CAPE COD – Weaponized ticks? Last week the United States Congress quietly voted to look into whether disease-carrying ticks are descendants of weaponized ticks from the American military.
It sounds like the plot of a bad 1960s science fiction film, but according to Kris Newby, author of “Bitten: The Secret History Of Lyme Disease And Biological Weapons” a real nightmare from the 1960s government bioweapons flirtations may be playing out all over Cape Cod and much of the East Coast.
While the Senate and President Trump have yet to approve the defense budget, the defense appropriation bill approved by Congress, includes the amendment by Chris Smith (R- New Jersey) that, “Directs the Inspector General of the Department of Defense to initiate an investigation into the Department’s possible involvement in the bioweaponization of ticks and other insects.”according to a Congressional website, rules.house.gov.
Reporter John Donnelly of CQ Roll Call, reported that “the unusual proposal” passed by a “voice vote.”
Smith told the Asbury Park Press on May 30, “If this (book) is true — and the documentation is very persuasive — we were doing bio-weapons work that was grossly immoral. It’s a shocking read, and I hope it adds to our push. Looking at what happened might help us come up with how we deal with it now.”
Congress has acted. But as of now, that means nothing.
Conspiracy Theory? Truth? Some Of Both?
Lyme disease has been around for thousands of years, said Larry Dapsis, Deer Tick Project Coordinator for the Cape Cod Cooperative Extension.
Still, Dapsis said, “The Lyme disease community is just a mind blower with all the information flowing around.”
Describing himself as “a simple entomologist,” whose job it is to “protect the people of Cape Cod through education and research,” Dapsis said that the idea of government involvement in creating tick-borne diseases has been documented in other books he has read.
** Click here for tick-borne illness protection information from Cape Cod County Extension **
Dapsis said that figuring out the mystery is “above my pay grade.”
“There’s something within the layers of the onion. It’s just that you don’t know what it is.” – Larry Dapsis, Deer Tick Project Coordinator for the Cape Cod Cooperative Extension
But, he said, “There’s something within the layers of the onion. It’s just that you don’t know what it is.”
“Is it just sloppy science in a lab?” he asked, based on reports he has read that “there were flawed procedures for quarantine and things like that.”
“To think that it could be something as devious as engineered weapons to use against people with pathogens, that’s just hard to think about,” he said.