Did Lyme disease originate out of Plum Island?
Excerpted from Examiner.com ( Posted: 10/30/2010 )
After years of denial that this was the case, a few years ago the Centers of Disease Control admitted when opening Margaret Batts Tobin Laboratory Building in Texas that facility would be used to study such diseases as anthrax, tularemia, cholera, lyme disease, desert valley fever and other parasitic and fungal diseases. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified these diseases as potential bioterrorism agents.”
Many in the Lyme disease community and so-called “conspiracy theorists” have been making this claim for a long time. While no surprise, the Department of Homeland Security has unequivocally denied it. On their web site “About Plum Island Animal Disease Center” (PIADC), they state; “the PIADC does not and has not performed research on Lyme disease.”
What is Plum Island Animal Disease Center?
According to their web site, “The Plum Island Animal Disease Center is a Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) facility designed and constructed to work with the most dangerous animal diseases in the world, such as foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), Rinderpest, and African swine fever. In fact, by federal law, Plum Island is the only place in the U.S. where FMD and Rinderpestviruses can be studied.”
Located about off the tip of Long Island, New York, it was opened in 1954 during the Cold War with a “goal” of protecting livestock from animal diseases.
Some say it was opened under “Project Paperclip”. This was a top-secret government program to recruit Nazi scientists who were working on animal diseases during WWII. It has been suspected that more than 2000 scientists were brought here and offered employment contracts and US citizenship. One of the areas of expertise they had was experiments with disease-infected ticks.
For the complete article: http://www.examiner.com/infectious-disease-in-national/did-lyme-disease-originate-out-of-plum-island?sms_ss=twitter&at_xt=4ccc47e53790a5b4,0
Lyme Handbook 