circumstantial evidence suggests he may have conducted biological warfare research on tick-borne diseases on, among other places, Plum Island, off the coast of Long Island. FTR 480 presents information suggesting that the spread of Lyme disease in this country may have originated from Plum Island BW tests.
2. The second half of the program sets forth a thought-provoking paper about the ubiquitous presence of biological warfare specialists in the Lyme disease research community. By the same token, the history of Lyme disease research is associated with biological warfare research at virtually every turn. Lyme research is controlled by the Steere Camp, whose members are inextricably linked to the biological warfare research community in this country. The opposing camp-the ILADS—contends that Lyme disease is a serious ailment that produces prolonged neurological symptoms. The Steere Camp maintains that Lyme is “hard-to-catch, easy-to-cure.” “The world of Lyme disease medicine is split into two camps – the US government-backed ‘Steere camp’, which maintains the disease is hard-to-catch, easily cured, and rarely causes chronic neurological damage, and the ‘ILADS camp’, which maintains the opposite. The Steere camp is intricately bound up with the American biowarfare establishment, as well as with giant insurance and other corporate interests with a stake in the issue. The ILADS doctors lack such connections, but are supported instead by tens of thousands of patients rallying behind them. Because the Steere camp has been massively funded and promoted by federal agencies, its view has dominated Lyme medicine not just in the US, but across much of the world. The result has been suffering on a grand scale. Below is a concise history of the military aspects of this cover-up.”
(“History of Lyme disease as a Bioweapon: Lyme is a Biowarfare Issue” by Elena Cook.)
3. 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. “ . . . 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. . . .” (Idem.)
4. The extraordinary mutability of borrelia bacteria makes that genus especially well-suited for biological warfare purposes. “ . . . 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.” (Idem.)
5. Research into Lyme disease has been dominated by personnel from the Epidemic Intelligence Service, whose members are the premier biological warfare experts in the country. The EIS personnel make up the Steere Camp. EIS personnel administered Lyme disease research from the beginning: “ . . . When Polly Murray made her now-famous call to the Connecticut health department to report the strange epidemic among children and adults in her town, her initial reception was lukewarm. However, some weeks later, she got an unexpected call from a Dr David Snydman, of the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), who was very interested. He arranged for fellow EIS officer Dr Allen Steere to get involved. By the time Mrs. Murray turned up for her appointment at Yale, the doctor she had expected to see had been relegated to the role of an onlooker. Allen Steere had taken charge – and his views were to shape the course of Lyme medicine for the next thirty years, up till today. [x]” (Idem.)
6. More about the EIS and its importance to the international biological warfare research community: “The EIS is an elite, quasi-military unit of Infectious Disease experts set up in the 1950’s to develop an offensive biowarfare capability. Despite the banning of offensive biowar in the 1970’s, the crack troops of the EIS continue to exist, ostensibly for non-offensive research into ‘emerging disease’ threats, a blanket phrase covering both bioweapon attacks and natural epidemics at the same time. Graduates of the EIS training program are sent in to occupy strategic positions in the US health infrastructure, taking leadership at federal and state health agencies, in academia, industry and the media. The organization also extends its influence abroad, training officers for public health agencies in Britain, France, the Netherlands etc. [xi] [xii]” (Idem.)
7. “In fact a high proportion of Steere camp Lyme experts are involved with the EIS. Given that the EIS is a small, elite force, (in 2001 the CDC revealed there were less than 2500 EIS officers in existence since the unit was first created in 1951 [xiii]), it seems incredible that so many of America’s top Infectious Disease experts would devote their careers to what they themselves claim is a ‘hard-to-catch, easily-cured’ disease. . . .” (Idem.)
8. The discoverer of the micro-organism that causes Lyme was a biological warfare expert—Willy Burgdorfer. Two of the people with whom Burgdorfer worked in the early phases of Lyme research (Jorge Benach and Alan Barbour) were also BW [biological warfare] specialists. “ . . . The microbe was accidentally found by biowarfare scientist Willy Burgdorfer and was subsequently named for him. [Italics are Mr. Emory’s.] Burgdorfer has championed the Lyme patients’ movement and is not suspected of any wrongdoing. However it is not impossible that he was unwittingly caught up in a chain of events that were not as random as they might have seemed. [Burgdorfer was a Swiss scientist who had been recruited by the US Public Health Service in the 1950’s. He was highly experienced with both ticks and borrelia, but after being told that the government was not interesting in funding work with the latter, he switched to work with Rickettsia and other pathogens. [xiv] In 1981, Burgdorfer was sent a batch of deer ticks by a team studying Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever on the East Coast. In charge of the team was one Dr Jorge Benach. [xv] Benach subsequently spent much of his career as a Steere camp Lyme researcher. In 2004 he was chosen as recipient for a $3 million biowarfare research grant. [xvi] [Italics are Mr. Emory’s.] Cutting open some of Benach’ ticks, Burgdorfer noticed microfilaria (microscopic worm young). This was a subject he had been studying recently, only these microfilaria were different. They were exceptionally large, large enough to be seen with the naked eye.[xvii] His curiosity naturally piqued, he opened up several more ticks. There he was surprised to find the spiral-shaped germs of borrelia. Cultivation is necessary in order to isolate bacteria for study, so that diagnostic tests, vaccines or cures can be developed. Borrelia are very difficult to grow in culture. However, by ‘lucky coincidence’, another scientist had recently joined the lab where he worked, and had apparently been involved in an amazing breakthrough in this area. So naturally Burgdorfer handed the infected ticks over to him. [xviii] That scientist was Dr. Alan Barbour, an officer, like Steere and Snydman, of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, with a background in work on anthrax, one of the most terrifying biowarfare agents known. [xix] [Italics are Mr. Emory’s.]” (Idem.)
9. Setting the template for future Lyme research, EIS researcher Alan Barbour’s work on borrelia determined the nature of subsequent Lyjme disease testing. Barbour has gone on to the top position in a biological warfare research facility at the University of California at Irvine, where he is working with another “Steerite,” Jonas Bunikis. “. . . EIS man Barbour therefore became the first to isolate the prototype organism on which all subsequent Lyme disease blood tests would be based. [xx] This is very significant, as a huge body of evidence [xxi] indicates the unreliability of these tests, which are routinely used to rule out the disease. Additionally, all DNA detection of the Lyme agent in ticks and animals is ultimately based, directly or indirectly, on the genetic profile of the strain first isolated by Barbour. Shortly after Barbour’s discovery, other species and strains of the Lyme-causing bacteria were isolated, especially in Europe. They were all classified based on their resemblance to Barbour’s organism, and have been grouped into a category called Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato or ‘Bbsl’ for short. . . . In 2005 Barbour, who spent much of his career studying the ‘hard-to-catch, easy-to-cure’ Lyme disease, was placed in charge of the multi-million new biowarfare mega-complex based at University of California at Irvine (UCI). [xxiv] Barbour is joined there by his close colleague and fellow Steerite Jonas Bunikis, author of recent papers calling for a restrictive approach to Lyme diagnosis. [Italics are Mr. Emory’s.]” (Idem.)
10. Edward McSweegan and Mark Klempner are two of the other BW experts to enter the Lyme disease research field. “ . . . The National Institute of Health (NIH) appointed biowarfare expert Edward McSweegan as Lyme Program officer. [xxv] [Italics are Mr. Emory’s.] Under his leadership the diagnostic criteria was skewed to exclude most sufferers, especially those with chronic neurological illness. McSweegan’s successor at NIH, Dr Phil Baker, is an anthrax expert [xxvi], and has continued his policies. . . . In 2001, responding to the protest of thousands of patients that standard two or three-week antibiotic courses were not sufficient, the NIH commissioned biowarfare scientist Mark Klempner to study persistence of Lyme infection. [Italics are Mr. Emory’s.] ILADS doctors had found that patients left untreated in the early phase often needed long courses of antibiotics, [xxix] sometimes for years. Klempner, however, concluded that persistent Lyme infection did not exist. In 2003 Klempner was appointed head of the new $1.6 billion biowarfare top-security facility being developed at Boston University. Shortly after, the news emerged that there had been an escape of the deadly bug tularemia, which was not properly reported to the authorities. [xxx] . . .” (Idem.)
11. Both the National Institute of Health and the Center for Disease Control “accidentally” listed Lyme as a potential bioterrorism vector. “In 2005 the author discovered a document on the NIH website listing Lyme as one of the potential bioterrorism agents studied in BSL-4 (top security) labs. After this was publicized, the NIH announced they had made a ‘mistake’, and removed the words ‘Lyme disease’ from the page. (At the time of writing, the original is still available in cached Internet archives. [xxxi]) However, at around the same time, a CDC source leaked the identical information to the Associated Press. [xxxii] Moreover, the Science Coalition, comprising entities as prestigious as the American Medical Association, Yale University, and the American Red Cross, maintain a website which, at the time of writing, also lists Lyme as a disease studied for its biowarfare potential. [xxxiii] Could these three major organizations all have, co-incidentally, made the same ‘mistake’? . . .” (Idem.)
12. Supplementing information in paragraph 4, the program notes that the Lyme disease is difficult to diagnose, another factor that makes it ideal for BW use. “ . . . 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. . . .” (Idem.)
13. Lyme disease has been proposed as a “sentinel” germ for biological warfare detection. A Department of Defense satellite system gives soldiers real-time data on the presence of Lyme-infected ticks in their vicinity. “ . . . The 2003 proposal for a rapid-detection method for biowarfare by Dr JJ Dunn of Brookhaven National Lab seems to add further grounds for suspicion. It is based on the use of two ‘sentinel’ germs – plague and Lyme. [xxxvii] In 1999 Lyme patient advocacy leader Pat Smith was amazed to find, on visiting an Army base at an old biowar testing ground in Maryland, that the US Dept. of Defense has developed a satellite-linked system that enables soldiers to read, in real-time, off a display on their helmet’s visor, information about the rate of Lyme-infected ticks wherever they may be on earth. Unit commanders could update the database using state-of-the-art portable PCR machines, which test for Lyme DNA in soldiers bitten by ticks. [xxxviii] The use of such cutting-edge technology for a supposedly ‘hard-to-catch, easy-to-cure’ illness seems odd, to say the least! . . .”(Idem.)
14. The conclusion to the essay encapsulates its working hypothesis: “ . . . It’s possible to see the modern history of Lyme as a string of events with an EIS member at every crucial node. . . .” (Idem.)
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