The Plum Island Conspiracy Theory has been around for years and years.
Doubt if it will ever be proven, especially when you are dealing with ticks exactly like those that have been proven to be infected in the late 1800's (Smithsonian collection.)
AND the ticks are carried around by birds including sea birds which can go around the world and migrating song birdswhich can become reservoirs for the disease and drop infected ticks off anywhere along their pathway.
The native Americans knew about disease caused by ticks in Northern Minnesota before the white invaders ever arrived.
The first documented case of traced Lyme disease (the victim had a tick-bite and rash) which was successfully treated with antibiotics was in Wisconsin, much earlier than the cases in Lyme, CT.
Mother nature is a very powerful force and every one of the creatures on this earth does all it can and must to reproduce and maintain their species. Even ticks.
Very hard to prove the government caused the disease somehow.
That's my story and I am sticking to it!
Ann - OH
Posted by griff (Member # 10253) on :
Do you have a link to proof to this story about early cases of lyme in Wisconsin?
I never heard of that, I believe it came from Plum Island and took a ride on a bird to Lyme across the water.
Posted by Ann-OH (Member # 2020) on :
The Wisconsin case is cited in most books on Lyme disease including "Everything you need to know... by Karen Forschner of the LDf and "The Widening Circle" by Polly Murray, the real discoverer of what came to be called Lyme disease, and many others, and in Jonathan Edlow's book "Bullseye".
Note that I pointed it out, not as the first case, (other cases of tick-borne disease had been reported, included something called Montauk Knee on Long Island for years and years before the rest) but as the first case with the rash that had been treated sucessfully with antibiotics.
The case was treated by Rudolph Scrimenti, MD in 1970.
Ann - OH
Posted by Aligondo Bruce (Member # 6219) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ann-OH: The Wisconsin case is cited in most books on Lyme disease including "Everything you need to know... by Karen Forschner of the LDf and "The Widening Circle" by Polly Murray, the real discoverer of what came to be called Lyme disease, and many others, and in Jonathan Edlow's book "Bullseye".
Note that I pointed it out, not as the first case, (other cases of tick-borne disease had been reported, included something called Montauk Knee on Long Island for years and years before the rest) but as the first case with the rash that had been treated sucessfully with antibiotics.
The case was treated by Rudolph Scrimenti, MD in 1970.
Ann - OH
Ann, while it's true that a single case of SOMETHING was treated by scrimenti, there is no way of knowing what exactly that was. As far as I know this case was reported as a case of barnnwarth's syndrome, which COULD have been confused with something else. there is no molecular biological evidence that this was a borrelial infection, and if there was, it would be similar to the museum evidence {of which there is very little} which utilized 16SRNA. there is no way of knowing whether this was Bb s.s. as seen today. IMO, the earliest decent evidence of sensu stricto strains comparative to what is seen in the united states today comes from 1946 on montauk point. And that's assuming you trust the authors.
given the current geographic pattern of lyme endemicity, I would agree that it is most likely that what scrimenti reported WAS a case of lyme disease. but that really is not evidence against a plum island source, since most plum theories revolve around an accidental or intentional release from the 1940's or 1950's. it's easily possible that migratory birds brought b.b. s.s. lyme to wisconsin, california, and western europe.
in fact, there are highly respected scientists in france at the pasteur institute {postic et.al.} who have repeatedly published on this possibility, the evolution of Bb s.s. in north america during historic times and its spread across the atlantic. their theory runs counter to allen barbour's ludicrous "it came from africa" theory. heck, why don't you read the papers yourself? look at the OspC patterns...come to your own conclusions.
Posted by HaplyCarlessdave (Member # 413) on :
Well, I certainly wouldn't put it past the rotten regime here to try to develop forms of lyme that are well suited to biological warfare, I suspect this is web- sensationalism.. The natural, most logical explanation is the one we should go with, though there are plenty of "political", and even "sensational", ramifications associated with that, to; e.g., suburbanization and elimination of natural predators to deer, and more generally the terrible toll on other species that human overpopulation and out-of-control destruction of ecological balance, has caused. DaveS