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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.
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Home to High-Security Lab and Source of Rumors, Plum Island Faces Uncertain Future
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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.
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.”
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.Richard Perry/The New York Times
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.
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.”
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 LABORATORIES
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?
