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Hot on the heels of "Savage Tick-Clone Armies are Sucking Cows to Death" comes an assertion that the US Pentagon is responsible for introducing Lyme-disease-carrying ticks into North America. According to a story in the Global Canadian newspaper "a bill has been passed in the House of Representatives which requires the Department of Defence to investigate whether research on biological weapons using insects took place in a 25-year period and whether these insects were released into the public realm either accidentally or on purpose."
The claim originated in the book 'Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons' by Kris Newby. The book tells the tale of "Willy Burgdorfer, the man who discovered the microbe behind Lyme Disease, revealing his secret role in developing bug-borne biological weapons, and raising terrifying questions about the genesis of the epidemic of tick-borne diseases affecting millions of Americans today."
In presenting the amendment in the House, New Jersey Republican Rep. Christopher H. Smith asked "With Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases exploding in the United States — with an estimated 300,000 to 437,000 new cases diagnosed each year and 10-20 percent of all patients suffering from chronic Lyme disease — Americans have a right to know whether any of this is true. And have these experiments caused Lyme disease and other tick-borne disease to mutate and to spread?"
Also at CBS News.
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(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday July 17 2019, @04:32PM
If you count this site, now you know 4 people. I contracted Lyme Disease a couple decades ago, but I had a very unusual presentation. Rather than the typical symptoms, the first thing I noticed was when my pulse dropped to 38 beats per minute and wouldn't go up. I had an inflammation blocking signals in my heart, which is one thing Lyme bacteria are known to do. I felt fine, other than that I couldn't even walk around without feeling fatigued. If I sat in a chair or lay in bed, I was perfectly fine.
I was rushed from a medical center to a major hospital once the doctor noticed something wrong with my heartbeat. There, a half dozen infectious diseases doctors descended into the emergency room trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with me. Thankfully, after being asked questions over and over a half dozen times, an emergency room doctor asked me again, "Have you noticed any rashes or skin changes?" And several weeks before I remembered what I thought was a heat rash on my abdomen for a day or so. The doctor immediately ordered a Lyme test, and I'm grateful for that smart emergency room doctor who knew at that time what was an incredibly obscure presentation for not-so-common disease.
Within a couple hours, after consultation with several infectious disease specialists, I was on massive doses of IV antibiotics. (They didn't wait for confirmation from the test, which wouldn't come for a couple days.) After four days in the hospital, my heart finally returned to normal function. After that, I went for daily doses of massive IV antibiotics at a medical center for eight weeks to be certain the disease was gone.
Thankfully (cross fingers and knock wood) I have had no symptoms since. And after a House episode quite a few years later with this unusual presentation (although there the patient suffered a heart attack, which I might have had it gone on untreated), it's likely more people are aware that this is sometimes what happens with Lyme Disease. (I am, however, sad that the emergency room doctor who correctly diagnosed me looked nothing like Thirteen from House....)
It's no small matter. And the long-term aches and pains most people tend to think of are just the minor bits of the complications this disease can create.