Were ticks used as biological weapons?

 In Blog, Heidi's Bug Blog, Uncategorized

Republican congressman Chris Smith proposed an amendment instructing the defence department’s inspector general to review if ticks were used as a biological weapon between 1950 and 1975.

One of the main motivations for Smith’s proposed amendment was a book written by Stanford science writer and former Lyme sufferer Kris Newby. He cites Willy Burgdorfer, the discoverer of the Lyme pathogen, as saying that Lyme disease was a military experiment that had gone wrong. Burgdorfer said that he was given the task of breeding ticks and other blood-sucking insects and then infecting them with pathogens that cause human diseases.

According to Smith, “interviews combined with access to Dr. Burgdorfer’s lab files reveal that he and other bioweapons specialists stuffed ticks with pathogens to cause severe disability, disease, even death to potential enemies.” (https://chrissmith.house.gov/uploadedfiles/2019-07-11_final_ndaa_lyme_ig_amendment_speech.pdf)

The book suggested that there were plans in place to drop weaponized ticks and other bugs from the air. Uninfected bugs were released in residential areas to trace how they spread, according to the book. It suggests that something could have gone wrong during the experiment and led to the outbreak of Lyme disease in the US.

FULL ARTICLE: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/16/pentagon-review-weaponised-ticks-lyme-disease

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