Author Archive

Fewer Ticks = Less Lyme? Nope

https://highlandscurrent.org/2024/03/15/fewer-ticks-less-lyme-maybe-not/

Fewer Ticks = Less Lyme? Maybe Not.

by Brian PJ Cronin

Tick Project releases results of five-year study

Article Excerpts:

First, the good news: Over five years, 46 Millbrook-based researchers found that bait boxes reduced the tick population in the yards of Dutchess County residents by half.

The bad news: It didn’t matter. Although there were fewer ticks, it had little effect on reducing illness or people’s encounters with them, findings in line with a preliminary study completed in 2016.

For the study, researchers selected 24 neighborhoods in Dutchess County, including some in Beacon. They applied fungal spray and bait boxes, both of which are commercially available and safe for people, pets and the environment.

The spray, which is sold as Met52, is made from Metarhizium anisopliae, which is found in forest soil in the eastern U.S. “It makes its living by attacking and killing arthropods on the forest floor, digesting them and using them as a food source,” said Ostfeld.

The bait boxes attract rodents that, once inside, rub against a wick that applies a non-toxic insecticide with the same active ingredient as Frontline, a tick treatment for pets. “It’s safe for vertebrates but lethal for ticks,” Ostfeld said.  (See link for article)

_______________

**Comment**

There are no easy answers here.  Sorry.

This is why our family has been without pets for years now.  Living in the Wisconsin woods is bad enough without inviting ticks into the house via pets.

While the article states Frontline is “safe,” I’ve actually known dogs to get sick and/or die after using it.  Also, a flea and tick collar caused our dog to lose his hair.  Our healthy, albeit older, dog suddenly developed a poor immune system and eventually died.  I don’t believe this a coincidence and the suspicious timing of the collar is too great to ignore.

Besides the most common reactions Frontline causes like hair loss, itching, and redness, and neurological issues like uncoordinated movement and lethargy, research by the EPA in 2009 examined incident data for spot-on pesticides used on dogs, including fipronil products for dogs and cats. The report on Frontline Plus for Dogs shows that of a total of 2469 incidents, they classified:

  • 1,872 (76%) as minor
  • 51 (21%) as moderate
  • 47 (2%) as major
  • 39 (<2%)  were deaths
These side effects are not addressed anywhere on Frontline’s website.

The EPA’s study also covered many other spot-on pesticides for dogs, and while some incidents were classified as minor, it’s important to note there were major incidents and deaths associated with every product.

Dr Jennifer Ramelmeier, a veterinarian who advises her patients to avoid using it states:

“The first response of the body when the patient develops a toxic load is to discharge from the body via the eyes, the ears, the skin and through loose stool … these discharges make a great medium for bacterial and yeast growth (which live naturally on your dog’s body).”

Frontline Plus is produced and owned by Merial, the animal subsidiary of Sanofi, a multinational pharmaceutical company

Ramelmeier and some other veterinarians started noticing that after the initial dose and bodily discharges, repeated doses are linked to conditions that don’t improve, cancer, and then death.

Others disagree and simply state it’s safe.

Here is some of the best advice from holistic vets:

  • Maintain the health of your pet. This means a healthy diet and physical activity. Also minimize the use of unnecessary pharmaceuticals. Healthy animals have lower body temperatures and cooler animals attract fewer fleas.
  • To actively repel fleas, she recommends products like neem oil.
  • Use Shoo tags
  • Feed garlic
  • Apply geranium oil to the collar of your dog to prevent fleas and ticks

Want to know how you can keep the fleas and ticks away naturally? Check out this article for more information on safe flea and tick protection.

Regarding Neem oil – I’ve used it for years as a pesticide on plants with very good effect.  I have not used it on pets.

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Category:

research, Ticks

LSU Obtains Grant to Synthesize Affordable Nootkatone

https://www.lsu.edu/eng/news/2024/03/che-nsf-pfi-grant-lyme-disease.php

Chemical Engineering, Biological Sciences Faculty Receive Largest NSF PFI Grant Ever Awarded to LSU

Mike Benton, Kerry Dooley, Roger Laine
Nootkatone Studies Could Lead to Prevention of Lyme Disease

March 25, 2024

BATON ROUGE, LA – Thanks to a $550,000 National Science Foundation Partnership for Innovation grant—the largest NSF PFI grant ever awarded to LSU—LSU Chemical Engineering (ChE) Professor Kerry Dooley, LSU ChE Department Chair and Professor Mike Benton, and LSU Department of Biological Sciences (Biol. Sci.) Professor Roger Laine will continue their work on a project that could bring affordable and effective insect repellent to the masses, possibly decreasing the number of Lyme disease, malaria, and West Nile virus cases around the world.

The project involves the use of nootkatone, an FDA-approved organic compound found in grapefruit skin and Alaska yellow cedar trees that is a natural deterrent for many insects, including the deer tick responsible for Lyme disease. The LSU researchers propose decreasing the cost of the nootkatone synthesis, making any products made with the compound affordable to the general public.

“The family of compounds that make up nootkatone is already proven to be both safer and more effective than existing commercial repellents,” principal investigator Dooley said. “However, it’s now too expensive for consumer insect repellents. We plan to greatly streamline, optimize, and reduce the costs associated with the synthesis.”

According to Laine, there have been few insect repellents on the market since DEET, which is found in most insect repellent sprays and creams currently available. However, a mosquito test showed that nootkatone at 5% in rubbing alcohol was superior to DEET, which usually needs to be administered at greater than 20% concentration, even six hours after application.

Years ago, Laine discovered the efficacy of nootkatone as an insect repellent while collaborating with retired LSU AgCenter Entomologist Gregg Henderson in Laine’s lab. They found that nootkatone repelled insects like mosquitos, gnats, wood ticks, fleas, termites, lice, and fire ants because the insects weren’t eating the vetivone grass that, unbeknownst to them, contained nootkatone. Former LSU Biol. Sci. Senior Research Associate Betty Zhu tested 15 other compounds that resembled the structure of the vetivone and discovered that nootkatone was the best repellent compound. Nootkatone had already been approved by the FDA at the time, with the CDC later discovering that it also repels deer ticks.

Though nootkatone was found to be the best repellent, the problem was the cost to buy it in pure form.

“Nootkatone costs $2,500/kg, which is too costly for insect repellent,” Laine said. “It should be $200-$300/kg, then you can add it to lotions and sunscreens.”

Dooley discovered that one important way to save on the cost would be to modify a step in the eight-step synthesis of nootkatone.

“I did a cost analysis of the synthesis process, and 70% of the cost is concentrated in the fourth step of the eight-step process,” Dooley said. “I decided this step in particular could be significantly reduced in cost.”

The eight-step synthesis was created in just two years by former LSU Chemistry Graduate Student Anne Sauer, who was working under retired professor William Crowe as a collaboration with Laine and Henderson. To simplify two oxidation steps in the eight-step synthesis, which is patented by LSU, Laine subsequently obtained a Board of Regents seed grant and hired synthetic chemist Xuefeng Gao to successfully modify the synthesis using ozone, now covered by new U.S. and Japanese LSU patents authored by Laine.

In the fourth step, the original paper and patent uses potassium hydride and 18-Crown-6 ether, along with tetrahydrofuran, as a solvent. Dooley read up on how people were trying to execute this step without using these expensive components and thought he and Benton should come up with a catalyst and solvent that could significantly reduce the cost of this step.

“It’s incredibly complicated and it takes a long, sustained effort to go from making a few grams of something to making kilograms or kilotons,” Dooley said. “There’s a lot of work on optimizing separations, minimizing the solvent use, getting certain impurities down, and getting yields slightly up. These things take a lot of time and effort.”

The LSU research team hopes to sell their synthesis process to a manufacturing company, who would then be able to mass produce affordable nootkatone products that could save people’s lives by preventing bites from infectious insects.

A 2024 CDC report states that there were 62,551 Lyme disease cases in 2022. Recent estimates using new data collection methods suggest approximately 476,000 people may be diagnosed with Lyme disease each year in the U.S.

“The deer tick is spreading throughout the U.S.,” Dooley said. “It’s not just prevalent in the Northeast.”

In other words, insects are going nowhere. A 2023 CDC report states there were 2,406 cases of West Nile virus across 43 states with the number of cases expected to increase in 2024. Per the World Health Organization, there were a reported 249 million cases of malaria worldwide last year.

“Sixty million people die of malaria each year,” Laine said. “It’s possible that if this eight-step synthesis process could produce nootkatone products that get to poorer countries, then WHO could possibly fund it. Mosquito nets could be covered with it, or they could have cloth ankle bands with nootkatone so ticks can’t crawl up your leg. The Department of Defense is also interested in ways to protect military personnel against tick-borne diseases. There are a lot of marketing niches with this.”

Contact: Libby Haydel
Communications Manager
225-578-4840
ehaydel1@lsu.edu

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Category:

mosquitoes, Prevention, research, Ticks, Treatment

Adaptive Immune Response Investigation in Lyme Borreliosis

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38165616/

Adaptive Immune Response Investigation in Lyme Borreliosis

Mihail Pruteanu 1, Armin Schwarzbach 2, Markus Berger 2

Abstract

To diagnose Lyme Borreliosis, it is advised to use an enzyme-linked immunosorbent test to check for serum antibodies specific for Lyme and all tests with positive or ambiguous enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) results being confirmed by immunoblot. This method of measuring the humoral immunity in human fluids (e.g., by ELISA) has provided robust and reproducible results for decades and similar assays have been validated for monitoring of B cell immunity. These immunological tests that detect antibodies to Borrelia burgdorferi are useful in the diagnosis of Borreliosis on a routine basis. The variety of different Borrelia species and their different geographic distributions are the main reasons why standards and recommendations are not identical across all geographic regions of the world. In contrast to humoral immunity, the T cell reaction or cellular immunity to the Borrelia infection has not been well elucidated, but over time with more studies a novel T cell-based assay (EliSpot) has been developed and validated for the sensitive detection of antigen-specific T cell responses to B. burgdorferi. The EliSpot Lyme assay can be used to study the T cell response elicited by Borrelia infections, which bridges the gap between the ability to detect humoral immunity and cellular immunity in Lyme disease. In addition, detecting cellular immunity may be a helpful laboratory diagnostic test for Lyme disease, especially for seronegative Lyme patients. Since serodiagnostic methods of the Borrelia infection frequently provide false positive and negative results, this T cell-based diagnostic test (cellular assay) may help in confirming a Lyme diagnosis. Many clinical laboratories are convinced that the cellular assay is superior to the Western Blot assay in terms of sensitivity for detecting the underlying Borrelia infection. Research also suggests that there is a dissociation between the magnitude of the humoral and the T cell-mediated cellular immune responses in the Borrelia infection. Lastly, the data implies that the EliSpot Lyme assay may be helpful to identify Borrelia infected individuals when the serology-based diagnostic fails to do so. Here in this chapter the pairing of humoral and cellular immunity is employed to evaluate the adaptive response in patients.

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Category:

Lyme, research, Testing

‘Misleading’Letter Urges Support for Pandemic Treaty, As Louisiana Becomes First U.S. State to Reject WHO Power Grab

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/who-power-grab-pandemic-treaty-support-letter/?

‘Misleading’ Letter Urges Support for Pandemic Treaty, as Louisiana Becomes First U.S. State to Reject WHO Power Grab

More than 100 former world leaders and public figures urged WHO member states to finalize a new “pandemic accord,” which the leaders said does not threaten nations’ sovereignty, but critics called the letter misleading because it doesn’t address the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations.

world health organization logo and hands on top of globe

More than 100 former world leaders and public figures are urging the World Health Organization (WHO) member states to finalize a new “pandemic accord” in time for the 77th World Health Assembly, set to take place in Geneva, Switzerland, May 27-June 1.

In an open letter, dated March 20, the leaders wrote:

“A pandemic accord is critical to safeguard our collective future. Only a strong global pact on pandemics can protect future generations from a repeat of the COVID-19 crisis, which led to millions of deaths and caused widespread social and economic devastation.”

Critics of the proposed pandemic accord told The Defender that the letter is deceiving because it addresses the proposed accord, or “Pandemic Treaty,” but doesn’t reference the amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR).

The IHR amendments, proposed in 2023, are being negotiated concurrently with the accord. Critics of the letter said it is meant to deflect attention from what they argue are the more onerous proposals  contained in the IHR amendments.

Dr. David Bell, a public health physician, biotech consultant and former director of Global Health Technologies at Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund, told The Defender the letter is “quite shameful” and “deceitful.”

Bell said:

“[The letter] follows the lead of the director general in misleading the public but claiming, rightly, that the pandemic agreement does not include provisions that hand over authority from countries to the WHO, when these are in the proposed amendments to the IHR that accompanies the pandemic accord.

“The proposed IHR amendments specifically mention border closures, mandated vaccination and other measures now associated with lockdowns. They specifically mention documentation being needed to cross borders and mention digital passports as one of the alternatives.”

Dutch attorney Meike Terhorst told The Defender the open letter “only refers to the pandemic accord to confuse everybody.”

“The real meat is in the IHR amendments, because on the basis of the amendments, the director general of WHO is anticipated to get independent legislative and executive powers while any legal review is made impossible,” Terhorst said. “The secrecy surrounding the drafts suggest that we are dealing with a coup d’état.”

Are negotiations in trouble?

Some critics suggested the open letter may be a sign that negotiations for the pandemic accord are flailing.

“There is no member state consensus on either document,” said Shabnam Palesa Mohamed, executive director of Children’s Health Defense (CHD) Africa and founder of Transformative Health Justice. “With eight weeks to go before the World Health Assembly, the WHO is evidently nervous about the accord being derailed.”

The BMJ reported that “little progress” has been made on the pandemic accord draft, and that the waiving of intellectual property “remains a sticking point for member nations at loggerheads in the discussions.”

“Proponents of the accord fear that the final draft could be watered down in negotiations and that weaker language might result in countries only being recommended to take certain actions rather than being compelled to by international law,” according to The BMJ.

Others noted growing global opposition to the proposed accord and IHR amendments. Iran, New Zealand, Slovakia and the Netherlands recently rejected IHR amendments proposed in 2022, while in South Africa, a “WHO Withdrawal Bill” has been proposed.

In the U.S., the Louisiana Senate voted unanimously on March 26 against allowing the WHO, United Nations and World Economic Forum to wield any influence over the state of Louisiana.

“The fact that all Democrats voted for it indicates how popular the sentiment is with their constituents,” said Dr. Meryl Nass, an internist and founder of Door to Freedom, “I think it sends a message to politicians everywhere that favoring the WHO will be accompanied by great political cost.”

Pandemic accord doesn’t threaten sovereignty — but IHR amendments do

Independent journalist James Roguski told The Defender that the letter from world leaders to the WHO is “mostly correct” as the proposed pandemic accord is not an “attack on national sovereignty.”

However, he and Dr. Kat Lindley, president of the Global Health Project and director of the Global COVID Summit, Lindley pointed out that the IHR amendments do pose a threat to nations’ sovereignty.

Lindley said the IHR amendments will make the WHO the “global authority on health in the event of new pandemics, which they clearly feel will be happening over and over again” and may pave the way for “future vaccine mandates and the imposition of digital health passes.

“If you don’t pay attention to anything else, you must pay attention to Article 18 of the IHR amendments,” Lindley said.

According to Article 18 of the proposed IHR amendments, “Recommendations issued by WHO to States Parties with respect to persons may include the following advice”:

  • Review proof of medical examination and any laboratory analysis.
  • Require medical examinations.
  • Review proof of vaccination or other prophylaxis.
  • Require vaccination or other prophylaxis.
  • Place suspect persons under public health observation.
  • Implement quarantine or other health measures for suspect persons.
  • Implement isolation and treatment where necessary of affected persons.
  • Implement tracing of contacts of suspect or affected persons.
  • Refuse entry of suspect and affected persons.
  • Refuse entry of unaffected persons to affected areas.
  • Implement exit screening and/or restrictions on persons from affected areas.

“Even more troubling,” Roguski said, are proposed amendments to Annex 6 which “empower the WHO to be the sole authority empowered to determine which ‘vaccines’ or other prophylaxis would be deemed to be acceptable for international travel.”

The language in the amendments “clearly changes the relationship the WHO has with the member states,” Lindley said. “Article 1 changes non-binding recommendations to binding obligations.”

Roguski said the pandemic accord is “not about health” but “a trade agreement designed to transfer wealth from the nations of the ‘Global North’ to the oligarchs of the Pharmaceutical Hospital Emergency Industrial Complex in the ‘Global South.’”

Elites ‘clearly in support’ of pandemic accord

The March 20 letter to the WHO was published by Project Syndicate, a commentary website supported by George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the MasterCard Foundation, the World Bank and the Google Digital News Initiative.

The letter’s 105 signatories included former U.K. prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, 23 former national presidents and 22 former prime ministers.

“The ‘elites’ are clearly in support of the ‘pandemic accord’ and one must ask why,” Lindley said. “There need to be more thorough investigations into the financial ties between the WHO, public-private partnerships and governmental contracts.”

Nass told The Defender it was notable that the signatories largely consisted of former politicians.

“The letter was signed primarily by a group of has-been politicians whose globalist credentials have been on display for anyone to see for years now,” Nass said. “I was surprised that the letter’s purveyors could not come up with a more credible group.”

Mohamed, executive director of CHD Africa, said the list of signatories is the “clearest evidence that the treaty serves the socio-economic and geo-political interests of interconnected elitists who will benefit from lucrative contracts, funding, positions and speaking engagements.”

Despite WHO claims that there are no plans for global vaccine passports, Blair has called for the development of a “national digital infrastructure” that countries “will need with these new vaccines.” He previously endorsed The Good Health Pass, a vaccine passport initiative launched by ID2020.

Secrecy surrounding IHR amendments ‘criminal’

Experts told The Defender the WHO is attempting to connect the pandemic accord to the threat of future pandemics in an attempt to shore up support in the face of delays in the negotiation process and growing global opposition.

“It is of interest to note that up until recently ‘pandemics’ were a rare occurrence but according to the WHO and MSM we are hours, days, months away from future ‘Disease X’ that is 20 times more deadly, despite the fact we do not know what it is,” Lindley said.

At the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in January, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus used the threat of a pandemic caused by “Disease X” to call for passage of the pandemic accord.

“There is no logical reason a disease 20 times more virulent will appear out of nowhere, unless it comes from a gain-of-function lab which the WHO proposes to supervise in the February 2024 version of the pandemic accord,” said Nass, who participated in the World Council for Health’s expert hearing on the “WHO power grab” March 26.

Roguski said the ninth meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body, where pandemic accord negotiations are taking place, is scheduled to conclude on March 28. But the negotiations have been “very contentious,” he said. “There is a very good possibility that they will need to schedule additional meetings in April.”

According to Roguski, IHR amendment negotiations are similarly delayed — but are occurring in greater secrecy than pandemic accord amendments. He said the Working Group for the International Health Regulations was required to submit a final package of amendments by Jan. 27, but failed to do so and will convene again April 22-26.

“From the looks of the leaked negotiating text, it seems like it has been simplified in order to ensure passage,” Roguski said. “The secrecy surrounding the proposed amendments to the IHR is literally criminal.”

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

Category:

Activism

Why Was mRNA the Government Choice for COVID?

https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/why-was-mrna-the-government-vaccine?

Why was mRNA the Government Vaccine of Choice for COVID-19?

Massive Public-Private Investment Over Decades was Destined for Deployment
PETER A. MCCULLOUGH, MD, MPH
MAR 28, 2024

John Solomon on Real America’s Voice Just the News asked me why was mRNA chosen over traditional vaccines for the COVID-19 pandemic? My answer goes back many years to the US Department of Defense Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (DARPA) ADEPT PROTECT P3 program which stated in 2012 the US will use mRNA vaccines to end pandemics in 60 days.

Former president Trump and the White House Task Force should have done their homework with a phone calls to DARPA and a few clicks on the internet and told America that mRNA was the plan for many years. It was not developed during the few months of Operation Warp Speed.  (See link for article and 2 Min video)

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Summary:

  • There are 9,613 patents licensed to giants in biotech and the US government
  • BARDA and DARPA have had a torrid love affair with mRNA for decades
  • A retrospective cohort study found the US government invested at least $31.9bn to develop, produce, and purchase mRNA covid-19 vaccines, including sizable investments in the three decades before the pandemic through March 2022. 
  • While the study claims “millions of lives were saved,” the truth is the experimental, COVID gene therapy injections saved ZERO lives.

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Category:

Activism, vaccines, Viruses