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Great info on Wisconsin’s Tick App, latest research about how Lyme outsmarts the immune system, a Spring Lyme conference in La Crosse, WI, and a WI Lyme Walk (TBD).
For more on the tick app: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/05/31/tick-app-wi-tick-chats-testing/
https://wnep.com/2018/10/23/esu-receives-money-for-tick-research-lab/ (News Video here)
SMITHFIELD TOWNSHIP, Pa. — Scientists at East Stroudsburg University’s Northeast Wildlife DNA Lab test ticks year round.
But thanks to state taxpayer money, they will now further their research and surveillance by starting a State Tick Research Lab.
“We were able to secure a half million dollars from the state to start funding our free tick testing service here at the DNA lab,” said Nicole Chinnici, Northeast Wildlife DNA Lab Director.
Nicole Chinnici is the director at the lab. She says this grant money will help pay for tick testing supplies.
“The free testing will cover three bacterial diseases, which includes Lyme disease, and depending on what kinds of ticks you have it will cover others as well as the Powassan virus,” said Chinnici.
Not only will this money allow for free tick testing, but it also allowed for the hiring of two new technicians which will help when thousands of ticks reach this laboratory.
The money will also help support the development of a data website that will provide infection rates, as well as identify areas across the state where ticks are most common.
“We are really at the forefront for forensics, animal forensics, and so to have this money to help us continue to advance tick testing and diagnoses of Lyme disease is really phenomenal,” said President Marcia Welsh, East Stroudsburg University.
If you ever find a tick, you can send it to the lab at East Stroudsburg University to have it identified and tested. You’re asked to wrap it in a plastic sandwich bag.
For the address to the lab, click here.
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**Comment**
This FREE tick testing is ONLY for residents in Pennsylvania. Hopefully, more of this type of thing will spread to other states. They do tick testing for a fee, however.
If interested go here:
http://quantum.esu.edu/dna/testing/
http://quantum.esu.edu/dna/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Tick-submission-form_2013-current.pdf
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/18/climate/moose-ticks.html?
The biggest number of winter ticks that Peter J. Pekins ever found on a moose was about 100,000. But that moose calf was already dead, most likely the victim of anemia, which develops when that many ticks drain a moose’s blood. So it was probably a lowball estimate, because some of the ticks had already detached.
“It’s about as grody a picture as you can imagine on a dead animal,” said Dr. Pekins, a professor of natural resources and the environment at the University of New Hampshire. (A warning: The pictures below are, indeed, grody.)
Between 2014 and 2016, Dr. Pekins counted ticks on moose calves at two locations in New Hampshire and Maine. He wanted to see how the moose were faring, given that climate change has been delaying snow’s arrival in New England’s winters.
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The longer-lasting warmth gives the ticks a leg up as they glom onto the moose, their preferred hosts, in the fall. They then feed through winter and hop off in the spring to lay eggs.
The moose-tracking exploits of Dr. Pekins and his colleagues were published last month in the Canadian Journal of Zoology. They argued that three consecutive years of tick outbreaks “arguably reflects a host-parasite relationship strongly influenced by climate change at the southern fringe of moose habitat.”
While large numbers of ticks, literal bloodsucking parasites, aren’t great for adult moose, they’re especially bad for moose calves, which can die from the onslaught.
With the help of a team that shoots nets from helicopters to catch and tag the calves with radio collars (a process that takes about 15 minutes for the moose and eschews the use of drugs), Dr. Pekins was able to track 179 moose calves. The average number of ticks he found on them was 47,371.
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“Anything over 35,000 is trouble for a calf moose,” he said.
Over the study period, 125 calves died, 70 percent of those being tracked.
In some ways, the moose are a victim of their own success.
“Maine and New Hampshire had less than 50 moose in the 1970s,” Dr. Pekins said. But their numbers have multiplied many times over since then, thanks to improvements in the available habitat and a lack of predators like wolves.
As a result, Maine now has anywhere from 60,000 to 70,000 moose; New Hampshire had as many as 8,000 or 9,000 in the early 2000s, though the numbers now hover around 5,000. And it’s the abundance of moose that enables the ticks to survive.
“You need a lot of moose on the landscape to have a lot of parasites,” Dr. Pekins said. “That’s the host-parasite relationship.”
That relationship was more or less in balance until the changing climate tilted the scales in the ticks’ favor. Over the long term, Dr. Pekins doesn’t expect the moose to die off completely, but there will be fewer of them.
The ticks don’t want the moose to die off completely, either.
“The parasite doesn’t want to kill off its host — that’s bad evolution,” Dr. Pekins said. “Because the parasite loses the game.”
Kendra Pierre-Louis is a reporter on the climate team. Before joining The Times in 2017, she covered science and the environment for Popular Science. @kendrawrites
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**Comment*
Sigh.….here we go again….
According to independent Canadian tick researcher, John Scott, climate change has zippo to do with the proliferation of ticks and the spread of Lyme: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/08/13/study-shows-lyme-not-propelled-by-climate-change/
In fact, warm winters are lethal to ticks.
Black-legged ticks require 14 hours of daylight to molt. If ticks can’t molt, they can’t move on to their next life-cycle. Photoperiod is innate and can not be altered by the climate. He states:
“The hypothesis that I. scapularis ticks will expand further north in the Prairie Provinces because of climate change is not only unscientific, but deceiving.”
Please see link above for numerous reasons why the whole climate change issue is “apocryphal” according to Scott.
October 23, 2018
Scientists and legal scholars question the rationale for the use of insects to disperse infectious GE viruses engineered to edit the chromosomes in plants, warning that the technology could very easily be weaponized
A new DARPA program is the first to propose and fund the development of viral horizontal environmental genetic alteration agents with the capacity to perform genetic engineering in the environment
The $27 million project, called “Insect Allies,” is trying to take advantage of insects’ natural ability to spread crop diseases, but instead of carrying disease, they would spread plant-protective traits
The opinion paper “Agricultural Research, or a New Bioweapon System?” argues that if plant modification were really the ultimate goal, a far simpler and more targeted agricultural delivery system could be used
There are also serious concerns about environmental ramifications, as the insects’ spread cannot be controlled. It would also be impossible to prevent the insects from genetically modifying organic crops
Genetic engineering (GE) is being used in myriad ways these days, despite the fact we know very little about the long-term ramifications of such meddling in the natural order.
For example, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), an arm of the U.S. Department of Defense, is now planning to use insects to deliver GE viruses to crops, with the aim of altering the plant’s genetic traits in the field.
The $27 million DARPA project, called “Insect Allies,” is basically trying to take advantage of insects’ natural ability to spread crop diseases, but instead of carrying disease-causing genes, they would carry plant-protective traits. As explained by The Washington Post:1
“Recent advances in gene editing, including the relatively cheap and simple system known as CRISPR (for clustered regularly interspaced palindromic repeats), could potentially allow researchers to customize viruses to achieve a specific goal in the infected plant.
The engineered virus could switch on or off certain genes that, for example, control a plant’s growth rate, which could be useful during an unexpected, severe drought.”
However, scientists and legal scholars question the rationale for the use of insects to disperse infectious GE viruses engineered to edit the chromosomes in plants, warning that the technology could very easily be weaponized.2,3,4,5
The opinion paper6 “Agricultural Research, or a New Bioweapon System?” published October 4, 2018, in the journal Science questions DARPA’s Insect Allies project, saying it could be perceived as a threat by the international community, and that if plant modification were really the ultimate goal, a far simpler agricultural delivery system could be used.
Jason Delborne, associate professor at North Carolina State University, has expertise in genetic engineering and its consequences. He told Gizmodo:7
“The social, ethical, political and ecological implications of producing HEGAAs [horizontal environmental genetic alteration agents] are significant and worthy of the same level of attention as exploring the science underpinning the potential technology.
The authors argue persuasively that specifying insects as the preferred delivery mechanism for HEGAAs is poorly justified by visions of agricultural applications.
The infrastructure and expertise required for spraying agricultural fields — at least in the U.S. context — is well established, and this delivery mechanism would offer greater control over the potential spread of a HEGAA.”
The team has also created a website8 to accompany the paper, the stated aim of which is “to contribute toward fostering an informed and public debate about this type of technology.” On this site you can also find a link to download the 38-page DARPA work plan. DARPA, meanwhile, insists the project’s goal is strictly to protect the U.S. food supply. A DARPA spokesperson told The Independent:9
“[S]prayed treatments are impractical for introducing protective traits on a large scale and potentially infeasible if the spraying technology cannot access the necessary plant tissues with specificity, which is a known problem.
If Insect Allies succeeds, it will offer a highly specific, efficient, safe and readily deployed means of introducing transient protective traits into only the plants intended, with minimal infrastructure required.”
The release of such insects could “play into longstanding fears among countries that enemies might try to harm their crops,” says Dr. David Relman, a former White House biodefense adviser and professor of medicine and microbiology at Stanford. According to The Associated Press (AP):10
“Guy Reeves, a coauthor of the Science paper and a biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany, says the technology is more feasible as a weapon — to kill plants — than as an agricultural tool. As a result, he said DARPA could be sending an alarming message regardless of its intentions.”
Others are concerned about environmental ramifications, regardless of whether the genetic traits being delivered to the plants are perceived as beneficial or harmful. According to DARPA, none of the insects would be able to survive for more than two weeks, but what if such guarantees fail? What if nature finds a way? If so, the insects’ spread could be near-unlimited.
Gregory Kaebnick, an ethicist at the Hastings Center bioethics research institute in Garrison, New York, told the AP he’s concerned the project may end up causing unforeseen environmental destruction, as insects will be virtually impossible to eradicate once released. If it turns out the genetic modification traits they carry are harmful, there will be no going back.
Yet others, such as Fred Gould, an entomologist at North Carolina State University who chaired a National Academy of Sciences panel on genetically modified food, believe the project’s stated goal of altering genetic traits of plants via insects is near-impossible in the first place.
However, while the research is still in its initial phase, they already have proof of concept. In one test, an aphid infected a mature corn plant with a GE virus carrying a gene for fluorescence, creating a fluorescent corn plant.11
Reeves questions why there’s been virtually no open scientific debate about the technology. According to Reeves, who is an expert on GE insects, the Insect Allies project is “largely unknown even in expert circles,” which in and of itself raises a red flag about its true intent.
He told The Independent, “It is very much easier to kill or sterilize a plant using gene editing than it is to make it herbicide- or insect-resistant.”12 Felix Beck, a lawyer at the University of Freiburg, added:13
“The quite obvious question of whether the viruses selected for development should or should not be capable of plant-to-plant transmission — and plant-to-insect-to-plant transmission — was not addressed in the DARPA work plan at all.”
As explained in the featured paper, the technology DARPA is using is known as horizontal environmental genetic alteration agents or HEGAAs. Essentially, HEGAAs are GE viruses capable of editing the chromosomes of a target species, be it a plant or an animal. The specificity of HEGAAs are dependent on:
The image below illustrates how an insect-dispersed viral HEGAA would disrupt a specific plant gene. As noted on the team’s website:
“Interest in genetically modified viruses, including HEGAAs, largely stems from their rapid speed of action, as infections can sweep quickly through target populations. This same property is also a serious safety concern, in that it makes it hard to predict where viruses geographically disperse to or what species they eventually infect.
Probably due to the complex regulatory, biological, economic and societal implications that need to be considered little progress has been made on how genetically modified viruses should be regulated when the intention is to disperse them in the environment. It is in this context that DARPA presented its Insect Allies work program in November 2016.”
The team also notes the use of HEGAAs are ultimately not likely to be limited to agriculture, which is why it’s so important to have an open discussion about the technology, its potential uses, misuses and ramifications — including unintended ones.
In 2018, three scientific publications discussed the development of “transmissible vaccines,” i.e., vaccines that would be transmissible between humans and therefore would no longer require individual vaccinations. Such products would also remove any possibility of informed consent, which creates a really huge ethical dilemma. In the past decade, at least seven scientific papers have focused on transmissible vaccines.
The team also brings up the obvious point that insects will not be able to distinguish between conventional crops and certified organic crops, which do not permit genetic engineering. Just how are organic farmers to keep these insect vectors from altering their crops? They can’t, and this could effectively destroy the organic industry as we know it.
According to DARPA, the technology does not violate the United Nations (U.N.) Biological Weapons Convention. However, according to the Science paper, it could be in breach of the U.N.’s convention if the research is unjustifiable. Silja Voeneky, a specialist in international law at Freiburg University, told The Independent:14
“Because of the broad ban of the Biological Weapons Convention, any biological research of concern must be plausibly justified as serving peaceful purposes. The Insect Allies Program could be seen to violate the Biological Weapons Convention, if the motivations presented by DARPA are not plausible. This is particularly true considering this kind of technology could easily be used for biological warfare.”
In related news, Simon Terry, executive director of the Sustainability Council of New Zealand, is calling for gene drive technology to be brought under international governance,15,16,17 as this kind of technology can make an entire species infertile in a relatively short amount of time, depending on the species life cycle.
However, there’s no known way to control it. As an example, while New Zealand would like to use gene drive to eradicate possums, it would be virtually impossible to prevent the spread of the gene drive to other areas, and in Australia, the possum is a protected species.
Gene drive has also been considered as an answer for barnyard grass, a pesky weed among Australian farmers, but a prized commodity in India. Likewise, Palmer Amaranth is considered a weed in the U.S. but an important food source in Central America, Africa, India and China. As noted by Terry, “One man’s pest could be another’s desired plant or animal,” and creating national regulations for a technology that can wipe out an entire species globally simply isn’t enough.
In a 2016 report,18 the Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) discussed the creation of transgenic mosquitoes, carrying genes against a malarial pathogen. Using CRISPR/Cas9, a gene drive was created that makes virtually all progeny of the male transgenic mosquitoes’ carriers of this antimalaria gene. However, the transgene was found to be unstable in female mosquitoes, and key safety issues were also raised, including:
According to ISIS, answering these questions is “crucial in the light of the instability of the gene drive in transgenic female mosquitoes.” As noted in the report:
“When these females bite animals including humans, there is indeed the possibility of horizontal gene transfer of parts, or the entire gene-drive construct, with potentially serious effects on animal and human health.
Cas9 nuclease could insert randomly or otherwise into the host genome, causing insertion mutagenesis that could trigger cancer or activate dominant viruses …
Finally, the ecological risks of gene drives are enormous … As the gene drive can in principle lead to the extinction of a species, this could involve the species in its native habitat as well as where it is considered invasive. As distinct from conventional biological control, which can be applied locally, there is no way to control gene flow …
[B]ecause the CRISPR/Cas gene drive remains fully functional in the mutated strain after it is created, the chance of off-target mutations also remain and the likelihood increases with every generation.
‘If there is any risk of gene flow between the target species and other species, then there is also a risk that the modified sequence could be transferred and the adverse trait manifested in nontarget organisms.’ (This commentary has not even begun to consider horizontal gene flow, which would multiply the risks manyfold.)”
James Stack, a plant pathologist at Kansas State University and a member on the advisory panel of DARPA’s Insect Allies project, believes the concerns raised in the Science paper are unfounded. He told The Washington Post:19
“I don’t understand the level of concern raised in this paper, and to jump ahead and accuse DARPA of using this as a screen to develop biological weapons is outrageous.
There’s risk inherent in life and you just have to manage it well. And I think as we move into a more crowded planet it’s going to put increasing demands on our food systems, our water systems. We’re going to need all the tools in the tool box that we possibly have.”
Unfortunately, recent history demonstrates we’ve not been very capable of managing these kinds of man-made risks very well at all. Just look at Roundup-resistant GMO food, for example, or electromagnetic field radiation from cellphones and wireless technologies, both of which have been shown to cause significant health and environmental problems since their inception.
There’s virtually no evidence to suggest mankind is very good at predicting the potential outcomes of our technological advancements, so unleashing gene-altering technologies that cannot be recalled or reversed seems foolish in the extreme. As mentioned, the Insect Allies project may be particularly detrimental for organic and biodynamic farming, as it would be completely impossible to prevent these gene-altering insect vectors from infecting organic crops.
Let’s face it: We’re surrounded by threats, some of them unseen, that are putting us at risk of ill health. GMOs. Processed foods. EMFs. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It’s at this time that most people seek guidance to help guard against these perils and secure their well-being. Oftentimes, it seems like an impossible feat.
But here’s a secret: The most complex of tasks can become easier and simpler if you take them one step at a time. If you’re truly committed to take control of your health, then my 30-Day Resolution Guide is exactly what you need. This step-by-step plan outlines the most important strategies for achieving optimal wellness, which include:
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**Comment**
I’ve been writing about this for some time and am very concerned about the law of unintended consequences with this technology. Please share this information far and wide because if we don’t, we could find ourselves precisely in the same situation we are in with vaccines (little to no safety studies and serious health ramifications – more coming out daily).
Besides crops, mosquitos, & possums, work is being done on both mice and mosquitoes in efforts of eradicating Lyme/MSIDS. For that info:
https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/10/11/new-england-scientists-explore-new-method-for-eradicating-lyme-disease/ “There are a lot of microbes in ticks, not just the Borrelia microbe that is associated with Lyme disease,” said Dr. Rawls, medical director for Vital Plan, an herbal supplement company. “The problem with the mouse thing is that even if it is successful, and you block the transmission of Borrelia and prevent the spread of that variety of Lyme disease, perhaps that opens the door to something worse, like Rickettsia, (a microbe associated with the spread of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever).”
How important are mice anyway? Independent Canadian tick researcher, John Scott, has shown established populations of deer ticks in Manitoba as well as in insular, hyper-endemic Corkscrew Island, yet both are devoid of white-footed mice. He points out that there are numerous reservoir hosts that must be considered including other mammals, birds, and reptiles. https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/08/13/study-shows-lyme-not-propelled-by-climate-change/
https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2015/12/28/frankinbugs/
https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/04/05/release-of-frankinbugs-one-step-closer/
https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/06/21/first-frankenbugs-now-frankinmice/
https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/07/10/wolbachia-the-next-frankenstein/
Numerous studies show unexpected insertions and deletions which can translate into possible toxins, allergens, carcinogens, and other changes. Science can not predict the real-life consequences on global pattens of gene function.
Even the European union has ruled CRISPR plants are GMO’s and should be subjected to the same strict rules: https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/611716/in-blow-to-new-tech-europe-court-decides-crispr-plants-are-gmos/
“It means for all the new inventions … you would need to go through the lengthy approval process of the European Union,” Kai Purnhagen, an expert at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, told Nature.
