
Pentagon Ordered to Tell Congress If It Weaponized Ticks and Released Them - yasp
https://gizmodo.com/pentagon-ordered-to-tell-congress-if-it-weaponized-tick-1836391549
======
waffle_ss
Tick researchers have refuted this myth that the military created Lyme disease
or were responsible for its spread here: [https://elemental.medium.com/what-
its-like-to-be-a-creepy-cr...](https://elemental.medium.com/what-its-like-to-
be-a-creepy-crawler-field-researcher-32c635338989)

> _What’s the strangest sort of question you have to handle?_

> _Keesing: The conspiracy theory that the government made the Lyme bacterium,
> that’s gotta be up there. I mean, really?_

> _Ostfeld: There was a man at a public event where I was speaking a few years
> ago who, in the question and answer session, pontificated about how the Lyme
> disease bacterium was created by the CIA at Plum Island as a biowarfare
> weapon — which if you know anything about this bacterium is absolutely
> ludicrous. It would be the stupidest biowarfare weapon you could possibly
> imagine. In any event, I said that this was actually not true, the DNA of
> this bacterium has been amplified in museum specimens of mice that were
> collected around the turn of the 20th century. So that predates Plum Island.
> And I said, there was a recent discovery of a mummified human corpse in the
> Swiss Alps in a National Geographic expedition that was 13,000 years old and
> they amplified Borrelia burgdorferi DNA from this mummified frozen corpse.
> And this guy responded by saying, "Yeah, so, you think it’s far fetched that
> the CIA would take this frozen human corpse and dump it out of a helicopter
> in the Swiss Alps to cover up what they did?" So there’s no correcting the
> conspiracy theorists._

~~~
calebm
Good example of people being unwilling to consider the facts.

Minor nitpick: I'd like us to get away from using "conspiracy theorist" as an
always-negative term. The truth is, many conspiracy theories have turned out
true (people do, after all, conspire in secret to do evil). Additionally,
there are conspiracy theorists who are reasonable and who have changed their
opinions when corrected.

~~~
ben509
Yeah, every prosecutor who indicts someone on conspiracy charges is a
conspiracy theorist, by the plain meaning of it.

What crosses the line into "truther" territory is generally a fantastically
organized coverup as explanation for a lack of corroborating evidence.

~~~
jakeogh
It's possible to condition people to actively avoid something. Shock, labels
and association with unrelated (often false) information are pretty effective.
[http://s3.amazonaws.com/nasathermalimages/public/video/prete...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/nasathermalimages/public/video/pretext.mov)

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gojomo
Notably, the bill requests information about activity in the 1950-1975
timeframe – when there _were_ other risky domestic biowarfare research
projects involving the undisclosed release of disease-causing agents. For
example, the SF bay area was dosed with military-delivered bacteria in
‘Operation Sea-Spray’:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-
Spray](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray)

~~~
lioeters
Scary stuff! "Open-air tests" is a nice way of putting it..

> Operation Sea-Spray was a 1950 U.S. Navy secret experiment in which Serratia
> marcescens and Bacillus globigii bacteria were sprayed over the San
> Francisco Bay Area in California.

> From September 20 to 27, 1950, the U.S. Navy released the pathogens off the
> shore of San Francisco. Based on results from monitoring equipment at 43
> locations around the city, the Army determined that San Francisco had
> received enough of a dose for nearly all of the city's 800,000 residents to
> inhale millions of particles each day during the week of spraying.

> Between 1949 and 1969 open-air tests of biological agents were conducted 239
> times.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
This seems like a weird conspiracy theory. I mean if you are looking for a bio
weapon, one that doesn’t have person to person spread, has a distinctive rash,
doesn’t result in immediate death (but can cause chronic conditions) and is
treated by fairly common antibiotics seems like a strange choice.

~~~
deweller
The report does not look to determine if the defense department created Lyme
disease. Rather it suggests that the Pentagon weaponized ticks.

What if, for example, they enhanced the Lyme bacteria to make it more
contagious as part of an attempt to make it a carrier of a more deadly
pathogen?

~~~
RosanaAnaDana
Or they were just looking at the ticks themselves as a delivery mechanism of
'whatever'.

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nsajko
Could the return of that conspiracy theory be prompted by the recent spread of
this invasive tick species:

[https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/longhorned-
tick/index.html](https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/longhorned-tick/index.html)

[https://www.wired.com/story/the-terrifying-unknowns-of-
the-a...](https://www.wired.com/story/the-terrifying-unknowns-of-the-asian-
longhorned-tick/)

------
brodouevencode
This reeks of conspiracy theory, _however_ if one were to weaponize an insect,
ticks would make sense. They're small and undetectable, evasive, bite you
without you knowing it, and tough as nails.

~~~
lioeters
While we're speculating, I imagine mosquitoes would be a good candidate as
well - it's a natural vector of infections, common enough to be
dismissed/ignored..

Oh, I see it also happens to be popular among conspiracy theory enthusiasts,
and not without basis in _some_ fact.

[http://www.hoaxorfact.com/technology/tiny-robot-mosquito-
dro...](http://www.hoaxorfact.com/technology/tiny-robot-mosquito-drones-being-
researched-by-the-us-government.html)

------
ceejayoz
Sigh. Historical accounts of Lyme disease go back at least to the 1700s,
predating the founding of the lab in question by a couple of centuries.

This seems to be an offshoot of the anti-vax hysteria.

~~~
dwringer
I certainly know nothing of the motives of this investigation, but a quoted
passage in the main article states that the inquiry is about "whether the
Department of Defense experimented with ticks and other insects regarding use
as a biological weapon between the years of 1950 and 1975" rather than the
highly implausible and easily discredited characterization that the government
may have somehow invented the Lyme bacterium.

~~~
pmoriarty
I wonder why they limited the inquiry to that date range.

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tantalor
That "If" is doing a lot of work in that title.

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mywittyname
Serious question: does the Pentagon actually have to comply? What authority
does Congress have to compel the Pentagon to do such?

~~~
yasp
Withholding funding?

