posted 08 April 2005 14:25            

Of course you get to say what you think. But I havn't heard what you think yet. What are your theories and some potential strategies to unlocking the truth?

The best public evidnce to date points towards something you don't want to consider. Is there a reason for that?

I do not consider myself ranting, rather brainstorming. I may not have the answers, but let's say that others who come to this forum begin to learn from our threads - isn't it possible that they may some how become involved in advocacy?

But to shut it down means that no one learns anything other than should we be taking Vit. b12 shots or not.

I had a good friend that was pretty high up in the military and went to Vietnam and Gulf War. He just passed away recently. Two days before he died I asked if he had a theory about his illness. He told me that he believed that it was the agent orange sprayed on them and the vaccinations from the Gulf War. So to pretend that our goverernment always has our best interest at heart is probably a bit naive at this point.

I don't know how much your are involvement in lyme advocacy. I don't want to underestimate your participation. Frankly, this is the most I do at this point.

But when you say: "Do you all who do believe this think that great long rants on internet forums is going to change any of this?"

Do you believe that not doing anything is going to change anything? Do you believe that by tossing these ideas around in a safe place and trying to culltivate some kind of collective concsiousness based on the facts (whatever they turn out to be) is a bad thing?

Even the modest goals deserve to have a life expectancy if we are going to change any of this.

Don't mean to give you a hard time Lou, but, should we just throw up our hands and say oh well, my children and I are going to be plagued by poor healthcare and we might as well expect to be treated like ***t.

military

quote:

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Originally posted by lou:
I guess we don't get to say what we think. Seemed like one measely thread was not too much to ask for those of us who don't buy the Plum Island scenarios. Do you all who do believe this think that great long rants on internet forums is going to change any of this?

Think I have heard too much of this kind of thing over the years to be convinced that it will lead to any action. Just look at the more modest goals and see that those don't even have adequate support.

And finally, Lisa, you have been thru a lot, but I find it wearing to have you keep sledgehammering. Sorry. I really am sympathetic and glad you have retained some spunk.

---

posted 08 April 2005 16:32               

Another tactic used is combining several agents and spreading them through vectors.Also adding parts of one microbe and inserting them into another. We certainly have a plethora of tickborne diseases. Combinations or Russian Doll cocktails make these diseases very difficult to diagnose and treat.

When a population is hit suddenly by an infectious agent which kills this alerts people to the danger and they quarantine and get out the antibiotics...which will abort the epidemic.

posted 08 April 2005 17:24               

What these people might or might not do cannot be predicted on the basis of conventional notions of logic or morality.

In any case, all I have ever suggested is that Plum Island really does carry out the type of research declared in its public documents, research into zoonotic pathogens, that these pathogens are likely to have been manipulated in various ways and that because they are carried by living organisms containment is problematic.

That this had been going on for some time about 10 miles by water from Lyme Conneticut is hardly controversial. Nor is the notion that people have become ill as a result owe its origin to hysterical paranoids; as far as I can tell, people in the region suspected this before Lyme was ever named.

In other words, what is being implied is not a conspiracy of omniscient devils but an ill-conceived venture carried out by men whose dispositions and official roles dispose them to secrecy.

Perhaps Lou's position is that the national security state is a model of openness and rationality. I studied the national security state for years in the process of getting my degree in politics, and have reached a different conclusion.

But nothing Lou or I could say would comfort anyone living near a facility like Plum Island, who watched their community overtaken by a zoonotic pathogen that is, contra Steere and the rest, difficult to diagnose and highly resistant to treatment.

It's reasonable to insist that we not overstate the case - to my knowledge, there is no PROOF that Bb has been manipulated or 'weaponized', just a lot of very suggestive evidence that would lend credibility to that idea.

The proximity of the Plum Island facility to Lyme, however, given that facilities STATED purpose, would create doubts in any mind that was even slightly open to receiving them.

I did take note of the post about the swamp relic, but there is nothing conclusive about it. They don't even know that the relic represents an actual case of Lyme disease, they just think, again, that there is a fair bit of evidence to make that credible. It says something, that a prehistoric corpse dredged from a swamp is considered a very 'scientific' way to dismiss this whole concern.

Did spirochetes make people ill prior to the 20th century? Almost certainly. That in no way diminishes the possibility that the version of Lyme disease which exploded on the scene in the last third of the 20th century was modified at, or relased from, Plum Island.

Conspiracy is the way a certain part of the world does business - I don't know anyone who really believes that all the decisions which affect great numbers of human beings are carried out in public, or that decisions which cause great harm to multitudes are quickly admitted to. Such views are neither logical nor informed by history.

Conspiracy theory can be a kind of addiction, I suppose, but the voices that have raised concerns here about Plum Island are not those of conspiracy junkies. We come to the concern reluctantly, wishing it were as easy to dismiss as people like Lou imply.

Indeed, the world Lou's comments project is in every sense preferable to the world in which we actually live.

Incompetence, however costly, is ultimately a self-limiting proposition. What must concern us is the marriage of modern technological advances like those used in biowarfare to the bureaucratic ineptitude and habitual secrecy of the national security state.

This is, as I have said before, a concern that transcends narrow political biases, that is properly shared by sane people on all sides of the political spectrum, and should be a uniting force for corrective action.

It was only a few days ago that victims of Nazi medical experiments were granted another round of compensation from the European Union, some 60 years after the fall of the Nazi regime. A few thousand Euros, too little, too late by over half a century.

I can assure you, though, that when those heinous experiments were being conducted, there were all sorts of people around the world who heard rumor of them and said 'No, no, the Nazis are a bad lot but they're not THAT bad, after all they are only men, not devils.'

posted 08 April 2005 17:44            

I agree with your point about human nature.
I like your writing.

posted 08 April 2005 18:37            

You asked, wouldn't they want an incapacitant that acted immediately? That's a very good question.

IMO, the military want different agents for different jobs. There will be occasions when they want an agent that incapacitates dramatically and immediately, and the declassified documents on the www.sunshine-project.org speak in detail about that kind of thing.

But on other occasions, they may actually prefer something that incapacitates some time after dispersal of the agent. This latter would be ideal if they were hoping the pathogen would spread massively through the target population by droplet spread (coughing etc). If the germ acted immediately in a very dramatic way, the enemy's doctors would arrange for isolation procedures, areas would be quarantined off, etc etc. An infection that had a two-week incubation period or a mild onset would not alert them in that way.

However, biowarfaremen might want that delay too (or a longer one) if they had implanted infected ticks into a target area. This would allow a certain time period for the infection to spread into the local eco-system, before doctors and scientists realised that a)there was an outbreak of a serious incapacitating disease, and b)it was a man-made epidemic and c)it was tick-borne.

Remember, by the time Polly Murray and her neighbours realised something was very wrong, birds may have spread the strain(s) of Bb concerned all over the country and to other countries too.

Further, a pathogen that incapacitated some people soon after they came into contact with it, while others came down with incapacitating symptoms some months later, would tend to confuse medical staff pretty effectively. (Just look at how confused most docs are when faced with Lyme, and that's in a situation where they **already know** the tick-bite connection, and with accurate information available if they cared to look for it, with IlADS guidelines etc often shoved under their noses these days by the patient.

Add to that a huge range of different symptoms, with many of the patterns mimicking known (but incurable and incapacitating) diseases like MS, ALS, rheumatoid arthritis, schizophrenia, etc etc - that might be a wise choice from the point of view of a biowarfareman without moral qualms about crippling civilians. (And frankly, I don't think offensive biowarfaremen are the kind who have those qualms - they think it's sissy.)

That's one scenario - there are also many others, and many different reasons why the military might want to control the flow if information about TBD and spin it to make it seem there was no epidemic of an incapacitating disease. (Just an unconnected rise in MS cases, ADD, Parkinsons etc and a mass outbreak of public hysteria and people all over the world imagining they are incapacitated with the same set of symptoms as each other : (

posted 08 April 2005 18:38            

You asked, wouldn't they want an incapacitant that acted immediately? That's a very good question.

IMO, the military want different agents for different jobs. There will be occasions when they want an agent that incapacitates dramatically and immediately, and the declassified documents on the www.sunshine-project.org speak in detail about that kind of thing.

But on other occasions, they may actually prefer something that incapacitates some time after dispersal of the agent. This latter would be ideal if they were hoping the pathogen would spread massively through the target population by droplet spread (coughing etc). If the germ acted immediately in a very dramatic way, the enemy's doctors would arrange for isolation procedures, areas would be quarantined off, etc etc. An infection that had a two-week incubation period or a mild onset would not alert them in that way.

However, biowarfaremen might want that delay too (or a longer one) if they had implanted infected ticks into a target area. This would allow a certain time period for the infection to spread into the local eco-system, before doctors and scientists realised that a)there was an outbreak of a serious incapacitating disease, and b)it was a man-made epidemic and c)it was tick-borne.

Remember, by the time Polly Murray and her neighbours realised something was very wrong, birds may have spread the strain(s) of Bb concerned all over the country and to other countries too.

Further, a pathogen that incapacitated some people soon after they came into contact with it, while others came down with incapacitating symptoms some months later, would tend to confuse medical staff pretty effectively. (Just look at how confused most docs are when faced with Lyme, and that's in a situation where they **already know** the tick-bite connection, and with accurate information available if they cared to look for it, with IlADS guidelines etc often shoved under their noses these days by the patient.

Add to that a huge range of different symptoms, with many of the patterns mimicking known (but incurable and incapacitating) diseases like MS, ALS, rheumatoid arthritis, schizophrenia, etc etc - that might be a wise choice from the point of view of a biowarfareman without moral qualms about crippling civilians. (And frankly, I don't think offensive biowarfaremen are the kind who have those qualms - they think it's sissy.)

That's one scenario - there are also many others, and many different reasons why the military might want to control the flow if information about TBD and spin it to make it seem there was no epidemic of an incapacitating disease. (Just an unconnected rise in MS cases, ADD, Parkinsons etc and a mass outbreak of public hysteria and people all over the world imagining they are incapacitated with the same set of symptoms as each other : (

posted 08 April 2005 19:45            

You asked, wouldn't they want an incapacitant that acted immediately? That's a very good question.

IMO, the military want different agents for different jobs. There will be occasions when they want an agent that incapacitates dramatically and immediately, and the declassified documents on the www.sunshine-project.org speak in detail about that kind of thing.

But on other occasions, they may actually prefer something that incapacitates some time after dispersal of the agent. This latter would be ideal if they were hoping the pathogen would spread massively through the target population by droplet spread (coughing etc). If the germ acted immediately in a very dramatic way, the enemy's doctors would arrange for isolation procedures, areas would be quarantined off, etc etc. An infection that had a two-week incubation period or a mild onset would not alert them in that way.

However, biowarfaremen might want that delay too (or a longer one) if they had implanted infected ticks into a target area. This would allow a certain time period for the infection to spread into the local eco-system, before doctors and scientists realised that a)there was an outbreak of a serious incapacitating disease, and b)it was a man-made epidemic and c)it was tick-borne.

Remember, by the time Polly Murray and her neighbours realised something was very wrong, birds may have spread the strain(s) of Bb concerned all over the country and to other countries too.

Further, a pathogen that incapacitated some people soon after they came into contact with it, while others came down with incapacitating symptoms some months later, would tend to confuse medical staff pretty effectively. (Just look at how confused most docs are when faced with Lyme, and that's in a situation where they **already know** the tick-bite connection, and with accurate information available if they cared to look for it, with IlADS guidelines etc often shoved under their noses these days by the patient.

Add to that a huge range of different symptoms, with many of the patterns mimicking known (but incurable and incapacitating) diseases like MS, ALS, rheumatoid arthritis, schizophrenia, etc etc - that might be a wise choice from the point of view of a biowarfareman without moral qualms about crippling civilians. (And frankly, I don't think offensive biowarfaremen are the kind who have those qualms - they think it's sissy.)

That's just one scenario - there are also many others, and many different reasons why the military might want to control the flow if information about TBD and spin it to make it seem there was no epidemic of an incapacitating disease. (Just an unconnected rise in MS cases, ADD, Parkinsons etc and a mass outbreak of public hysteria and people all over the world imagining they are incapacitated with the same set of symptoms as each other

posted 08 April 2005 21:16               

All opponenets to Hitler were now labeled "terrorists", laws were passed quickly suspending civil liberties, and the rest is history. History has shown that Hitler's own minions set the Rheichstag fire, as it created the event to enrage the populace into utter revolt against Hitler's opposition.

Does this scenario sound vaguely familiar ?

History has shown that governments may go to any extreme to consolidate/preserve power, if left unfettered.

The US government has been successfully sued for exposing an unwitting population to radiation, psychotropic drugs, dangerous chemical exposure, and a host of other evils. This is well documentated proven fact, aired in a court of law.

To think that for one minute the government would hesitate to experiment with ticks, and horrific pathogens, defies logic.

What are the odds that Plum Island and Lyme, CT. are in such close proximity, and the first major outbreak of a virulent strain of Bb is recorded there ? Coincidence ?

Does it benefit our cause to get decent awareness and treatment of lyme to implicate Plum Island?

Anything that's proven to be true, helps our cause. Wherever the chips may fall, so be it.

The fact that the Steere camp is purposely downplaying lyme severity, and encouraging poor diagnostic techniques, only reinforces the case, that these people have something to hide. It's more than mere bruised ego's these folks are afraid of, by being proven wrong.

You see, if realising that lyme is a long term, severe, debilitating disease, and difficult to treat, someone is going to ask why that is so ?

When that question is finally asked and scientifically investigated, where does it lead back to ? That's precisely why in my estimation, they have to fight so vigorously now, so that question can never be asked.

However, it's inevitable, and the truth will come out. Our LLMD said as much, when he stated, that it's like trying to put toothpaste back in the tube. As more become infected, more awareness is raised, and the demand for treatment becomes louder. It's self-perpetuating, and light will be shown upon it.

posted 08 April 2005 22:50            

serially cultured laboratory strains are also not a good way of saving the evidence...they lose so much genetic information in passaging it's useless.

quote:

---

Originally posted by NP40:
Hitler was consolidating his power in pre-war Germany, but he still had opposition. Suddenly, the German Rheichstag [German Congress] burst into flames one evening. The arsonists blamed immediately were the opposition to Hitler's goals.

All opponenets to Hitler were now labeled "terrorists", laws were passed quickly suspending civil liberties, and the rest is history. History has shown that Hitler's own minions set the Rheichstag fire, as it created the event to enrage the populace into utter revolt against Hitler's opposition.

Does this scenario sound vaguely familiar ?

History has shown that governments may go to any extreme to consolidate/preserve power, if left unfettered.

The US government has been successfully sued for exposing an unwitting population to radiation, psychotropic drugs, dangerous chemical exposure, and a host of other evils. This is well documentated proven fact, aired in a court of law.

To think that for one minute the government would hesitate to experiment with ticks, and horrific pathogens, defies logic.

What are the odds that Plum Island and Lyme, CT. are in such close proximity, and the first major outbreak of a virulent strain of Bb is recorded there ? Coincidence ?

Does it benefit our cause to get decent awareness and treatment of lyme to implicate Plum Island?

Anything that's proven to be true, helps our cause. Wherever the chips may fall, so be it.

The fact that the Steere camp is purposely downplaying lyme severity, and encouraging poor diagnostic techniques, only reinforces the case, that these people have something to hide. It's more than mere bruised ego's these folks are afraid of, by being proven wrong.

You see, if realising that lyme is a long term, severe, debilitating disease, and difficult to treat, someone is going to ask why that is so ?

When that question is finally asked and scientifically investigated, where does it lead back to ? That's precisely why in my estimation, they have to fight so vigorously now, so that question can never be asked.

However, it's inevitable, and the truth will come out. Our LLMD said as much, when he stated, that it's like trying to put toothpaste back in the tube. As more become infected, more awareness is raised, and the demand for treatment becomes louder. It's self-perpetuating, and light will be shown upon it.

[This message has been edited by NP40 (edited 08 April 2005).]

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posted 08 April 2005 23:02            

the US cannot be defeated in a conventional way. And nuclear warfare just results in a world wide holocaust.

the US will fall by being eaten away from the inside.

perhaps the US was experimenting on just this sort of warfare, thinking of disabling the soviets, and it backfired and we infected ourselves.

now let me ask you a question. a new disease pops up at the height of the cold war in the most densely populated part of the country. Don't you think that there have been investigations into this outbreak beyond steere?

posted 08 April 2005 23:09            

quote:

---

Originally posted by CaliforniaLyme:
The only Lyme conspiracies I believe in are those talked about by Attorney General of CT Richard Blumenthal re insurance industry and those arisen by ignorance of people like STeere and perpetuated by perhaps more than simply ignorance... People like McSweegan make me wonder sometimes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But as to origins, the LAST thing we need as patient reps or advocates is to bring in conspiracy theories!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The best paper re Bb as far as infecting human population is, because it was long long ago- and ALSO because it was published in a field unconcerned with Lyme politics-
is- Bb from the skeletal remains of a prehistoric swampified childs body:

1: Am J Phys Anthropol. 1998 Jun;106(2):229-48. Related Articles, Links

Prehistoric juvenile rheumatoid arthritis in a precontact Louisiana native population reconsidered.

Lewis BA.

Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, USA. galewi@unixl.sncc.lsu.edu

Descriptions of skeletal pathological conditions evident in the prehistoric Tchefuncte adolescent 16ST1-14883b are clarified. The basis is reaffirmed for assigning to the described pathological conditions a diagnostic perspective of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis or juvenile Lyme disease--a disease that mimics juvenile rheumatoid arthritis in its arthritic presentation--rather than of assigning them as representative of juvenile onset ankylosing spondylitis or other juvenile spondyloarthropathies. A hypothesis (Lewis [1994] Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 93:455-475) is restated that 1) the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi was the infectious agent responsible for prevalence of adult rheumatoid arthritis in prehistoric southeastern Native American populations, 2) that B. burgdorferi is a possible cause of the arthritis evident in individual 16ST1-14883b, and 3) that antibodies to B. burgdorferi provided partial immunity to the related spirochete Treponema pallidum for the 16ST1 precontact Tchefuncte population from Louisiana, protecting them from severe treponemal response. Given the probable widespread existence of Ixodid tick vectors for B. burgdorferi in prehistoric North America, coupled with the existence of treponematosis, it follows that the transition of Native American hunting-gathering economies to more sedentary economies would predictably be linked to an increased incidence of treponematosis due to the loss of benefits of the above-stated partial immunity. In other words, as prehistoric Native American exposure to tick vectors for B. burgdorferi decreased, susceptibility to treponematosis increased. Inferences regarding biological controls interacting with and influencing prehistoric Native American migration patterns are suggested from the link of B. burgdorferi to an Ixodid tick common to northeast Asia.

Publication Types:
Historical Article

PMID: 9637186 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

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posted 09 April 2005 00:40               

He was thretoned by a man in army fatigues and got rid of the papers,in the basement of Mayo clinic.

It was simply an accident lyme got loose, the ticks were droped from an airplane onto plumb island for an expirenment and got carried away by sea birds before they sprayed the island.

posted 09 April 2005 11:49               

My overview is as follows:

Yes spirochetes are ancient. Yes borrelia existed a long time ago. However my hunch is that it was far less virulent. It was not causing ALS, lupus, etc. Also, it was not as commonly part of a soup of pathogens, it seems to me babesia is about as virulent.

Sarah (CaliforniaLyme) good to see you and hear that your life is going so well...consider that you took 9 months of mepron...why doesn't malaria require the same?

One must ask why these pathogens are so difficult to eradicate, more so than tuberculosis or malaria, two big killers worldwide.

Once bioweaponized for greater virulence--easier adhesion, easier cell penetration, or splice in viral fragments, or WHO KNOWS what they did...and through carelessness the stuff gets out (there is such an obvious record of accidents at all biowarfare facilities, whether Ken Alibek's work in Moscow where the anthrax got all through the lab, or the recent incident with Klempner's lab and tularemia) that one doesn't have to have much imagination to realize that the ticks got out. Especially if at Plum Island for instance, they were in outdoor colonies and there was so much wildlife on the island. But even without that, without stringent safety measures which seem disregarded at most labs, the stuff can get out. Nature is very inventive, even when tampered with to be more virulent, microbes will figure out a way to find a host.

Then, bacteria exchange genes. So you get contamination of the naturally occuring pathogens. THen you add in as I've said before, global warming, our exodus into the suburbn and then exurban woods, and our unwillinngess to kill bambi while making extinct all bambi's alpha predators (we used to have 500,000 deer in this country now we have 25 million). So you have conditions for an epidemic, and multiple tickbites, unbeknownst to the human host, with multiple pathogens each time. And there is your recipe for chronic debilitating illness.

One of my suspicions centers more on the vaccine. We know Osp-C is expressed in the human not Osp-A (temperature related). Four years ago or more, early in my lyme infection, I spoke to the makers of an Osp-C vaccine who said it had essentially been squelched by the powers that be who wanted the Osp-A (Steere's). The Osp-A either reactivated latent disease or cause dautoimmune disease who knows, but it was pulled from the marekt. But why not use an Osp-C? It might even help those already infected by alerting the immune system (sort of like cancer vaccines). No Osp-C vaccine was ever made, at least not yet.

What's that about? I'd rather focus on THAT story. Especially now when pharmas are under attack for good reason.

Usually the answer in all this is money and power. Why did they use cheaper monkeys to make polio vaccine--kidneys contaminated with sv-40? Because it was cheaper! Even tho they had warnings at the time about the risk.

And for anyone who has immersed themselves in the military-industrial complex they slowly get "infected" with a worldview that necessarily lacks compassion and sees all humans as pawns in a larger "heroic" battle to "protect" interests at home...etc etc...when you read Lab257, whatever its accuracies and inaccuracies, one strong impression you come away with is those who run this kind of research are more than complacent, they are playing God, and a nasty God at that. They like the power to unleash forces stronger than nature herself made and they not only don't care if ordinary folk are harmed, they even enjoy it. Sounds sick but you can't work in certain fields and stay a heart-centered humanistic person. Consider all the gulf war vets sick from the experimental anthrax vaccine and depleted uranium. The government responsible for that DOES NOT CARE. President Bush will stop his vacation for a brain-dead lady on life support for 15 years, basically to please his right wing constituency, while sending healthy young men to their deaths for dubious oil interests. (Maybe we will get more democracy in the middle east and thats good but thats not why we did it). He will say the Pope was morally clear, when the Pope himself refused the feeding tube that Bush wanted to keep Terry Schiavo on. This may sound like I'm wandering far afield but the point is, the human life doesn't matter--power does, and retaining power.

All of which adds up to once again, my saying that finding a cure for those who have to take antibiotics for years, is a better idea. Even Sarah (CaliforniaLyme) who has regaiend most of her life--which is amazing--had to go through a couple years of drug hell and is still on antibiotics.

posted 09 April 2005 12:04            

People are on antibiotics for tuberculosis for years sometimes- AND people DO stay on treatment for malaria for years sometimes too!! That is where tonic water came from, with quinnine in it, because people found drinking a little daily tonic kept them from relapsing!!! I lived in India when I was little and know quite a bit about malaria because I have had it!
What is interesting is that malaria can have a tissue stage which most people don't know!!

Anywayz, lots of diseases require long-term treatment or treatment for the rest of ones life! My husband- Ed, bless him, he is a sweetie- is diabetic and he will have to take insulin every day the rest of his life!

posted 09 April 2005 13:18               

I want to thank Paisley for her post, which I think cuts to the core of what all this means to us as patients.

And Maddog gets big points for saying much more concisely what I meant about high-tech sophistication married to bureaucratic incompetence.

Oxygenbabe demonstrates what had seemed obvious to me, that when we talk about Plum Island it isn't that OR global warming, expanding deer populations, etc, they aren't competing explanations.

This disease exacts a tragic price from many of us here, who are among the sickest of the sick. Very often in history those who are afflicted see things that others do not, act when others lack the determination to do so, and bring our common life back in contact with realities it can no longer afford to ignore.

It's a more subtle and voluntary business than the canary in the coal mine, but there is a crude analogy there.

This type of discussion is not how I spend all my time. I have reason to doubt how many more periods of lucidity my life has left in it. I spend some of those hours trying to attend to my soul, and give thanks to the souls that have touched mine in important ways. I spend some of them writing poems or daydreaming. I reserve a portion for trying to understand what this wretched epidemic can tell me about the world I live in and what it will take to assure its habitability for my younger friends and family.

I can't walk unassisted, or drive, or safely engage in much more exercise than controlled breathing and (very) gentle stretching. On a good day, those limits apply. So I have time. And for some of that time, I have a mind that can still make out patterns of meaning and respond to them.

I introduce this personal note because everyone who takes the Plum Island connection seriously has been tarred with a certain brush, painted as some kind of singularly obsessed, paranoid, hysterical freak.

posted 09 April 2005 13:42            

quote:

---

Originally posted by MADDOG:
Hi,I actually know a person who 15 years ago was given secret papers explaining the plum island accidient.

He was thretoned by a man in army fatigues and got rid of the papers,in the basement of Mayo clinic.

It was simply an accident lyme got loose, the ticks were droped from an airplane onto plumb island for an expirenment and got carried away by sea birds before they sprayed the island.

Simply done by people educated beyond their intellegence. MADDOG

---

posted 09 April 2005 13:46            

see it's more complicated than just saying "look at this stretch of 16S RNA, this is Bb"

unless someone was miraculously able to get a total DNA sequence of the organism including telomeric DNA, you can't place much credence in these reports.

quote:

---

Originally posted by CaliforniaLyme:
ALigondo, an LLMD referenced that in a lecture who had read the full paper and said they had shown it. He is a good one and so I have always trusted that assertion. Maybe I am wrong to do so. But they also found Bb in ticks in ancient amber so it has been around for a long long long time!

People are on antibiotics for tuberculosis for years sometimes- AND people DO stay on treatment for malaria for years sometimes too!! That is where tonic water came from, with quinnine in it, because people found drinking a little daily tonic kept them from relapsing!!! I lived in India when I was little and know quite a bit about malaria because I have had it!
What is interesting is that malaria can have a tissue stage which most people don't know!!

Anywayz, lots of diseases require long-term treatment or treatment for the rest of ones life! My husband- Ed, bless him, he is a sweetie- is diabetic and he will have to take insulin every day the rest of his life!

---

posted 09 April 2005 17:15            

Thanks for the kudos. Sad that I don't even remember what I said. I'll have to back track.

I wanted to share an interersting story. It's kind of weird, but I don't believe in coicidences anymore.

My children and I were coming back from a drs. appt. I didn't want to make dinner and stopped by Dairy Queen. Not the finest dining. I had a lot of other options at that intersection and still can't figure out why I stopped there for dinner.

At one point I decided to get a sundae. I asked the girl at the register what the purple band (silicone wrist band) stood for. She said REMEMBER. She hesistated, but then she said her sister had just died. I said I was sorry for her loss.

Then I asked her what the black one stood for. She said that one said CHANGE THE WORLD. I said, "that's cool" and walked away. Then she yelled to us, hey what are the green ones for. I said, Lyme Disease. Her jaw dropped and she couldn't speak.

She finally shared that her sister had died because of lyme disease. Then my jaw dropped and I couldn't speak. She had taken her life. She was in the army - the family thinks that she got it on the army base, but basically wasn't doing anything to help her get better.

She had been travelling the country trying to get answers, until she couldn't take it anymore.

I said that she paid a heavy price for this disease, asked for her name and told her that if I ever got my book done, I would dedicate it to her memory. Then my son said, "do you want my green bracelet?" She couldn't speak to us any longer because she couldn't stop crying.

posted 09 April 2005 18:50            

If anyone else has information as sensitive as that, please hang on to it, don't share it in an open forum. I believe there is enough out there just in the public domain for us to make our case, no one should put themselves at risk.

In England there are rumours that a PhD student who was investigating the public health risk of Lyme, and died suddenly of a heart attack at age 27, did not die a natural death.

I am not saying this to sow fear, I just want people to be careful what they say in public.

Lisa

quote:

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Originally posted by MADDOG:
Hi,I actually know a person who 15 years ago was given secret papers explaining the plum island accidient.

He was thretoned by a man in army fatigues and got rid of the papers,in the basement of Mayo clinic.

It was simply an accident lyme got loose, the ticks were droped from an airplane onto plumb island for an expirenment and got carried away by sea birds before they sprayed the island.

Simply done by people educated beyond their intellegence. MADDOG

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posted 09 April 2005 23:05               

In my opinion, conspiracy and cover-up should be a given at this point. The more difficult question is what is their motivation. Is it a cover-up of an accident or experiment that escaped their control? If so, one would think they would do everything they could to prevent or at least limit new chronic cases by aggressively advocating proper early diagnosis and treatment. In this way, they would be limiting further spread of the disease. Instead they continue to be a deliberate obstacle to proper diagnosis and treatment. Could it be that these co-conspirators want the disease to spread? Sure looks like it. Why? My best guess is that these people are all part of a conspiracy to weaken the US population over time. The Nazis experimented with tick borne diseases for this reason. They wanted to take over the world and felt this was an effective way to weaken some of their enemies from within.

In the same way, we could be dealing with another totalitarian regime which has the U.S. in their long term sights. Perhaps Russia or China or both. I often hear Lyme folks discussing conspiracy in terms of our own government doing this to its own citizens. Perhaps but much more likely IMO is that the communists have infiltrated us long ago and have people in powerful places where they can control things, ie the CDC & NIH & state health departments along with many other places. They need to be in positions of authority so they can control the agenda. Many innocent, elected officials are being sold a bill of goods and help perpetuate the plan without realizing they are part of a conspiracy. We are a wide open country and the communists espionage tactics are legendary so IMO it is unrealistic to think they haven't infiltrated our government.

posted 10 April 2005 04:29            

You see, in those days, there was no need to do this covertly, as the US had not yet sigend any international treaties outlawing it, as happened in 1972.

It's not accurate to say that Allen Steere did not do a 180 deg. turn in the 1980's. If you examine the record, you can see that **from the very beginning** his conduct was extremely suspicious. Despite the fact that he clearly was aware of the many decades of European literature on the subject, as well as more recent news regarding the efficacy of penicillin, he continued to insist that Lyme was probably viral, thus blocking treatment for all.

It's worth remembering that the rheumatologist whom Polly Murray was originally scheduled to see when she first raised the alarm with the Connecticut health department was pulled at the last minute by Dr Snydman, also of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, who ensured she would see Steere instead.

Steere was thus given the mantle for "discovering" Lyme disease, and the rest is tragic history.

The Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) is a programme of the CDC. It is not a minor programme. The elite ID personnel who graduate from the EIS are then encouraged to take up positions in strategically important parts of the health infrastructure all over the country. Thus they become chief epidemiologists, get on the editorial boards of top medical journals, gain important positions in the mass media (the rabidly anti-Lymie Altman of the NY Times is a good example)etc..

As an elite unit of basically biowarfare-trained specialists, they wield huge power in the political structure. If they feel a the work of a particular doctor or scientist is getting in the way of military goals, they can ensure that person is either intimidated into silence, has his license to practise removed/reputation trashed, or worse.

Unless of course, large numbers of patients rally to protect the individual concerned (eg Dr Burrascano).

They operate as a team and can ensure that, if deemed necessary for national "security", information on any disease can be spun in a co-ordinated manner, and action taken to silence those who interfere with those "security" goals.

Remember, the goals and priorities of a military doc may be very different from a civilian doc following the Hippocratic oath.

Not only Steere and Snydman, but CDC Lyme officials (as well as CDC directors) and in general, a hugely disproportionate number of the Steere camp just "happen" to be EIS members or known biowarfare experts.

That the poster Ticktox has recognised all this is good. It is after all, all documented fact in the public domain. However, Ticktox then parts company with established evidence by wandering off into a ridiculous and bizarre theory about communists controlling America and trying to weaken its population with chronic infectious diseases.

Where is your evidence for this nonsense, (other than possibly among the pages of Mein Kampf?) Where is the slightest shred of evidence that the US government and military are controlled by "communists"?

A person could reasonably argue that Lyme was developed as a bioweapon by the Soviet Union, and that the outbreak in Connecticut in the 70's was a deliberate release by them . But we are now in 2005, 14 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. There is no more Soviet Union, and Russia (in case you had not noticed) is no longer a Communist country.

It does no service to anyone when you bring these bizarre fantasies into a field where those of us who genuinely want to expose the Lyme cover-up for what it is, based on solid evidence painstakingly gathered, already face scoen and disbelief on the basis that we are plugging baseless "conpiracy theories".

It will not be hard for us to prove that the Lyme cover-up is a deliberate cover-up by the US and other NATO governments, via the medium of the Steere camp, assisted by huge input from those industries with a financial stake in the matter (insurance, vaccine/biotech etc).

There is no need to then go on to say that because we have evidence of that, this then indicates that western governments are controlled by communists, Jews, Blacks, gays, or greem lizards from outer space. It doesn't, no more than the fact that the sky is blue "proves" that the moon is made of cheese.

If you want to genuinely advance the expose, and hopefully bring down this coverup so that patients can finally get proper recognition and treatment of Lyme disease, please take care that you present credible evidence for your statements, and at least, very high quality circumstantial evidence to support your theories.

Bizarre neo-McCarthyite musings about Communists controlling America are not evidence, and considering the Soviet bloc is all but disappeared for over a decade - just ridiculous.

Lisa

quote:

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Originally posted by ticktox:

But how do you explain Steere doing a 180. In the early 80's he sounded just like our LLMDs. He didn't get stupid all of a sudden. Maybe a gun to the head or some threat to his family. Who knows. .........In the same way, we could be dealing with another totalitarian regime which has the U.S. in their long term sights. Perhaps Russia or China or both. I often hear Lyme folks discussing conspiracy in terms of our own government doing this to its own citizens. Perhaps but much more likely IMO is that the communists have infiltrated us long ago and have people in powerful places where they can control things, ie the CDC & NIH & state health departments along with many other places. They need to be in positions of authority so they can control the agenda. Many innocent, elected officials are being sold a bill of goods and help perpetuate the plan without realizing they are part of a conspiracy. We are a wide open country and the communists espionage tactics are legendary so IMO it is unrealistic to think they haven't infiltrated our government.

I am sure many will disagree and consider this craziness or silliness but I think it ties up many of the conflicting questions that we see throughout this Lyme puzzle. Most of us who think in terms of a conspiracy don't want to believe it, but the evidence is there if you look.

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posted 10 April 2005 10:03               

I still don't know what it is you want to do. How/where do you want to gather evidence? Maybe lymenet isn't the best place for this discussion (tho it drew me temporarily back to lymenet). Meanwhile people are suffering so something has to be done. I met a lady the other day who claims she has ALS but 200 hyperbaric treatments greatly improved her. She also mentioned her daughter has chronic lyme. So I looked at her and said, you don't have ALS< hyperbaric doesn't improve ALS, but it does improve lyme. And lyme is sometimes misdiagnosed as ALS. So you live on the east coast and your daughter has chronic lyme, well guess what, so do you.