The theories have been swirling around medical chat rooms for decades. It started when I began my medical practice in 1987 after moving to Hyde Park, N.Y., which I didn’t know at the time, was one of the number one hot spots for Lyme in the United States. I remember hearing about Plum Island 40 years ago when I started seeing chronic Lyme disease patients. The primary theory was that it was no coincidence that the outbreak of Lyme disease took place in Lyme, Connecticut, right across from Plum Island where the government was doing experiments on ticks.
The reason these patients were so sick, according to the theories, was that the bacteria was bioengineered to be more potent. It certainly was possible, since governments around the world all have their secret bioweapons programs, but of course it was difficult to prove the theory beyond a reasonable doubt. And then there are of course conspiracists putting out far-reaching theories in different areas, like ‘we are not alone in the universe’… (of course, which we’re not!) …so we needed reasonable proof. The prevailing thinking on Plum Island was that Nazi scientists were recruited after WWII to work on ticks and weaponize them. Now more information is emerging on these theories. This past week two articles came out. One by Dr Robert Malone and the other by the Daily Mail.
For those not Lyme history buffs, part of the initial information on Plum Island came from the book by Michael Carrol, Lab 257, released back in August 2005.
Lab 257 Was Based On Declassified Government Documents
Lab 257 and the release of bioengineered ticks has been discussed in one form or another for over 20 years. I listened to the theories for decades, and ignored them for the most part, because Borrelia burgdorferi had been known to be around for over a million years. It was not a new bacteria. And even if the government had bioengineered it, what difference was it going to make in getting my patients better? (more about that in a bit). It’s not like I could call up the secret scientists and ask for the secret sauce, although an AI search on potential solutions was interesting, as I will discuss below.
Then came Kris Newby, who wrote the book Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons
This was 14 years after Lab 257 was released. Some theories just won’t die!
Kris was senior producer of the documentary ‘Under Our Skin’ which I was in. She had strong scientific credentials. You can see the interview with Dana Parish back from several years ago, through Bay Area Lyme Foundation:
As per this interview from Kris and the BAL Ticktective Podcast:
“In this interview, author/filmmaker, Kris Newby, explains the murky history behind the US government’s involvement with Lyme disease and continued efforts to hide how the military’s bioweapons programs caused the spread of tick-borne pathogens. She explains how alliances between pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, university-based research teams, and the government led to inaccurate testing and denials of care, causing untold suffering to millions. Kris draws parallels between Long Covid and chronic Lyme and shines a light on how we are being dismissed, misinformed, and deliberately misled by the very institutions that should be protecting us.”
https://www.bayarealyme.org/tag/bitten-the-secret-history-of-lyme-disease-and-biological-weapons/
The Theories of Bioengineered Ticks Resurfaced Over A Decade Later
Bitten by Kris Newby was the second book to receive a lot of attention, discussing the above research on Plum Island and why it was done. Some patient advocates and doctors firmly believed that the Plum Island experiments were the reason Lyme was so controversial. After all, if the government accidentally (or not so accidentally) released ticks or bioengineered them, and then it was making tens of thousands of people sick (the numbers kept getting bigger year after year) that could explain why the government kept covering up the inaccuracy of testing; attacking doctors who were trying to find answers, backing IDSA researchers who claimed it was no more than an ‘autoimmune phenomenon’ vs ‘a persistent infection’ (hey, we didn’t do anything to the ticks to make them more potent biological weapons and resistant to standard therapies), not to mention the governments continued focus on finding a vaccine.
If they caused part of the problem, they would want a vaccine to protect people, right? Perhaps that is why they kept focusing on that aspect of the equation?
Did Financial Gains in Vaccines Obfuscate ‘Gain of Function’ Research?
Unfortunately, the argument that we are creating a vaccine to protect people gets mired in whether you caused the problem in the first place, and of course, financial collaborations. The patents for the LYMErix vaccine were primarily held through a collaborative arrangement between SmithKline Beecham (now GlaxoSmithKline [GSK]) and Yale University (who also received a lot of government grant money to study ticks), as well as the CDC. SmithKline and the CDC reportedly filed a joint patent application related to Lyme disease diagnostics and components.
The NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) also funded basic research grants which provided the foundational patents for cloning the genes used to create the vaccine. Let’s be clear. I have nothing against vaccines that save lives as I use them all the time; but when you remove the 31 (OspA) an 34 (OspB) bands from the Lyme diagnostic criteria at the Dearborn conference in 1994 because they were antigens used in the vaccine (their presence could indicate either infection or vaccination confusing the situation) and never put these Lyme-specific bands back in your official two-tiered testing years later, once the vaccine was off the market, when they could improve diagnostics for sick patients, that is just plain wrong. Your job as the top health related organizations in our country is to protect and save lives. Not obfuscate.
Now comes the third act of this long-running play. An article released last week by Dr Robert Malone by Trial Site News discusses once more ‘declassified documents’ linking the Lyme outbreak to a US bioweapons program. See below:
Declassified Documents Link U.S. Bioweapons Program to Lyme Disease Outbreak
Who is Dr Malone, who wrote this recent article, and why should we care about the extensive AI search he did? As of early 2026, Dr. Robert Malone serves as a member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a key federal vaccine panel within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He was appointed to this position in June 2025 by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was appointed as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). For those of you following the news, Secretary Kennedy has vowed to stop ‘gaslighting Lyme patients’ and get to the truth behind the present epidemic. That means the scientist writing this article has the support of the present HHS Secretary of Health, who himself has admitted that he has had chronic Lyme disease. Secretary Kennedy has stated on multiple occasions that it is “highly likely” that Lyme disease was developed as a military bioweapon.
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