8 ms·

On the link between Lyme disease and bioweapons (2019)

84 points by johntfella 3y ago

seeknotfind 3y ago
I read this book a few years ago and really enjoyed it. Many things to say but one thing, why do books like this have to mention JFK somewhere in there.
- ggm 3y ago
  The whole point of why we talk about the grand conspiracy is because conspiracy nuts join the dots promiscuously. At least Robert Anton Wilson did it humorously. FNORD!
  - panzagl 3y ago
    Hail Eris!
  - darkclouds 3y ago
    I dont think conspiracy nuts need to join the dots when you watch this BBC documentary. It explains the paranoia of the military which unfortunately is not recognised in the DSM strangely, but if you spend the 1hr watching this, I wont spoil how the British state were forced to come clean about their military fubar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8Zr0IPtx80 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8Zr0IPtx80 I think the military do a lot more biological and chemical testing on the population than they care to admit, mainly because its their responsibility to secure the country (any country) which means trying to stay ahead of the curve. Just look at the RAND report on how covid nearly took out the US Navy! https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA400/RRA468-1/RAND_RRA468-1.pdf https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/... I even got to pick a (mad) scientists brain who worked at Porton Down the UK military biological and chemical testing place, they have stuff there which makes ebola look like a walk in the park, without going into any more detail. Does anyone know why they used sheep in the anthrax tests? Its because sheep are natural carriers, and sheep shearers get infected quite frequently.
    - Eumenes 3y ago
      > Just look at the RAND report on how covid nearly took out the US Navy! I'm not sure if 7 military deaths count as "nearly took out the US Navy!" ... maybe you're being sarcastic. Looks like twice that number die from drowning every year: https://nps.edu/web/safety/rods-identification https://nps.edu/web/safety/rods-identification
      - darkclouds 3y ago
        I think you missed the quarantine. There comes a point where any entity falls below a minimum staff level. It was reported that some ships were held back or had to return to port because too many people were sick, due to the close confined living conditions. That's unless what I was reading online was being man in the middled to provoke me. I wouldnt put anything past anyone now a days.
tamimio 3y ago
>the condition was named Lyme disease. A conspiracy theory spread like a fever: that the researchers at Plum Island had engineered a new sickness, one that now afflicts more than 30,000 Americans per year. https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2019/07/did-us-invent-lyme-disease-1960s-house-aims-find-out/158529/ https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2019/07/did-us-invent-lym...
chayesfss 3y ago
[dead]
thriftwy 3y ago
I wonder if we are going to see airborne HIV eventually. Because, why not? It would be very reproductively succesful.
- Terr_ 3y ago
  Compare: "I wonder if we are going to see jetpacks by the year 2000. Because, why not? They would be very economically successful." Everything is successful if you assume it Magically Just Works. Viruses, like any creature, have physical limits, practical tradeoffs, and even game-theory/ecological considerations as they compete against other.
  - tchbnl 3y ago
    Although of the two, I think I'd prefer the jetpacks.
    - Terr_ 3y ago
      Since humans cannot swell up to rise like balloons, we could dub them Human Inflato-deficiency Vehicles, thus creating airborne HIV at the same time.
- Enginerrrd 3y ago
  >Because, why not? It would be very reproductively succesful. Eh, HIV has a very specific affinity to CD4+ T cells, which explain the symptoms associated with AIDS. For viruses that spread either by droplet transmission or true airborne transmission, they must have sufficient affinity for upper or lower respiratory tissues. Usually, this involves an optimization problem where they develop a particular affinity for those tissues and are less effective at other tissues. They then tend to present with... respiratory symptoms. All viruses are different, but on it's face, it doesn't make too much sense. There are some respiratory viruses with interesting mechanisms for causing immune suppression to evade the host immune system for longer, but none that I know of work the same way as AIDs.
  - 3y ago
unyttigfjelltol 3y ago
Lyme apparently has been proven to be in the wild since time immemorial and thus the headline is nonsense.[1] [1] https://www.sciencealert.com/congress-is-investigating-whether-the-us-actually-infected-americans-with-lyme-disease https://www.sciencealert.com/congress-is-investigating-wheth...
- dawnofdusk 3y ago
  Not saying that I believe in the conspiracy theory, but can't the disease exist naturally while also being the subject of bioweapon research? The only way to know would be to figure out more precisely what kind of research was being done on the Lyme bacteria... I'm not sure if there are signatures one can look for which indicate that some strain is certainly a wild mutation and not from concerted research (similar to how archeologists distinguish which sharp rocks are ancient human tools and which ones are just coincidentally sharp rocks).
  - darkclouds 3y ago
    > while also being the subject of bioweapon research? It can, Anthrax is a classic example, occurring naturally, the bio weapons part of the military will want to know how to make it more potent, in case "the enemy" develops the same or similar potent strain of bio weapon. Thats the justification part for this development which is probably labelled as "proof of concept" in much the same way a variety of drugs will be tested against a variety of bacteria or virus for medical research, in case its found in the wild. Man has been selectively breeding stuff for hundreds of years, animals like pedigree dogs, cats, livestock, plants, why wouldn't the military of any country despite international agreements find ways to get around those agreements. Just look at the US nuclear stockpile, the US didn't proliferate new weapons, they merely upgraded the existing nukes and upgrading wasn't in any agreement. And if we were to have a perfectly encapsulated bubble of safety, how much would the population levels increase by more than we currently see with todays accidents? Survival of the fittest has evolved to include modern day living. When thinking about the ever lasting lightbulb, if man stopped developing light bulbs of sorts, would we have got to have created the led light bulb as quickly? So conspiracy theories do exist, because we hear them, but they serve many purposes in society, they can smooth over events, they can be educational, they can be used to draw certain types of people out into the open who arguably have health complaints or a drug problem of sorts, which could be worded as a chemical imbalance. Take covid, it funnelled money into drug companies, AI's were developed to speed up the making of vaccines which have now started to apply to other viruses, at the same time, the planet was given a rest from our daily activities, insect numbers started to rise, police were able to catch up with criminals that they have been trying to track down for ages, in fact the excuses for catching a lot of criminals was one of the covid successes that hasnt been discussed much, we all got forced into working remotely to get used to not having to commute, bosses and managers had to deal with that loss of instant dictatorship and fire fighting and start to plan more. There's a whole host of reasons for covid to have been released on this planet which is why I say it was a biological weapon if it wasn't people having panic attacks and a sudden rise of pseudomonas in the lungs like cystic fibrosis sufferers experience due to a sudden influx of iron in their diet, perhaps caused by eating more meat and thus iron during lockdown. So CT's do exist, but what is its purpose is probably a better question to ask.
walterbell 3y ago
https://debugyourhealth.com/lyme-disease-cure/ https://debugyourhealth.com/lyme-disease-cure/ > Why would a PhD from MIT start debugging her family’s health ... Learn how we went from debilitating chronic Lyme Disease to radiant health. No practitioners were able to help us, so we had to figure it out on our own. Many years and hundreds of thousands of dollars later, this website summarizes everything we learned along the way. The quest for a Lyme disease cure led us to health better than we have ever had before we contracted Lyme.
- JPws_Prntr_Fngr 3y ago
  About halfway down the page is this video [0] in which she appears to "debug" by holding a box full of bottles of supplements, and remove them selectively until she finds the one that makes her stronger. Is this for real? Am I missing a key detail, or is this family batshit insane? [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOmKCYba_oE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOmKCYba_oE
  - stonogo 3y ago
    No, you're not missing anything. These are crazy people. It's a harmless brand of crazy, at least.
  - Cpoll 3y ago
    The page features homeopathy, bone broth fasts, detoxes, chiropractic, the whole kitchen sink.
    - walterbell 3y ago
      Any recommendations for Lyme disease treatment?
eynsham 3y ago
If one has good evidence of the sort of thesis hinted at, one should state it straightforwardly and present the evidence for it perspicuously, rather than darkly hinting as the first section does, which style rather suggests the evidence to follow is weak and only convincing through obfuscation.
EGreg 3y ago
Sounds like the lab leak theory for that novel coronavirus being the result of gain-of-function research. Who could be taken in by a canard like that? Coronaviruses emerge naturally and jump species sometimes, it was probably the wet market near the biolab studying that virus that it crossed species at.
- balderdash 3y ago
  Not to mention there was a government bio-research facility a mere 14 miles away From Lyme, CT on Plum Island, that did bio-weapons research targeting livestock during the Cold War.
moeris 3y ago
> While most Lyme disease patients who are diagnosed and treated early can fully recover, 10 to 20 percent suffer from persistent symptoms, some seriously disabling. There's no evidence that chronic Lyme exists: > There is no evidence to suggest that “chronic Lyme” exists, or that long-term antibiotics are required to treat it. (https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/avoid-prolonged-antibiotics-for-chronic-lyme/ https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/avoid-prolonged-antibiotics...) It's pseudoscientific and pretty dangerous nonsense at that.
- thedougd 3y ago
  I can’t begin to explain the misery of watching a loved one, close to you, fall into the trap of bullshit medicine. Someone who was otherwise bright and intelligent lost their ability to think critically because they were suffering too long. Or maybe it’s severe mental illness. Even worse, they may extend their fears to their children and family, forcing their Internet bought potions on them. What I have found is that all the bullshit medicine keeps similar company: Chronic Lyme, Bartonella, Biofilms, non-native Parasites, mold, heavy metals, and even emf sensitivity.
  - byt143 3y ago
    How about the misery of a loved one going untreated, undiagnosed and dismissed by physicians with a facile understanding of chronic multi system disease dynamics. People who do that are usually ones who cannot find physical relief elsewhere.
- 8847f646 3y ago
  There is evidence of "Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome" [1]. > Several recent studies suggest that B. burgdorferi may persist in animals after antibiotic therapy. There's also evidence that the standard Lyme treatment increases the "round bodies" form of the bacteria [2]. That being said, there's still a lot of shysters who, as you say, push long-term antibiotics or diagnose patients with "Lyme disease," despite not having evidence. The CDC recognizes the existence of "Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome," but highlights that long-term antibiotics aren't a good solution [3]. [1]: https://www.niaid.nih.gov/diseases-conditions/chronic-lyme-disease https://www.niaid.nih.gov/diseases-conditions/chronic-lyme-d... [2]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3132871/figure/f1a-idr-4-097/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3132871/figure/... [3]: https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/postlds/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/postlds/index.html
mycologos 3y ago
I'm confused by the number of upvotes this article has. It's a mishmash of innuendos and barely-related facts. I thought Lithub was a better website than this. As far as I can tell, the narrative of this article is "the CIA did some real-world tests of how harmless bacterial spores propagate in a real-world environment; they also did closed-lab tests of how harmful bacterial droplets for Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever propagate in a controlled environment among monkeys; a botched chemical weapons experiment ended US offensive chemical and bio warfare research; then a specific researcher had some family troubles, the end." It appears to be structured to imply that an outbreak of tick-born illnesses in Long Island in 1968 is not a coincidence. Maybe the full book is a different story, but this seems like pretty bad conspiracy theoretic stringing together of tangential things.
- boffinAudio 3y ago
  Not everything that makes you uncomfortable or embarrassed about your state is a conspiracy theory. Sometimes the state really does commit crimes on its populace, and in this particular case - where there's smoke, there's fire. The CIA shouldn't be in the medical experiment business. Period. That citizens are willing to let it get away with murder is bad enough.
  - aa1234556 3y ago
    [dead]
  - thumbuddy 3y ago
    They and other agencies are also involved in the psychological experiment business. Historically and probably currently. All the data they've got these days and various means to interact with their subjects is probably pretty wild.
    - boffinAudio 3y ago
      Considering that the CIA is a highly secretive over-funded organization that was built by ex-Nazi's, these developments are indeed a matter of major concern, and one should not be dissuaded by the CIA's "conspiracy theorist" agitprop from investigating and prosecuting their vast and heinous crimes against humanity. Period.
ck2 3y ago
There should be greater concern over the recent return in surge of Malaria, Leprosy and now West Nile Virus https://www.insider.com/mosquitos-with-west-nile-virus-becoming-immune-bug-spray-2023-8 https://www.insider.com/mosquitos-with-west-nile-virus-becom...
abeyer 3y ago
I grew up in the town the disease is named after, I know it's a real thing, but if I had to go by the absolute nonsense that's posted about it on the internet I'm not sure I would.
kukkeliskuu 3y ago
In this thread, the argument that chronic Lyme's disease does not exist, seems to repeat itself. It may very well be that chronic Lyme's disease does not exist, but the arguments that claim this still appear to miss some key points. The argument that chronic Lyme's disease does not exist relies on the existence of a reliable test for Lyme's disease. The article questions the existence of such a test. If the tests are not reliable, any research that uses the tests to deduce that chronic Lyme's disease does not exist, is not reliable either. There are researchers that believe in the existence of the chronic Lyme's disease. They have some arguments on why it is difficult to test, eradicate and even understand Lyme's disease. First argument is that Lyme's disease is actually an amalgam of several diseases that work synergetically, such as borreliosis, babesiosis and bartonella. If you are cure one, the others take over, and make the body more suspective for the re-emergence of the cured disease. Second argument is that apparently the side effects of the diseases are not actually caused by the disease itself, but poisons released during the die-off of the disease. This is called Herxheimer reaction. So, more you are able to cure, the worse you feel, initially. That is why it is difficult to recognize what is helpful in curing the disease and what is harmful. Third argument is that borreliosis has been observed (by microscope) to change form, and "hide" within other micro-organisms and blood cells. Spiral form is only one of the forms. Perhaps antibiotics can only cure some of the forms?
balderdash 3y ago
This is not new ground, there was a mediocre book that makes most of the same allegations, but more focused on plum island called lab 257 (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/385040.Lab_257 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/385040.Lab_257) While not a great book, there were two elements I found compelling 1) a heat map of Lyme prevalence can basically be drawn with plum island at the center, 2) the us government did bio weapons tests, using ticks as a disease vector, on ways of killing an enemy’s livestock supply (and hence crippling their food supply).
aredox 3y ago
This is trite bullshit, debunked for years. "The U.S. Department of Agriculture has repeated it several times since the book came out: no one has ever worked on Lyme disease on Plum Island. Eric Traub himself never conducted any research there. He simply visited the site! He wasn't a tick specialist, but a foot-and-mouth disease specialist. Pressed by an Associated Press journalist, Michael C. Carroll admitted back in 2004 that he had "no direct evidence "2 of his claims. The strongest argument in support of this thesis is in fact a simple geographical coincidence. Lyme, the small Connecticut town that gave its name to the disease, is located in Connecticut, a few dozen kilometers from Plum Island, as the crow flies. It was here, in 1975, that researchers drew up a summary of what they called "Lyme arthritis". They had observed an unusual recrudescence of oligoarthritis in children, and attributed it to tick-borne bacteria of the Borrelia genus. In fact, these researchers were not the first to observe what was to become Lyme disease. Other outbreaks were scattered across Europe and North America, thousands of miles from Plum Island." https://www.afis.org/Maladie-de-Lyme-L-Obs-a-retrouve-le-coupable https://www.afis.org/Maladie-de-Lyme-L-Obs-a-retrouve-le-cou... Disappointing to see many fall for it. "Do your own research", but for real, please.

84 points by johntfella 3y ago

I read this book a few years ago and really enjoyed it. Many things to say but one thing, why do books like this have to mention JFK somewhere in there.

ggm 3y ago
The whole point of why we talk about the grand conspiracy is because conspiracy nuts join the dots promiscuously. At least Robert Anton Wilson did it humorously. FNORD!
- panzagl 3y ago
  Hail Eris!
- darkclouds 3y ago
  I dont think conspiracy nuts need to join the dots when you watch this BBC documentary. It explains the paranoia of the military which unfortunately is not recognised in the DSM strangely, but if you spend the 1hr watching this, I wont spoil how the British state were forced to come clean about their military fubar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8Zr0IPtx80 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8Zr0IPtx80 I think the military do a lot more biological and chemical testing on the population than they care to admit, mainly because its their responsibility to secure the country (any country) which means trying to stay ahead of the curve. Just look at the RAND report on how covid nearly took out the US Navy! https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA400/RRA468-1/RAND_RRA468-1.pdf https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/... I even got to pick a (mad) scientists brain who worked at Porton Down the UK military biological and chemical testing place, they have stuff there which makes ebola look like a walk in the park, without going into any more detail. Does anyone know why they used sheep in the anthrax tests? Its because sheep are natural carriers, and sheep shearers get infected quite frequently.
  - Eumenes 3y ago
    > Just look at the RAND report on how covid nearly took out the US Navy! I'm not sure if 7 military deaths count as "nearly took out the US Navy!" ... maybe you're being sarcastic. Looks like twice that number die from drowning every year: https://nps.edu/web/safety/rods-identification https://nps.edu/web/safety/rods-identification
    - darkclouds 3y ago
      I think you missed the quarantine. There comes a point where any entity falls below a minimum staff level. It was reported that some ships were held back or had to return to port because too many people were sick, due to the close confined living conditions. That's unless what I was reading online was being man in the middled to provoke me. I wouldnt put anything past anyone now a days.

tamimio 3y ago

>the condition was named Lyme disease. A conspiracy theory spread like a fever: that the researchers at Plum Island had engineered a new sickness, one that now afflicts more than 30,000 Americans per year. https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2019/07/did-us-invent-lyme-disease-1960s-house-aims-find-out/158529/ https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2019/07/did-us-invent-lym...

chayesfss 3y ago

[dead]

thriftwy 3y ago

I wonder if we are going to see airborne HIV eventually. Because, why not? It would be very reproductively succesful.

Terr_ 3y ago
Compare: "I wonder if we are going to see jetpacks by the year 2000. Because, why not? They would be very economically successful." Everything is successful if you assume it Magically Just Works. Viruses, like any creature, have physical limits, practical tradeoffs, and even game-theory/ecological considerations as they compete against other.
- tchbnl 3y ago
  Although of the two, I think I'd prefer the jetpacks.
  - Terr_ 3y ago
    Since humans cannot swell up to rise like balloons, we could dub them Human Inflato-deficiency Vehicles, thus creating airborne HIV at the same time.
Enginerrrd 3y ago
>Because, why not? It would be very reproductively succesful. Eh, HIV has a very specific affinity to CD4+ T cells, which explain the symptoms associated with AIDS. For viruses that spread either by droplet transmission or true airborne transmission, they must have sufficient affinity for upper or lower respiratory tissues. Usually, this involves an optimization problem where they develop a particular affinity for those tissues and are less effective at other tissues. They then tend to present with... respiratory symptoms. All viruses are different, but on it's face, it doesn't make too much sense. There are some respiratory viruses with interesting mechanisms for causing immune suppression to evade the host immune system for longer, but none that I know of work the same way as AIDs.
- 3y ago

unyttigfjelltol 3y ago

Lyme apparently has been proven to be in the wild since time immemorial and thus the headline is nonsense.[1] [1] https://www.sciencealert.com/congress-is-investigating-whether-the-us-actually-infected-americans-with-lyme-disease https://www.sciencealert.com/congress-is-investigating-wheth...

dawnofdusk 3y ago
Not saying that I believe in the conspiracy theory, but can't the disease exist naturally while also being the subject of bioweapon research? The only way to know would be to figure out more precisely what kind of research was being done on the Lyme bacteria... I'm not sure if there are signatures one can look for which indicate that some strain is certainly a wild mutation and not from concerted research (similar to how archeologists distinguish which sharp rocks are ancient human tools and which ones are just coincidentally sharp rocks).
- darkclouds 3y ago
  > while also being the subject of bioweapon research? It can, Anthrax is a classic example, occurring naturally, the bio weapons part of the military will want to know how to make it more potent, in case "the enemy" develops the same or similar potent strain of bio weapon. Thats the justification part for this development which is probably labelled as "proof of concept" in much the same way a variety of drugs will be tested against a variety of bacteria or virus for medical research, in case its found in the wild. Man has been selectively breeding stuff for hundreds of years, animals like pedigree dogs, cats, livestock, plants, why wouldn't the military of any country despite international agreements find ways to get around those agreements. Just look at the US nuclear stockpile, the US didn't proliferate new weapons, they merely upgraded the existing nukes and upgrading wasn't in any agreement. And if we were to have a perfectly encapsulated bubble of safety, how much would the population levels increase by more than we currently see with todays accidents? Survival of the fittest has evolved to include modern day living. When thinking about the ever lasting lightbulb, if man stopped developing light bulbs of sorts, would we have got to have created the led light bulb as quickly? So conspiracy theories do exist, because we hear them, but they serve many purposes in society, they can smooth over events, they can be educational, they can be used to draw certain types of people out into the open who arguably have health complaints or a drug problem of sorts, which could be worded as a chemical imbalance. Take covid, it funnelled money into drug companies, AI's were developed to speed up the making of vaccines which have now started to apply to other viruses, at the same time, the planet was given a rest from our daily activities, insect numbers started to rise, police were able to catch up with criminals that they have been trying to track down for ages, in fact the excuses for catching a lot of criminals was one of the covid successes that hasnt been discussed much, we all got forced into working remotely to get used to not having to commute, bosses and managers had to deal with that loss of instant dictatorship and fire fighting and start to plan more. There's a whole host of reasons for covid to have been released on this planet which is why I say it was a biological weapon if it wasn't people having panic attacks and a sudden rise of pseudomonas in the lungs like cystic fibrosis sufferers experience due to a sudden influx of iron in their diet, perhaps caused by eating more meat and thus iron during lockdown. So CT's do exist, but what is its purpose is probably a better question to ask.

walterbell 3y ago

https://debugyourhealth.com/lyme-disease-cure/ https://debugyourhealth.com/lyme-disease-cure/ > Why would a PhD from MIT start debugging her family’s health ... Learn how we went from debilitating chronic Lyme Disease to radiant health. No practitioners were able to help us, so we had to figure it out on our own. Many years and hundreds of thousands of dollars later, this website summarizes everything we learned along the way. The quest for a Lyme disease cure led us to health better than we have ever had before we contracted Lyme.

JPws_Prntr_Fngr 3y ago
About halfway down the page is this video [0] in which she appears to "debug" by holding a box full of bottles of supplements, and remove them selectively until she finds the one that makes her stronger. Is this for real? Am I missing a key detail, or is this family batshit insane? [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOmKCYba_oE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOmKCYba_oE
- stonogo 3y ago
  No, you're not missing anything. These are crazy people. It's a harmless brand of crazy, at least.
- Cpoll 3y ago
  The page features homeopathy, bone broth fasts, detoxes, chiropractic, the whole kitchen sink.
  - walterbell 3y ago
    Any recommendations for Lyme disease treatment?

eynsham 3y ago

If one has good evidence of the sort of thesis hinted at, one should state it straightforwardly and present the evidence for it perspicuously, rather than darkly hinting as the first section does, which style rather suggests the evidence to follow is weak and only convincing through obfuscation.

EGreg 3y ago

Sounds like the lab leak theory for that novel coronavirus being the result of gain-of-function research. Who could be taken in by a canard like that? Coronaviruses emerge naturally and jump species sometimes, it was probably the wet market near the biolab studying that virus that it crossed species at.

balderdash 3y ago
Not to mention there was a government bio-research facility a mere 14 miles away From Lyme, CT on Plum Island, that did bio-weapons research targeting livestock during the Cold War.

moeris 3y ago

> While most Lyme disease patients who are diagnosed and treated early can fully recover, 10 to 20 percent suffer from persistent symptoms, some seriously disabling. There's no evidence that chronic Lyme exists: > There is no evidence to suggest that “chronic Lyme” exists, or that long-term antibiotics are required to treat it. (https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/avoid-prolonged-antibiotics-for-chronic-lyme/ https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/avoid-prolonged-antibiotics...) It's pseudoscientific and pretty dangerous nonsense at that.

thedougd 3y ago
I can’t begin to explain the misery of watching a loved one, close to you, fall into the trap of bullshit medicine. Someone who was otherwise bright and intelligent lost their ability to think critically because they were suffering too long. Or maybe it’s severe mental illness. Even worse, they may extend their fears to their children and family, forcing their Internet bought potions on them. What I have found is that all the bullshit medicine keeps similar company: Chronic Lyme, Bartonella, Biofilms, non-native Parasites, mold, heavy metals, and even emf sensitivity.
- byt143 3y ago
  How about the misery of a loved one going untreated, undiagnosed and dismissed by physicians with a facile understanding of chronic multi system disease dynamics. People who do that are usually ones who cannot find physical relief elsewhere.
8847f646 3y ago
There is evidence of "Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome" [1]. > Several recent studies suggest that B. burgdorferi may persist in animals after antibiotic therapy. There's also evidence that the standard Lyme treatment increases the "round bodies" form of the bacteria [2]. That being said, there's still a lot of shysters who, as you say, push long-term antibiotics or diagnose patients with "Lyme disease," despite not having evidence. The CDC recognizes the existence of "Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome," but highlights that long-term antibiotics aren't a good solution [3]. [1]: https://www.niaid.nih.gov/diseases-conditions/chronic-lyme-disease https://www.niaid.nih.gov/diseases-conditions/chronic-lyme-d... [2]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3132871/figure/f1a-idr-4-097/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3132871/figure/... [3]: https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/postlds/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/postlds/index.html

mycologos 3y ago

I'm confused by the number of upvotes this article has. It's a mishmash of innuendos and barely-related facts. I thought Lithub was a better website than this. As far as I can tell, the narrative of this article is "the CIA did some real-world tests of how harmless bacterial spores propagate in a real-world environment; they also did closed-lab tests of how harmful bacterial droplets for Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever propagate in a controlled environment among monkeys; a botched chemical weapons experiment ended US offensive chemical and bio warfare research; then a specific researcher had some family troubles, the end." It appears to be structured to imply that an outbreak of tick-born illnesses in Long Island in 1968 is not a coincidence. Maybe the full book is a different story, but this seems like pretty bad conspiracy theoretic stringing together of tangential things.

boffinAudio 3y ago
Not everything that makes you uncomfortable or embarrassed about your state is a conspiracy theory. Sometimes the state really does commit crimes on its populace, and in this particular case - where there's smoke, there's fire. The CIA shouldn't be in the medical experiment business. Period. That citizens are willing to let it get away with murder is bad enough.
- aa1234556 3y ago
  [dead]
- thumbuddy 3y ago
  They and other agencies are also involved in the psychological experiment business. Historically and probably currently. All the data they've got these days and various means to interact with their subjects is probably pretty wild.
  - boffinAudio 3y ago
    Considering that the CIA is a highly secretive over-funded organization that was built by ex-Nazi's, these developments are indeed a matter of major concern, and one should not be dissuaded by the CIA's "conspiracy theorist" agitprop from investigating and prosecuting their vast and heinous crimes against humanity. Period.

ck2 3y ago

There should be greater concern over the recent return in surge of Malaria, Leprosy and now West Nile Virus https://www.insider.com/mosquitos-with-west-nile-virus-becoming-immune-bug-spray-2023-8 https://www.insider.com/mosquitos-with-west-nile-virus-becom...

abeyer 3y ago

I grew up in the town the disease is named after, I know it's a real thing, but if I had to go by the absolute nonsense that's posted about it on the internet I'm not sure I would.

kukkeliskuu 3y ago

In this thread, the argument that chronic Lyme's disease does not exist, seems to repeat itself. It may very well be that chronic Lyme's disease does not exist, but the arguments that claim this still appear to miss some key points. The argument that chronic Lyme's disease does not exist relies on the existence of a reliable test for Lyme's disease. The article questions the existence of such a test. If the tests are not reliable, any research that uses the tests to deduce that chronic Lyme's disease does not exist, is not reliable either. There are researchers that believe in the existence of the chronic Lyme's disease. They have some arguments on why it is difficult to test, eradicate and even understand Lyme's disease. First argument is that Lyme's disease is actually an amalgam of several diseases that work synergetically, such as borreliosis, babesiosis and bartonella. If you are cure one, the others take over, and make the body more suspective for the re-emergence of the cured disease. Second argument is that apparently the side effects of the diseases are not actually caused by the disease itself, but poisons released during the die-off of the disease. This is called Herxheimer reaction. So, more you are able to cure, the worse you feel, initially. That is why it is difficult to recognize what is helpful in curing the disease and what is harmful. Third argument is that borreliosis has been observed (by microscope) to change form, and "hide" within other micro-organisms and blood cells. Spiral form is only one of the forms. Perhaps antibiotics can only cure some of the forms?

balderdash 3y ago

This is not new ground, there was a mediocre book that makes most of the same allegations, but more focused on plum island called lab 257 (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/385040.Lab_257 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/385040.Lab_257) While not a great book, there were two elements I found compelling 1) a heat map of Lyme prevalence can basically be drawn with plum island at the center, 2) the us government did bio weapons tests, using ticks as a disease vector, on ways of killing an enemy’s livestock supply (and hence crippling their food supply).

aredox 3y ago

This is trite bullshit, debunked for years. "The U.S. Department of Agriculture has repeated it several times since the book came out: no one has ever worked on Lyme disease on Plum Island. Eric Traub himself never conducted any research there. He simply visited the site! He wasn't a tick specialist, but a foot-and-mouth disease specialist. Pressed by an Associated Press journalist, Michael C. Carroll admitted back in 2004 that he had "no direct evidence "2 of his claims. The strongest argument in support of this thesis is in fact a simple geographical coincidence. Lyme, the small Connecticut town that gave its name to the disease, is located in Connecticut, a few dozen kilometers from Plum Island, as the crow flies. It was here, in 1975, that researchers drew up a summary of what they called "Lyme arthritis". They had observed an unusual recrudescence of oligoarthritis in children, and attributed it to tick-borne bacteria of the Borrelia genus. In fact, these researchers were not the first to observe what was to become Lyme disease. Other outbreaks were scattered across Europe and North America, thousands of miles from Plum Island." https://www.afis.org/Maladie-de-Lyme-L-Obs-a-retrouve-le-coupable https://www.afis.org/Maladie-de-Lyme-L-Obs-a-retrouve-le-cou... Disappointing to see many fall for it. "Do your own research", but for real, please.