Archive for the ‘Lyme’ Category

The Smear That Buried BITTEN

https://krisnewby.substack.com/p/the-smear-that-buried-bitten?

The Smear that Buried BITTEN

Reframe the claim. Call it a conspiracy. Never release the files.

Kris Newby

Sept. 29, 2026

I spent five years researching Bitten, my book about the U.S. military’s Cold War bug-borne weapons program and the unresolved questions surrounding the first investigation into Lyme disease.

At the center of the story is Willy Burgdorfer, the NIH scientist celebrated for identifying the bacterium that causes Lyme disease. Before the book came out, few people knew that Burgdorfer also spent part of his career working with Fort Detrick’s entomological warfare division. Researchers there studied how fleas, mosquitoes, and ticks could be infected with pathogens and used as weapons.

Late in life, Burgdorfer told me he had found a second unusual microbe during the Lyme investigation—one he believed deserved far more scrutiny. He suggested it may have been connected to earlier weapons research and said he had been ordered to set it aside. Letters and laboratory notes I later found supported that account.

To be clear, Bitten did not prove that Lyme disease was a bioweapon. It asked a narrower and more urgent question: whether another potentially disease-causing microbe found in Lyme-area ticks and humans had been ignored, hidden, or never fully investigated.

That distinction matters. When Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) called for a congressional inquiry in 2019 into whether the military had used ticks in biological-weapons research, the public deserved a careful examination of the records. Instead, the debate was quickly reframed around a claim I never made.

Tick researcher Sam Telford III published a Washington Post op-ed titled, “No, Lyme disease is not an escaped military bioweapon, despite what conspiracy theorists say.” A link in the article pointed readers to a review of my book.

I saw this as a classic disinformation move—reframe the argument to include something false, then attribute it to the reporter and brand the person as a conspiracy theorist. Casual readers never get past the headline and a false narrative is burned into memory.

The stakes are not academic. The release of engineered or unnatural biological agents can have long-term effects on people and the environment. Continued secrecy around the tick-borne weapons program still obstructs a timely response to a growing public-health crisis.

A conversation with the author

I called Telford after reading the piece to discuss statements I considered false or misleading. When I asked whether he had read Bitten, he said, “No. I don’t have time to read books.” I offered to send him a copy. “You can, but I’ll probably shred it,” he replied. That exchange stayed with me: an op-ed designed to dismiss my book was written by someone who told me he had not read it.

(See link for article)

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**Comment**

Sadly, we go onto learn that publications would not fact-check the errors in Telford’s op-ed.

Newby kept digging and points out that Telford, a tick researcher at Tufts University didn’t disclose that he was the director of Tuft’s New England Regional Biosafety Laboratory, located in a semi-rural New England town about 40 miles west of Boston. This biolevel-3 lab works on biodefense, dangerous pathogens, and high-containment laboratory operations, including anthrax and tick-borne diseases.

COVID exposed a much bigger reason for the lack of disclosure.

The ‘powers that be’ do not want the eye of Mordor swinging onto tick weaponization because it would draw attention to dangerous work at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories, including the importing of foreign pathogens exposed a couple of months ago in the Munster affair, described here and here, not to mention the fact everyone’s dog knows now that COVID was created in a lab and either escaped or was intentionally released.

The questions raised decades ago continue to remain unresolved thanks to Telford and others’ deflection.

For more:

Category:

Activism, Lyme, research, Testing, Ticks, Tularemia

Lyme, Dementia, and the Tests Nobody Thinks to Run

Lyme, Dementia, and the Tests Nobody Thinks to Run

Sept. 2026

Dr. Hartman and Dr. Horowitz walk through the 16 factor MSIDS model, why chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia sit at the top of the list of diagnoses worth reconsidering, and the brain markers Dr. Horowitz now asks physicians to run before and after treatment. They also cover how Lyme testing differs across labs, the dapsone protocol he developed over a decade, and why he believes the same handful of factors keeps surfacing in dementia, autism, ADHD and long COVID. That argument sits at the center of Ending Chronic Illness, his new book from Simon & Schuster, and this conversation is for patients who have seen many doctors without getting answers as well as clinicians willing to widen what they measure before deciding what a patient has. —

Dr. Horowitz developed an empirically validated questionnaire for Lyme-MSIDS which is more accurate than current testing. He also wrote: “Why We Can’t Get Better,” an excellent resource for both patients and practitioners. He states that it’s easier to obtain medically assisted death than treatment for chronic Lyme disease, and wrote a thoroughly sourced article showing that the debate about chronic Lyme is entirely political and not based on science.

CHAPTERS

00:00 — Why Lyme may sit under the dementia numbers

02:24 — The scale of the epidemic and why case counts diverge

06:57 — Reading a Lyme test differently

11:53 — Sixteen nails in the foot

12:44 — The first live human case linking Lyme and Alzheimer’s

16:03 — Why the same 16 factors keep appearing

21:26 — How the dapsone protocol was discovered

24:03 — Brain markers, and amyloid as a defense

27:04 — Autism, ADHD, and measuring inflammation first

36:30 — Which diagnoses should prompt a tick-borne workup

41:14 — Dapsone: side effects, risk, and benefit

50:27 — Which tests to order, and Ending Chronic Illness

Category:

Lyme, Psychological Aspects, Testing, Treatment

After These Young People Died, Postmortems Found an Unnerving Parasite Link

After These Young People Died, Postmortems Found an Unnerving Parasite Link

04 September 2026

ByEsra Öz

After These Young People Died, Postmortems Found an Unnerving Parasite Link (Breitschwerdt et al., Parasites & Vectors, 2026, CC BY 4.0.)

He had been athletic and healthy. Then came years of exhaustion, pain, memory problems, and psychiatric symptoms. Eventually, he had to leave college.

By the time the 27-year-old died, six years of illness and specialist care had failed to restore his health.

Tests performed after his death revealed DNA from two species of Babesia, tiny parasites that infect red blood cells, and Bartonella henselae, the bacterium that causes cat-scratch disease.

His was one of six cases in a postmortem investigation driven by families still seeking answers about their children’s illnesses.

Researchers confirmed DNA from one or both groups of microbes in five individuals.

The discovery left a crucial question unanswered: what role, if any, had these infections played in their illnesses?

The individuals were aged 14 to 30, and all had experienced chronic illness and suicidal thoughts or behaviors.

Four died by suicide, one through medical assistance in dying, and another from a severe disorder involving excessive immune activation.

Their parents contacted Edward Breitschwerdt, an infectious disease researcher at North Carolina State University, after learning about his team’s work on Bartonella and neurological illness. (See link for article)

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**Comment**

This is the perfect article to follow up on the research on ‘PTLDS’ as it wonderfully shows how these pathogens are hard to find let alone effectively treat but are causing needless suicides and unbelievable suffering, due to an old faulty dogma that refuses to go away.

Important excerpt:

“They supplied medical histories and arranged for postmortem samples to reach his laboratory. Some had already been tested or treated for these infections while alive. The investigation was therefore not the first indication of infection in every case. At the laboratory, the initial search returned no clear answers. The researchers analyzed 125 DNA extracts from blood, laboratory blood cultures, tissues, and other body fluids. Initial quantitative PCR screening, which searches for selected genetic sequences, was negative throughout. Digital PCR, which divides samples into many tiny reactions, then produced faint signals in some samples. None reached the study’s threshold for a positive result. Additional targeted tests and DNA sequencing, which reads genetic material to identify organisms, provided confirmation.”

These poor folks would have been ignored by most researchers after the PCR screening, but Bart guru, Dr. Ed Breitschwerdt, is no dummy and kept digging. Notice they did additional ‘targeted’ tests AND DNA sequencing. Mainstream research simply quits looking after using tests that are wrong nearly 90% of the time.

In response to the question of whether the DNA points to an active infection at the time of death, Breitschwerdt said that detecting a known pathogen’s DNA in clinical specimens is medically accepted as evidence of “active infection.

Yet – for some reason, this ‘medically accepted’ evidence does NOT hold true for Lyme/MSIDS. It’s the perfect quagmire with no end in sight.

While this was an ‘observational study’, not a prospective case-controlled study, Breitschwerdt states:

“I think the best interpretation is that infections with vector-borne pathogens that have evolved to induce persistent infections in animals and human patients are not a current diagnostic consideration in patients with chronic illnesses or neuropsychiatric symptoms.”

For more:

Category:

Babesia, Bartonella, Inflammation, Lyme, Psychological Aspects, research, Testing

Designing Studies For Post-Treatment Lyme Disease and Other Infection-Associated Chronic Illnesses

https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/149/6/1842/8586348

Designing studies for post-treatment Lyme disease and other infection-associated chronic illnesses 

Paul M Arnaboldi, Jacqueline Becker, Avindra Nath, Patricia K Coyle, Andrew Handel, Timothy J Sellati, Maria Gomes-Solecki, Sandra Garcet, Marianne K Henderson, Piper Mullins,… Show more

Brain, Volume 149, Issue 6, June 2026, Pages 1842–1859, https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awag016

Published: 18 May 2026

Abstract

Infection-associated chronic illnesses (IACIs) encompass a spectrum of poorly understood syndromes often marked by significant neurologic and multisystem symptoms following an infectious event.

This review focuses on several diseases representative of the IACI spectrum. These are post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome (PTLDS), long COVID, myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and multiple sclerosis (MS). Their clinical and biological complexity, combined with a lack of clear diagnostic criteria and objective available laboratory biomarkers, makes them difficult to distinguish from conditions with overlapping features. This presents challenges for research studies, as well as diagnosis and clinical management. This diagnostic ambiguity, coupled with heterogeneous patient presentations, has led to challenges in research, including misclassification of study participants and inconsistent or irreproducible findings. Some PTLDS research exemplifies these issues, which also extend to other IACIs.

To advance the field, we highlight key methodological refinements and approaches for studying IACIs, including rigorous participant selection, standardized sample collection protocols, and the use of appropriate control groups, including those with microbiologic proof of the initial infection when known and technologically feasible. We also address broader influences on research quality, such as stigma, historical neglect, and the urgency to find treatments, which have contributed to the proliferation of poorly controlled studies and questionable practices. Drawing lessons from past challenges, we propose a path forward grounded in fit-for-purpose methodological rigor to improve scientific understanding and support evidence-based therapeutic development for IACIs. (See link for full article)

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**Comment**

I’m not going to do a full write up of this, but am simply going to point out an error right away in paragraph two which states, “antibiotic therapy is effective for clearing the bacterium.” For years research has shown that this is simply not the case with a subset of patients. There are numerous reasons for this including the involvement of coinfections antibiotics won’t touch, and using an ineffective antibiotic, for the wrong duration of time as research has shown many of these pathogens have the ability to sequester in tissues in a dormant state when threatened by treatment only to reemerge later when conditions are favorable. Again, for a vast majority of patients who are infected with multiple pathogens simultaneously, an antiquated and ineffective CDC monotherapy simply will not and can not work.

As I’ve written previously, I take issue with the accepted post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome (PTLDS) moniker since the ‘post treatment’ is based upon the entirely false premise that 10 days of doxycycline ‘cures’ Lyme disease. This tenet has been proven false again and again yet is regurgitated as an unquestionable rule. All you have to do is look around and see thousands still suffering after this supposed ‘gold standard’ therapy.

The authors also state that ‘Chronic Lyme Disease’ (CLD) is ‘used by some to describe individuals with a vague array of symptoms, frequently lacking documentation of exposure to Bb.

So, in paragraph two they already tip their hand that they are simply old school players who buy the clap-trap that Lyme is simple to identify, prove, and treat when everyone and their dog knows this belief belongs in the same category as pixie dust. A test that can be wrong nearly 90% of the time is no test that should be taken seriously by anyone. Diagnosis remains a ‘clinical’ one and anyone who says other wise is an ostrich with their head in the sand.

Important excerpt:

“In this review, we focus on and refer to PTLDS using criteria proposed and generally accepted by most academic and government agencies.4,9-11 Individuals with PTLDS had laboratory and clinically supported evidence of B. burgdorferi infection. They received appropriate early antibiotic therapy9,12 and continued to have or develop new symptoms within 6 months of infection that lasted for a period of at least 6 months, resulting in impaired or declining function.”

This is all I need to know. They will find nothing of value for sick patients. Zip. Nadda.

Until the world wakes up to the uniqueness of this complex illness, we simply circle the drain.

For more:

Category:

Lyme, research

Chronic Lyme, Morgellons & the Fight For Better Care

This week on What the Morgs?, host Britt Girvan sits down with Dr. Raphael Stricker, a physician at Union Square Medical Associates in San Francisco and longtime advocate for patients with Lyme disease and tick-borne illness. Dr. Stricker is a past President of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS), serves on the board of LymeDisease.org and the Lyme Disease Advisory Committee, and has authored more than 200 medical publications.

In this episode, Britt and Dr. Stricker discuss the challenges surrounding Lyme disease diagnosis and treatment, chronic Lyme symptoms, current vaccine research, tick-borne co-infections, Morgellons disease, and the barriers many patients face when searching for answers and appropriate care.

Topics Discussed:

-Lyme disease diagnosis, chronic symptoms, and common misconceptions

Dr. Stricker discusses the limitations he sees in current Lyme disease testing, what can make diagnosis difficult, how chronic symptoms are defined, and why patients with persistent symptoms may struggle to receive appropriate care. He also shares his perspective on the current Lyme disease vaccine landscape.

-The connection between Lyme disease and Morgellons disease Britt and Dr. Stricker explore Morgellons disease, the physical symptoms patients experience, research examining Morgellons fibers and skin lesions, and the history of patients being dismissed or characterized as delusional. They also discuss the importance of clinicians taking patients’ experiences seriously and continuing to investigate the condition.

-Co-infections, treatment approaches, and neurological symptoms Dr. Stricker discusses current research into tick-borne co-infections such as Babesiosis, his use of combination antibiotic therapy, and approaches used in his practice for patients experiencing neurological symptoms such as brain fog and cognitive difficulties. He also explains why treatment can vary significantly from one patient to another.

About What The Morgs? Podcast: What The Morgs? is a podcast for people navigating Lyme and Morgellons disease. Hosted by Britt Girvan, the show is built on a mission to support, educate, and empower those affected—turning personal struggle into shared strength and purpose. What The Morgs? Website: https://whatthemorgs.com/

For more:

Another Lyme OspA Vaccine Whitewash
The meta-analysis by Zhao and colleagues comes to the conclusion that “the OspA vaccine against Lyme disease is safe and its immunogenicity and efficacy have been verified.” The authors arrive at this sunny conclusion by excluding 99.6% of published articles that demonstrate potential problems with the OspA vaccine. Furthermore, the authors ignore peer-reviewed studies, FDA regulatory meetings and legal proceedings that point to major problems with OspA vaccine safety (1-3). This whitewash bodes ill for future Lyme vaccine candidates because it fosters disregard for vaccine safety among Lyme vaccine manufacturers and mistrust among potential Lyme vaccinees.

Category:

Lyme, Morgellons, Treatment, vaccines