HARWICH — When stricken with high fever, nausea and headaches, not many people would suspect a tick-borne disease as rare as miyamotoi.
Only a handful of cases of the disease similar to tick-borne relapsing fever have been reported in Massachusetts.
But Melissa Davey of Harwich already knew the tiny deer tick that bit her was carrying the pathogen that causes miyamotoi when she started coming down with symptoms July 9.
The results of a tick report from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where Davey had mailed a tiny tick she pulled off her right leg, showed that the tick was negative for a number of known pathogens, including the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, but was positive for miyamotoi.
Davey remembered this result eight days after receiving the report, when she started feeling queasy and experiencing fevers and drenching sweats.
“At first I thought, ‘Is this the flu?’” said Davey, 52. “Then I remembered the tick report.”
Having the report enabled her physician to order the right tests, said Davey, who went on 30 days of doxycycline after testing for miyamotoi.
“My doctor thought it was fantastic I did the tick report,” Davey said.
“It’s good data to have in hand,” said Larry Dapsis, entomologist and tick project coordinator for the Cape Cod Cooperative Extension.
Having a positive tick report doesn’t mean the person who was bitten will get sick — and having a negative one is no guarantee of good health — since the individual could have missed a bite by a different tick, Dapsis said.
Davey said the nymphal tick she found on her lower right leg June 25 was the size of a poppy seed.
But the information is still helpful to doctors, Dapsis said.
“Now you can show (the tick report) to your physician and say, ‘Hey, I’ve been exposed to this pathogen,’” Dapsis said.
It’s not just patients making the link between their tick report and possible illness.
Scientists at the tick report lab at UMass increasingly are looking for links between the pathogens found in ticks and the emergence of diseases including Lyme, miyamotoi, babesiosis and anaplasmosis in the humans that the ticks fed upon.
The lab is referring tick report clients whose ticks carry miyamotoi to a scientists in New Haven, Connecticut, attempting to develop an FDA-approved test for miyamotoi.
Currently labs use polymerase chain reaction tests to detect DNA from the miyamotoi borrelia bacteria, according to officials from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
Another test detects a person’s antibodies to the bacteria, but neither one is approved by the FDA yet, said Michel Ledizet, senior research scientist at L2 Diagnostics LLC in New Haven.
Ledizet said in an email that he has received several dozen blood samples for the study since he started working with Stephen Rich, the microbiologist who runs the UMass lab, in 2016.
“We probably need 50 to 100 samples from people who became infected by Borrelia miyamotoi,” Ledizet said.
“However, we need to collect many more samples because the tick does not always transmit the bacteria while it feeds. In fact, transmission appears to occur less commonly than we expected,” said Ledizet, who said the final report to the National Institutes of Health is due later this year.
There are still a lot of unknowns about miyamotoi, first identified in 1995 in ticks from Japan and reported in humans six years later, in Russia. Miyamotoi infection was first identified in U.S. citizens in 2013, two years after the first human cases were reported in Russia.
Reported human cases in the U.S. are low, with the Centers for Disease Control saying there have been fewer than 60 well-documented cases in the U.S., while the number of confirmed and probable cases of Lyme disease across the country reach a record 42,743 in 2017.
State DPH officials also report low figures of miyamotoi, with 12 cases in Barnstable County in 2017, two in 2018 and two so far in 2019.
Detection rates in ticks tested at Rich’s lab are minuscule compared with cases of Lyme disease. Out of nearly 10,000 ticks tested over a year’s time, 132 were positive for miyamotoi compared with nearly 3,000 for for Borrelia burgforferi, the spirochete that causes Lyme disease.
“The number of cases is so low you can’t derive a trend,” Dapsis said.
“We continue to see miyamotoi in the tick population (in Barnstable County) at an average of 2%. There is some risk out there,” Dapsis said.
“But it’s not nearly as high as Lyme disease,” he said.
It’s important to keep learning about the disease, said Ledizet, who said he hopes to continue with his study and better experimental results and ultimately an FDA-approved test that is widely available commercially.
Falling ill with miyamotoi was scary, said Davey, whose temperature spiked to 103 degrees.
“I was miserable. I was having uncontrollable shaking chills and terrible, terrible headaches, body aches, confusion,” Davey said.
She suspects she picked up the tick while walking her family’s puppy in Hawksnest State Park, adjacent to her property.
She found the tick on her lower right leg, just below her knee.
“I’m usually very good about checking,” Davey said. “But this one got away from me.”
The tick test is subsidized by Cape Cod Healthcare for Barnstable County residents at $15.
Davey said she emailed Rich’s lab a note of appreciation for helping her make the connection between the tick that bit her and her illness.
“I just wanted to let them know, ‘What you do does matter,’” Davey said.
Congressman Claims Evidence Links Lyme Disease to US Military Bioweapons Research
U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class William J. Camp Jr., left, noncommissioned officer in charge, uses a chemical agent detection pen to determine the substance at a simulated crime scene. (New Jersey National Guard photo/Mark C. Olsen)
This article by Jeff Schogoloriginally appeared on Task & Purpose, a digital news and culture publication dedicated to military and veterans issues.
A lawmaker who wants the Pentagon to investigate whether military biological weapons experiments with ticks cause Lyme disease insists he is not spreading conspiracy theories.
"Why wouldn't we want to know?" Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) told Task & Purpose. "Let the IG [inspector general's office] decide that -- and put this to bed forever -- if indeed it's a fable, if it's untrue."
"Ticks and Lyme Disease would be a very strange choice as a deliberate bioweapon because ticks are difficult to work with, don't have wings, and Lyme would hardly be a force reducer," said Robert Peterson, an entomology professor at Montana State University.
Pentagon spokeswoman Heather Babb declined to discuss Smith's amendment because the Defense Department does not comment on proposed legislation.
"DOD takes extreme care in all of our research programs to ensure the protection of our personnel and the community," Babb said.
When Smith announced his amendment, he cited the book "Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons," which looks at U.S. military experiments with ticks.
"There's just too much evidence for a reasonable man or woman to just turn the page and say: 'Put on your tinfoil fat. This is just a conspiracy theory,'" Smith said. "And yet, people with credentials will say that, which begs the question: Why would they even say that?"
Kris Newby, who wrote "Bitten," said she discovered circumstantial evidence linking the outbreak of Lyme disease in the 1960s to the U.S. military.
As proof, Newby cites an interview she had with Dr. Willy Burgdorfer, the American scientist who discovered what causes Lyme disease, who told her shortly before his death that he had been instructed to keep his research into a possible cause for Lyme disease a secret.
"My hypothesis is that was the biological weapon they were trying to cover up," said Newby, a science writer at the Stanford School of Medicine in California.
But Newby said she cannot definitively link Lyme disease to the U.S. military's bioweapons research efforts conducted at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
"I can't connect all those dots right now," said Newby, who survived Lyme disease. "My theory is that it was a genetically engineered Rickettsia [bacteria] but, as a journalist, I can't prove that."
Others find the idea the notion that the U.S. military infected ticks with Lyme disease more than a little far-fetched.
"I've heard a little bit about this story and speculation and whatnot -- it's a really intuitively weak accusation," said Jeffrey Lockwood, who teaches natural sciences and humanities at the University of Wyoming.
Lockwood wrote "Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War," about the U.S. military's biological warfare experiments with ticks, flies, and fleas. It turns out the Army did conduct research into whether ticks could be used to spread tularemia, relapsing fever, and Colorado fever during the Cold War.
Despite these experiments, Lockwood said he is "profoundly dubious" that the U.S. military looked into using ticks to transmit Lyme disease.
Ticks are not the best vector to spread bioweapons because they do not go very far and Lyme disease is a slow-acting pathogen, Lockwood told Task & Purpose. Other tick-borne diseases are far worse to humans.
"Weaponizing Lyme disease with a tick vector just doesn't add up to make a whole lot of sense," Lockwood said. "On the other hand -- quite frankly -- U.S. military weapons development hasn't always made a whole lot of sense."
Among those closely following the weekend legislative maneuverings are residents who suffer from Lyme disease, Elaine Thompson of the Telegram reports. Measures that would require insurers to cover long-term care for the ailment has already been vetoed twice by Gov. Baker, who has sent lawmakers a new compromise proposal. The original bill’s co-sponsors, Sen. Anne Gobi of Spencer and Rep. David Linksy of Natick, spent yesterday whipping votes, Thompson reports. “I’m hopeful,” Linsky said. “It will require a concerted effort on behalf of my colleagues to do this along with a number of other pressing issues before Sunday at midnight.”
But the Massachusetts Medical Society yesterday declared its support for Baker's alternative proposal for the treatment of patients with Lyme disease. "The Massachusetts Medical Society is firmly in support of the governor's initiative to provide insurance coverage for the treatment of patients with Lyme disease," said James Gessner, president of the society, said in a statement, reports State House News Service (pay wall). "Public health officials have determined that Lyme disease is endemic throughout the commonwealth, so much so that the state has the fourth highest incidence of Lyme disease in the nation. It is imperative that we provide comprehensive care for those affected, and the governor is attempting to do just that." After the House convened on Saturday morning, Baker's bill (H 4560) relative to the treatment of Lyme Disease was referred to the Committee on Financial Services. Seconds later, the chair considered no action taken on the matter.
For years, there has been suspicion among some that modern-day tick-borne diseases aren’t just a natural occurre...
By Cynthia McCormick
Posted Jul 19, 2019
For years, there has been suspicion among some that modern-day tick-borne diseases aren’t just a natural occurrence, but phenomena born in a bioweapons laboratory.
While skeptics say the concern about tick weaponization belongs in the realm of science fiction, it’s recently gained political traction.
Thanks in part to a science writer who contracted Lyme disease on Martha’s Vineyard, legislators in Washington, D.C. are calling for an investigation into a possible connection between tick-borne disease and places like the Plum Animal Disease Center in New York and Fort Detrick in Maryland.
Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bipartisan amendment that directs the inspector general of the Department of Defense to determine whether a biological weapons program enhanced the disease-carrying capabilities of ticks from 1950 to 1975, and whether any accidental or intentional releases of infected ticks or pathogens occurred.
The office of U.S. Rep. Christopher Smith, R-NJ, said Kris Newby’s newly published book, “Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons,” inspired him to write the amendment to the defense bill.
“Americans have a right to know whether any of this is true,” Smith said.
For Newby, a science writer at Stanford University and a senior producer of the Lyme disease documentary “Under Our Skin,” the mystery lies in why it has taken so long for legislators to delve into the origins of vector-borne diseases that have affected millions of Americans in the last few decades.
The House action “was a welcome surprise,” Newby said during a phone call.
“I’m very happy it’s raised the profile, the visibility of tick-borne diseases.”
Most Americans have no idea that the U.S. government operated a large-scale bioweapons program during the Cold War, Newby said, calling the program “a really well-kept secret” whose confidentiality rivaled the Manhattan Project.
“Maybe this thing we call chronic Lyme is one of the germs that got out during the tests,” Newby said.
The idea behind biological weapons is to spread disease that incapacitates and weakens an enemy population, thus allowing an invading army to sweep in take over while preserving the territory’s infrastructure, Newby explains in “Bitten.”
At the center of Newby’s book is the late William Burgdorfer, the Swiss-born scientist credited with discovering the corkscrew-shaped bacteria, or borrelia, that causes Lyme disease.
The pathogen transmitted by black-legged ticks was named after him and is known as borrelia burgdorferi.
But Newby believes that Burgdorfer, whose personal papers she viewed or copied, also knew about another, more dangerous pathogenic agent in ticks that he kept from the public. She calls the agent — possibly a rickettsia bacterium, possibly combined with a virus — “Swiss Agent USA.”
Relying on papers and declassified documents, Newby said she discovered that Burgdorfer used his entomological expertise to develop methods to grow ticks in large numbers and inject them with disease-causing pathogens.
Although Burgdorfer was based at a National Institutes of Health research facility in Montana, the Rocky Mountain Laboratory, Newby said he also worked as a contractor for the U.S. chemical and biological weapons program and spent time at Fort Detrick and a medical research unit in Cairo, Egypt.
Late in his life and suffering from Parkinson’s, Burgdorfer talked to Newby about some of his work. He said he had been “doing the things that the Nazis used to be doing,” such as putting plague in fleas and masking the viral load of tick disease to make it hard to detect, Newby said.
“He’s a scientist and here he’s saying, ‘I didn’t tell you everything I found in those ticks,’” Newby said. “I kept on digging.”
Although she never found a smoking gun, Newby’s research led her to believe a release of infected ticks occurred either by accident or on purpose during the 1960s.
The most famous outbreak was of Lyme arthritis, later known as Lyme disease, in 1968. The disease is named for the site of the outbreak in Lyme, Connecticut, across Long Island Sound from the Plum Island Animal Disease Center.
“I think the most likely scenario is a military experiment gone wrong or an accidental release from Plum Island Animal Disease Center of New York,” Newby wrote in “Bitten.”
What is less well-known is that the same year, there were outbreaks of Rocky Mountain spotted fever on Cape Cod and babesiosis on Nantucket, she wrote. Both diseases are carried by ticks.
It’s also possible that pathogen-soaked aerosols — the kind tested in the giant metal “eight ball” container at Fort Detrick — got loose, Newby said.
Dr. Sam R. Telford III, professor of infectious disease and global health at Tufts University and an expert on tick-borne disease, is not buying the bioweapons theory of disease.
“The late Willy Burgdorfer was a gentleman and a scholar in every way,” Telford said in an email. “He would have been appalled at any request for advice on how to weaponize ticks.”
There is no need for Congress to investigate links to Plum Island or other facilities, said Telford, who said tick-borne disease was detected in mice on Cape Cod as far back as 1894.
“It is a shame that our legislators spend so much time on garbage legislation proposed by some with too much time on their hands,” Telford wrote to colleagues after the House action.
Bethany Wing of Bourne, who has been treated for several tick-borne diseases including Lyme and babesiosis, said she has heard rumors about Plum Island for years.
“I don’t have answers. It just seems disturbing,” Wing said. “It needs to be put to rest whether it is or isn’t (true). It just needs closure.”
Newby calls the Lyme disease she and her husband, Paul Newby, contracted in 2002 on Nashawena Island across from Martha’s Vineyard “our long journey to hell and back.”
It started with a flu-like illness, with symptoms including malaise, fatigue, muscle pain, blurry vision and sensitivity to light, among other things.
Doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with the fit athletic couple, but after a few months the Newbys developed brain fog and crushing fatigue. She could no longer read to her sons at bedtime and had trouble “processing time and space,” Newby wrote.
“I’d run into the side of doorways and had trouble recalling the current month and year,” she wrote.
After a year that included visits to 10 doctors and $60,000 in medical expenses, the couple was diagnosed with babesiosis and Lyme disease, prompting a years-long regimen to regain their health, Newby said.
While there is division in the medical community over whether Lyme infection persists, Burgdorfer himself came down squarely on the side of patients who said they had a chronic version of the tick-borne illness.
“He would regularly meet with sufferers and start crying when he heard their stories,” Newby said.
“Everybody loved Willy,” she added. “Even his sons didn’t know he was doing this work.”
In 1969, President Richard Nixon discontinued the U.S. offensive biological weapons program a year after more than 2,000 sheep died in a nerve agent accident near Dugway Proving Ground in Utah.
But a release of infected ticks or aerosols containing genetically-modified tick disease pathogens would not have been a one-off incident, Newby said, not with climate change encouraging tick species to fan out and with suburbanization carving up land to make it more hospitable for tick hosts like mice and deer.
Disease in ticks or the air would end up in mammals that would provide a blood meal for and infect new ticks, Newby said.
“It’s the butterfly effect,” she said.
Newby’s book has received advanced praise from physicians and authors who view Lyme as a persistent, dangerous disease. Among them are Dr. Joseph J. Burrascano Jr., co-founder of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society, and Mary Beth Pfeiffer, who wrote “Lyme: The First Epidemic of Climate Change.”
“Kris Newby’s book is based on documents, photographs and other evidence,” Pfeiffer told the Times in an email.
“This body of information does not prove the Lyme disease was created in a government bioweapons lab, but it does offer compelling data that the government experimented with ticks and insects in unseemly ways,” justifying an examination by independent agencies within the government, Pfeiffer wrote.
Whether or not the House amendment eventually becomes part of the defense reauthorization bill, Newby said she hopes its proposal leads to more funding for tick-borne disease research and the release of documents withheld from her for purported reasons of national security.
“My hope is that this book will widen the lens on our view of this problem and inspire people to more aggressively pursue solutions,” Newby wrote.
Plum Island, a former germ warfare testing site, gets rare look by envir...
The Christian Science Monitor
Plum Island held an open house of sorts for environmental leaders Wednesday as the federal government proceeds w...
Home to High-Security Lab and Source of Rumors, Plum Island Faces Uncert...
Journalists were given a glimpse of the federal Plum Island Animal Disease Center off Long Island, which will be...
PLUM ISLAND, N.Y. — There have been comparisons to the H.G. Wells novel, “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” a nod from Hannibal Lecter in “The Silence of the Lambs,” and a murder mystery called “Plum Island,” by Nelson DeMille, in 1997. When the carcass of an unidentified animal was found on a Long Island beach a few years ago, it became popularly known as the Montauk Monster, and local residents said it had come from — where else? — Plum Island.
The site there is officially called the Plum Island Animal Disease Center. It is a federal facility, the nation’s most important lab for combating infectious animal diseases.
But the fact that the island is one and a half miles off Long Island, and that access to it is so highly restricted, has made the high-security lab the source of a cascade of science fiction scenarios and conspiracy theories, which proliferate in films, books and local lore, and include rumors about government experimentation with hybrid animals, Cold War biological weapons and even the outbreak of Lyme disease.
On Tuesday, officials allowed a small group of reporters who had undergone an extensive background check a rare glimpse at this island of intrigue.
But first, there was a morning ferry ride from Connecticut, carrying Plum Island workers. The commuters filed into a modern cinder block building; a poster above the security desk bore the heading “Betrayed”; listed below were “Traditional Espionage Indicators.”
Plum Island has attracted controversy in recent years, and not because of what actually goes on there. In fact, the research center will be closed within the next decade, and federal officials are marketing the 840-acre island to potential developers. The move has spawned theories about the future of the island, whose research campus will be moved to Kansas.
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A lab technician at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center works with proteins.CreditRichard Perry/The New York Times
Could Plum Island really become a Trump golf resort? And what would a luxury development be named? Anthrax Estates?
The federal General Services Administration has omitted such thoughts from its online sales listing, noting that “the island boasts a sandy shoreline, beautiful views and a harbor strategically situated to provide easy access.” The listing even offers to include the ferries and official vehicles in the deal.
Located 100 miles east of New York City, with sweeping water views, the island has already drawn unsurprising interest from local real estate agents and developers, including, yes, Donald J. Trump.
Many people in the area, however, want the island preserved as a nature sanctuary or perhaps a park. In July, a coalition of environmental groups and activists filed a federal lawsuit to stop the sale, and there is a similar legislative push in Congress.
“It’s a race against the clock,” said Representative Lee Zeldin, who sponsored a recent bill to repeal provisions of a 2009 law requiring the government to sell the island to the highest bidder.
Mr. Zeldin, a Republican who represents the eastern portion of Long Island, said he favored preserving part of the island as a public park, while keeping the labs active for other types of research.
He expressed hope that the bill would be passed in the next few months. As for those working on the marketing and sales efforts, he said, “I would encourage them to go as slow as possible.”
“Food security is national security,” said Larry Barrett, the director of the center.CreditRichard Perry/The New York Times
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“Food security is national security,” said Larry Barrett, the director of the center.Credit
The island has been overseen since 2003 by the Department of Homeland Security because of the research center’s critical role in protecting the nation’s livestock, and its importance to the food economy, said John Verrico, a spokesman for the agency’s science and technology arm.
Larry Barrett, the director of the center, put it in similar terms. “Food security is national security,” Mr. Barrett said, especially given that the center is the only place in the country where research is conducted with the live virus that causes foot-and-mouth disease.
The key concern, he said, is ensuring that the infectious livestock disease samples used in the research labs are not employed for bioterrorism, or even accidentally introduced to the outside world, creating the possibility of a widespread outbreak, which could threaten livestock herds and impose an enormous cost on the national economy.
Officials described painstaking steps taken to avoid an outbreak, such as stringent security clearances and background checks, the boiling of all water discarded from the lab and the requirement that anyone who works within the biocontainment lab must shower twice before leaving.
As for the cattle, pigs and other animals used for vaccine and other kinds of testing, they are kept in indoor, secured living quarters, said Dr. Luis L. Rodriguez, who leads research at the center’s laboratories.
They are acquired as healthy animals, inoculated or infected for testing and ultimately euthanized and incinerated at the end of a testing trial, he said, emphasizing that the animals are treated as humanely and ethically as possible.
Still, to avoid the possibility of the spread of disease, any deer that occasionally swim onto the island are killed and immolated.
One of the abandoned laboratory buildings on Plum Island.CreditRichard Perry/The New York Times
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For similar reasons, officials have been reluctant to bring a dog to the island to help chase away geese.
The security guidelines even complicate efforts to market the island, partly because arranging visits is an exhaustive process, and advance clearance is required for each visitor.
There has been little, if any, preliminary assessment of the property by outsiders, officials said. Development cannot begin until after the research center is shut, since ferrying workers and equipment onto the island could compromise security guidelines, Mr. Verrico said.
Secure it was. Federal officials asked for information from journalists interested in visiting Plum Island in July, and would consider only United States citizens. On Tuesday, armed guards searched reporters before both arrival and departure and shadowed the group wherever it went.
Open food containers were prohibited, as was the use of laptop or tablet computers. Photography in unauthorized areas, most of them at the research center, which occupies a small portion of the island, was forbidden.
The remainder of Plum Island is a largely untouched natural terrain of brush and trees. Paved and unpaved roadways cut through the overgrowth. The shoreline consists of pristine beaches with clear water, and there is a fresh water pond and wetlands near the ferry landing.
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Dr. Luis L. Rodriguez leads research at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center’s labs.CreditRichard Perry/The New York Times
Overlooking Orient Point and the Plum Gut Channel is a lighthouse built in 1869. Not far away is Building 257, a fortresslike bunker once used for munitions storage and, for a time, animal research.
Farther down the shoreline is a complex of aging structures that were part of Fort Terry, a military post once used for guarding the entrance to Long Island Sound.
The hulking brick barracks, now deteriorating, overlook Gardiner’s Bay and the Hamptons to the south. On the rocky shoreline nearby, a group of seals frolicked, components of the island’s diverse wildlife.
Near the barracks is a helipad for the emergency delivery of disease samples.
A rapid response is crucial during an outbreak, so when questionable diseases are detected in American livestock, samples are rushed by chartered jet to an airport in Suffolk County and then taken by helicopter to the island, said Dr. Fernando Torres-Velez, who heads the diagnostic work at the Foreign Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory.
The island falls under the jurisdiction of the Town of Southold on the North Fork, which has already put in place zoning that precludes resort or luxury home development on the island, said Scott A. Russell, the town supervisor.
The zoning preserves most of the existing natural areas and stipulates that the center may be reconstructed only for a similar use, such as research, Mr. Russell said.
“It’s ironclad, it’s cast in stone,” he said of the zoning, though he acknowledged that it could still be legally challenged. “Anyone seeking to develop the island would have to follow it.”
A large wetland on Plum Island is home to many migratory birds.CreditRichard Perry/The New York Times
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A large wetland on Plum Island is home to many migratory birds.CreditRichard Perry/The New York Times
Mr. Russell said Trump Organization officials had contacted him regarding the zoning.
“They said they wanted to build a world-class golf course and resort,” he said, adding that he told them the zoning did not seem to fit their vision.
The existing research center could be used to study environmental energy, he said, adding, “We have infrastructure that we would like to keep there, and you got wind, you got solar, you got tidal there.”
Mr. Verrico noted that the government was still under a congressional mandate to sell the island, and said the sale was really the purview of the General Services Administration. A spokesman for that agency said he could not comment because of the lawsuit filed in July.
The groups who filed the suit maintain that the government wrongly called for the auction of the island and failed to detail the cleanup required at the research labs.
Many of them agree with Representative Zeldin and favor the preservation of a portion of the island as a public park while keeping the labs active for other types of research.
“You feel like you are at a location thousands of miles away from home,” he said.
A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 20 of the New York edition with the headline: Uncertain Future for an 840-Acre Island of Intrigue.
Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is a research institute in Upton, New York that brings together scientists and engineers to conduct research in its world-class facilities. BNL was established in 1947 at the site of Camp Upton, a former U.S. army base, and occupies 5,265 acres of land – much of which stretches into the Long Island Central Pine Barrens. Today, the national laboratory, directed by Doon Gibbs, employs nearly 3,000 scientists, engineers, technicians, and support staff, and also hosts more than 4,000 visiting researchers each year from around the world. BNL is overseen and primarily funded by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy, and is managed and run by Brookhaven Science Associates.
At BNL, some of the major research themes include energy security, photon sciences, nuclear and material physics, and climate, environment, and biosciences. Researchers here have access to state of the art facilities with tools that exist in few laboratories around the world. BNL is home to the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), which was designed to study quark-gluon plasma, and was the world’s most powerful particle accelerator until 2010. The laboratory campus also includes the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS), a facility that has attracted hundreds of researchers to BNL because of its ability to produce synchrotron light that is 10,000 times more intense than that conventional light beams created in a laboratory, and thus can help researchers get a much closer look at structures at an atomic level.
Though BNL is largely closed to the public, families are invited to visit on during Summer Sunday open houses, which are scheduled every summer on particular Sundays and include different science shows each week, as well as hands-on exhibits and tours of the facilities. Outside of Summer Sundays, tours of BNL can be arranged free of charge.
Classes are also welcome at BNL through field trips to the Brookhaven National Laboratory Science Museum for students in elementary school through high school to support STEM education, or Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics education. High school and college students from across the United States also take part in summer internship programs at the laboratory in an effort to give them real-world experience with scientific research.
BROOKHAVEN works with radioactive materials and has contaminated groundwater and the surrounding environment. Can we TRUST government to do the right thing?
