Episode 595: Can Lyme Affect Folate in the Brain? Dr. Lindsey Wells on Autism, PANS/PANDAS & FRAA
What if some of the depression, anxiety, brain fog, cognitive dysfunction, OCD, speech changes, and other neuropsychiatric symptoms experienced by people with Lyme and other vector-borne diseases involve more than the infection itself?
In this episode of the Tick Boot Camp Podcast, Matt Sabatello sits down with Dr. Lindsey Wells, ND, a Connecticut naturopathic physician whose work focuses heavily on children with Lyme Disease, PANS/PANDAS, autism spectrum disorder, neurodevelopmental conditions, and other vector-borne diseases.
Her study explored an intriguing question: could some people with Lyme disease, Bartonella, Babesia, or other vector-borne infections also have an immune-mediated problem that prevents enough folate from reaching the brain?
The findings open an important new area of investigation. (See link for article and interview)
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**Comment**
The study found that nearly 62% of patients with tick borne illness tested positive for folate receptor alpha autoantibodies.
The study also found that Bartonella was the most common individual infection identified among FRAA-positive patients.
Important excerpt:
She discusses research suggesting that proteins associated with animal dairy may share similarities with folate receptor structures. Through a molecular mimicry mechanism, antibodies generated against those proteins could potentially cross-react with folate receptors.
Dr. Wells therefore commonly incorporates dairy removal when addressing FRAA-positive patients.
She also discusses clinical observations suggesting that FRAA levels can fluctuate and may rise during periods of infection or physiological stress.
Another important point is a routine folate blood test can not determine FRAA status. The FRAT Folate Receptor Autoantibody Test, a specialty blood test designed to detect autoantibodies to folate receptor alpha is required.
Dr. Wells has seen clinical improvements in these patients in anxiety, OCD, cognition, communication, and other neuropsch symptoms by using folinic acid (Leucovorin) as it utilizes another folate transport mechanism to deliver folate to the CNS.
HHS Launches Agency-Wide Actions to Strengthen Vaccine Injury Research, Reporting, and Patient Care
WASHINGTON, D.C.—OCTOBER 8, 2026— The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) this week launched a series of actions to strengthen how the federal government identifies, documents, investigates, and responds to health problems reported following vaccination, with a focus on improving patient care and generating better evidence about potential vaccine-related injuries.
To address health problems Americans report after vaccinations, HHS:
Opened a new National Institutes of Health (NIH) clinic dedicated to studying and caring for patients experiencing health problems following vaccination;
Proposed reimbursing physicians for reporting suspected vaccine-related injuries to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) through a new Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) policy, bringing vaccine reporting in Medicare in line with typical Medicare reimbursement policies;
Will require electronic health records to capture vaccine-related adverse events so that information can follow patients across the health care system; and
Is modernizing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) VAERS to make reporting simpler and improve the tools available to researchers and medical professionals investigating potential safety signals.
“We must listen to patients and families who report vaccine injuries—not dismiss or gaslight them,” said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “President Trump and I are building a health system that takes them seriously, follows the evidence, and uses what we learn to make vaccines safer. This is how we earn back trust in our public health institutions.”
NIH Opens Clinic for Patient Care and Research
On October 5, NIH opened a new clinic dedicated to studying and caring for patients experiencing health problems following vaccination. HHS and NIH leaders marked the opening with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at NIH’s Bethesda campus.
The clinic brings specialized patient care and scientific investigation together, allowing NIH clinicians and researchers to evaluate patients, study their experiences, investigate potential causes, and identify better approaches to care. By connecting patients directly with clinicians and researchers, NIH will expand access to evaluation and care while advancing scientific understanding of health problems reported following vaccination.
CMS Proposes Reimbursing Physicians for VAERS Reporting
For the first time, CMS has proposed reimbursing physicians for the time they spend submitting reports of suspected vaccine-related injuries to VAERS, bringing vaccine reporting in Medicare in line with typical Medicare reimbursement policies.
VAERS relies on reports from health care professionals, patients, caregivers, vaccine manufacturers, and others to help identify potential vaccine safety concerns. CMS proposes the reimbursement policy to reduce barriers to physician reporting and encourage health care professionals to document suspected adverse events following vaccination.
Electronic Health Records to Capture Vaccine-Related Adverse Events
Federal health information technology standards overseen by the HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology will now require electronic health records to capture vaccine-related adverse events so that this information can follow patients across the health care system.
The requirement will give health care professionals a more complete picture of a patient’s medical history and reduce the need for patients to repeatedly recount the same information when receiving care from different providers.
CDC Modernizing VAERS
CDC is modernizing VAERS to make adverse-event reporting simpler, more accessible, and easier to use.
In August, CDC solicited bids for a new contract to overhaul the system. On September 28, CDC announced a new contract to make VAERS accessible on mobile devices and improve the tools available to researchers and medical professionals investigating potential safety signals. Earlier this year, CDC also added a VAERS QR code to Vaccine Information Statements provided to parents and patients for each vaccine administered.
Together, these Department-wide actions will connect patient care, physician reporting, medical records, clinical research, and federal safety monitoring. They will help HHS better identify and investigate potential vaccine injuries, improve care for patients, and use what it learns to strengthen vaccine safety.
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**Comment**
Not to be a ‘Debbie Downer,’ but I’m not expecting much from this. The fact the COVID kill shots are till being pushed tells me everything I need to know.
The ULTIMATE PHARMA POWER GRAB: New Bill Aims to Strip CDC Oversight and Automate Vaccine Approvals
Del Bigtree sounds the alarm on S.3323, warning that this legislation is an open play for COMPLETE PHARMACEUTICAL CONTROL over every vaccine decision made in America.
Oct. 12, 2026
In this crucial clip from The HighWire, Del Bigtree exposes S.3323, the Family Vaccine Protection Act, a dangerous legislative maneuver designed to hand total power over U.S. vaccine policy directly to pharmaceutical manufacturers.
Under the bill, the CDC director would be stripped of independent oversight, legally required to automatically adopt Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommendations unless the agency can clear an onerous burden of proof and publish its review.
Additionally, the legislation forces ACIP to fast-track newly licensed vaccines and new indications based strictly on the manufacturer’s timeline.
Bigtree warns that this is a calculated, aggressive play for absolute corporate dominance over our public health programs, and that the public must mobilize to push back immediately.
Did industry capture help silence COVID shot safety warnings? The BMJ’s findings demand an answer from lawmakers.
The Independent Medical Alliance (IMA), a national coalition of independent physicians, researchers and clinicians, today called on Congress to end the regulatory capture that may have contributed to the COVID vaccine safety failures documented by The BMJ.
The BMJ found that CDC and FDA officials were warned that the data mining tool they relied on to scan vaccine injury reports was blind to signals from the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA shots. Officials kept the tool and told the FDA scientist who raised the problem to back off. Then they assured the public there were no safety signals.
Pfizer and Moderna had record years. Pfizer’s Comirnaty brought in roughly $37 billion to $38 billion in each of 2021 and 2022. Moderna went from $803 million in revenue in 2020 to more than $18 billion in 2021, almost entirely from Spikevax.
The CDC didn’t run its second promised analysis until 2022. When it did, the analysis flagged myocarditis and other events as safety signals week after week, even as the CDC director publicly described the results as showing nothing unexpected.
Throughout the rollout, the federal government acted as regulator, largest buyer, liability shield, and, with Moderna, development partner. Several senior officials who oversaw these products later took high-paying jobs in the pharmaceutical industry.
“Congress needs to connect the dots and find out exactly where the pressure to overlook this data came from,” said Dr. Joseph Varon, President and Chief Medical Officer of the Independent Medical Alliance. “Frontline doctors, me included, were speaking up about the injuries we were seeing from the COVID shot. They used flawed FDA and CDC data to shut us down.”
IMA is calling on Congress to enact five reforms.
1. Separate the functions. The FDA’s biologics center authorized the mRNA shots and also controlled the safety analysis that could have raised questions about them. The CDC promoted vaccine uptake while co-running VAERS. Post-market vaccine safety should sit in an office that does not answer to the people responsible for vaccination rates, and whose findings cannot be overruled because they might fuel “rhetoric.”
2. Slow the revolving door. Senior officials who personally handled authorization, labeling or safety-signal decisions for a class of products should be barred for a set number of years from taking a paycheck, consulting contract or board seat with any manufacturer of that class. The FDA should also publish an annual accounting of where its departing medical reviewers go.
3. Make safety analyses public from day one. Any emergency product that floods VAERS should automatically trigger at least two pre-specified data mining methods, including one designed to catch effects shared across a product class. Post weekly results to a public docket the same week they’re produced. If a method is known to be insensitive, every official statement that cites it should say so.
4. Protect the scientist who brings bad news. Ana Szarfman was a career FDA officer. She was told to hold off, and when she persisted, to stop. Congress should give federal safety scientists who flag defects in active surveillance systems statutory protection, including a private right of action if they are removed from the work for speaking up.
5. Put practicing physicians in the room. Safety rules that affect every household shouldn’t be written only by people who will never treat the 24-year-old with chest pain. Frontline doctors need a real seat at the table.
“We’re done accepting ‘trust us’ from agencies that kept a broken alarm running and then pointed to the silence,” Varon said. “If they want the public’s trust back, they can start by taking the fox out of the henhouse.”
The BMJ investigation is available at bmj.com. To arrange an interview with one of our doctors, contact Lynne@imahealth.org.
An open letter to Springer Nature, ACM, Sage, and The BMJ, exposing discrepancies between their published claims and editorial correction policies—with highlighted policy-versus-passage exhibits and a demand for stronger scientific accountability and the issuance of formal corrections.
This investigation is part of a broader effort to establish accountability for the use of misinformation designations against identifiable Americans.
In September 2026, we launched Restore the First, a national citizens’ coalition bringing together 20 organizations and eight independent media outlets to address censorship, government accountability, and enforceable protections for First Amendment rights.
The coalition was convened by six Americans named in the original “Disinformation Dozen” report. Our work now extends beyond the conduct of government agencies and technology platforms to a question of scientific accountability: What happens when published research perpetuates inaccurate or unsupported allegations against the very people targeted for censorship?
We are calling on scientific publishers to examine the documented discrepancies, correct consequential errors, and strengthen their correction policies so that no individual is denied an impartial review because of their views or reputation.
The institutions that claim authority to identify misinformation must themselves be accountable for the accuracy of their claims.
The Organization Behind the Blacklist Now Faces Federal Scrutiny
In a striking development, Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate—the organization responsible for the original “Disinformation Dozen” campaign—is now the subject of U.S. government deportation proceedings. In September 2026, a federal district court dismissed his lawsuit challenging the government’s actions, and Ahmed appealed.
Although these immigration proceedings do not constitute a judicial finding that CCDH’s research was false, they place renewed scrutiny on an organization whose allegations helped shape media coverage, government pressure, and subsequent academic publications.
The question for scientific publishers is unavoidable: Did they independently scrutinize CCDH’s evidence before lending their institutional authority to allegations against identifiable Americans?
The credibility of a scientific claim must rest on its evidence—not on the influence or perceived authority of the organization promoting it. (See link for article)
The Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) requires that advisory committees serving the executive branch operate with strict public transparency, establishing that meetings must generally be open to public attendance and announced in advance via the Federal Register.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) states in its September 9, 2026, shutdown contingency plan that its pandemic preparedness agency will suspend Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) execution and congressionally mandated preparedness evaluations while continuing to negotiate, award, and manage biodefense contracts. You can contact HHS here.
They Built a Machine to Treat You as a Terrorist Threat. The Justice Department Just Published the Blueprints.
Five years ago I warned that the government was preparing to treat people who questioned COVID policy as a domestic-terror problem. The receipts are in.
Five years ago I warned that the government was preparing to treat people who questioned COVID policy as a domestic-terror problem. A 273-page DOJ report, released October 5, 2026, now shows exactly how it was done, who was targeted, and why it should matter to every reader of this newsletter.
On August 13, 2021, the Department of Homeland Security issued a terrorism bulletin that listed “grievances over public health safety measures and perceived government restrictions” among the drivers of domestic terrorism, and promised to “identify and evaluate” online activity “associated with the spread of disinformation, conspiracy theories, and false narratives.”
The next day I published a piece on GreenMedInfo saying plainly what the bulletin implied: that people who questioned, resisted, or disobeyed COVID restrictions, or who questioned the vaccines, were being moved into the category of potential domestic terrorists. I wrote that the people being described this way were mostly mothers and fathers, many with vaccine-injured children, who were questioning the medical system for the first time in their lives.
I was told that was paranoid. And that I was a “super-spreader” of dangerous misinformation.
On October 5, 2026, the Department of Justice released a report by its Weaponization Working Group, with 250 pages of internal emails attached, showing what happened in the ten weeks after that bulletin. I have reviewed all 273 pages. This is what they say, in plain language, and what it means for you.
The machine is not partisan and it is not gone. Tip portals, threat tags, private “NGO reporting” contracts, and counter-misinformation offices are infrastructure. They outlive the administration that built them. The only reason we can read these emails is that one administration chose to release documents about the previous one. The next one can choose otherwise. (See link for chronology as well as steps that need to be taken)
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**Comment**
Ji says the following steps are crucial so history doesn’t repeat itself:
Extend the file review and apology process to ANYONE whose name is on the ‘naughty’ list.
Release the communications.
Make it illegal to rebuild. The Senate Commerce Committee has already advanced S. 4749, the JAWBONE Act, which would bar federal officials from coercing platforms to suppress lawful speech. Call your senators and ask them to pass it. Then ask your representative for a House companion. Restore the First, has scripts and a lookup tool.
Join Stand For Health freedom and take action with their advocacy tools. And share the platform widely with those you know who are.
I encourage you to read Sayer Ji’s article: The Plague Panic & Vaccines Were Ready Before the Diagnosis. In it you will learn that within 72 hours of a Siberian lab worker dying without a plague diagnosis, vaccine stocks shot up 20%, proving a fear narrative and countermeasure economy are fully built and waiting to be set in motion at any time by an unresolved death, long before any evidence.This is what should frighten you.
Russia Plague Mystery: Separating Fact From Social Media Hype
IMA’s Dr. Ryan Cole says Russia’s suspected plague death is unconfirmed and not an outbreak. After COVID, Americans should demand evidence before fear.
IMA Head of Medical and Scientific Affairs Dr. Ryan Cole joined The National News Desk to separate fact from fiction in reports of a suspected plague death in Russia. A young woman who worked at a plague research laboratory in Siberia died after developing severe pneumonia, but testing has not confirmed plague. Dr. Cole explains that the story first spread through a Telegram channel, and that 90% of the roughly 200 people placed under observation have already been released. One death, he notes, does not make an outbreak.
Dr. Cole also takes on social media posts linking the case to an experimental mRNA plague vaccine, which he points out has only been studied in animal models. He explains that pneumonic plague rarely spreads from person to person, is treatable with antibiotics when caught early, and circulates on every continent except Australia among rodents and fleas most people rarely encounter. Looking back at COVID, when conclusions were drawn before the evidence was in, he urges Americans to demand evidence before believing a viral headline.
Check out these related resources from IMA below, followed by the full segment transcript.
USDA Ordered 6 Million Doses of ‘Experimental’ Plague Vaccine the Same Month DEFUSE Proposed Spraying Its Carrier on Bats
The order was six times existing demand and equal to nearly 28 years of later annual bait sales, while DEFUSE-linked spray technology identified applications for “animals/humans.”
USDA-APHIS procurement memorandum dated March 6, 2018, specifying 6 million doses of experimental recombinant raccoonpox vaccine (RCN-F1-V307), valued at $1.3 million, for manufacture into plague-vaccine bait for prairie dogs at the USDA Pocatello Supply Depot in Idaho. The document predates the April contract award and was prepared the same month Project DEFUSE was submitted to DARPA.
According to a March 2018 U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA-APHIS) contract award to Colorado Serum Company, the federal government contracted for an estimated 6 million doses of recombinant raccoonpox plague vaccine, using the same vaccine-carrier platform Project DEFUSE proposed that month for spraying vaccine material onto bats.
The plague-vaccine order was six times the doses USDA said it needed for existing customers and equivalent to nearly 28 years of the depot’s subsequently reported annual vaccine-bait sales.
Meanwhile, DEFUSE’s proposed delivery partner, PARC, described aerosol technology for biological applications involving “animals/humans.”
DEFUSE is the project submitted the year before the COVID-19 pandemic to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that characterized a pandemic response to a future SARS-CoV-2-like outbreak.
Why was the government contracting for millions of doses of a plague-vaccine platform while developing automated biological spraying?
What would be sprayed, and what informed consent protections would exist for potentially exposed people?
