Lyme Disease: The Secret Biological Weapon Unleashed?
The origin of Lyme disease, back in the 1970s in Lyme, Connecticut, continues to strongly puzzle scientists, doctors, and conspiracy theorists alike. What began as an outbreak of flu-like symptoms spiraled out of control into an epidemic currently affecting thousands across the United States. But is there more to this disease than what the naked eye can see or statistics provided by Public Health? The more sensational versions regard Lyme disease as having always, from its very start, been absolutely unnatural—a kind of sinister biological experiment gone wrong.
Specifically, these theories point to the government-run animal disease research facility Plum Island, situated in the waters off Long Island, New York, as the actual source of this biological experiment. Was it possible that Lyme disease was released by accident from some secret lab to cause the epidemic?
Plum Island: Where It All Begins
The role that Plum Island has played, if true, is not minor in this whole story. Starting in the 1950s, as part of a broader Cold War effort, construction of the Plum Island Animal Virus Lab was to study and prevent diseases that would threaten the US livestock industry. Yet, theorists insist that this facility had to do with far more than animal diseases. The fact that Plum Island isn't far off Lyme, Connecticut, the place where Lyme disease was initially identified, hasn't gone unnoticed by those who would proffer a darker narrative. In other words, Plum Island researchers might be experimenting with biological weapons and using the tick for their vector to carry and distribute the pathogens.
It is conjectured that these ticks may have been infected with the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi, the causative agent of Lyme disease, and subsequently escaped into the wild where an unchecked epidemic continues to this day.