Archive for the ‘Tularemia’ 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

Antibiotics vs Herbs: One Doc’s Experience

https://www.treatlyme.net/guide/recovery-crystal-ball-of-odds-and-timelines

In my free Lyme Q&A Webinar called Conversations with Marty Ross MD, people ask me questions related to recovery. Here are some of those questions.

  • Do herbal antibiotics work?
  • Do prescription antibiotics work better than herbal antibiotics?
  • How long will it take me to recover from Bartonella, or Babesia, or Borrelia?
  • Can I recover from chronic Bartonella, Babesia or Borrelia?

Video Article

In the video in the top link, I answer these questions based on my extensive twenty year clinical experience treating persistent tick-borne infections like Lyme, Bartonella, and Babesia using the best herbal and prescription antibiotic approaches. What I discuss is based on my experience. Unfortunately the research answering these questions is very limited or even non-existent.  (See link for article and video)

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**Comment**

Please remember, this is simply ONE practitioner’s experience.

Dr. Horowitz recommends treating Babesia for 9 months to a year.  I agree with this and it was our experience.

Regarding Lyme disease, I believe it has more to do with how long you have had it as well as how many other coinfections and comorbidities you have.  The more coinfections and comorbidites – the longer it’s probably going to take – particularly the older you are.  Mold, MCAS, allergies, etc. all play a large role in this a – and are as important as the infection(s).  

For reference, it took FIVE years of treatment followed by 3-4 relapses necessitating treatment before we reached ‘remission.’  Maintaining  the immune system is imperative and that means balancing hormones as well as minerals, vitamins, etc.  I guarantee you WILL NOT get better if you live in a moldy environment or do not deal with these other factors.  

For more:

Category:

Babesia, Bartonella, Ehrlichiosis, Herbs, Lyme, Mycoplasma, Parasite Treatment, Rickettsia, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Tickborne Relapsing Fever, Toxoplasmosis, Treatment, Tularemia

Mysterious Illness at Martha’s Vineyard

http://  (Approx. 50 Min)

Mysterious Illness at Martha’s Vineyard

Although initially published in 2020, it is a stark reminder of the seriousness of Tularemia, a tick-borne illness also transmitted by rabbits as well as through inhalation, and which has a bioweapons history.  Patients are often misdiagnosed with pneumonia.  Landscapers are at a 6X higher risk than the general public.

Unfortunately the verbiage on Youtube is misleading as it says the patients inadvertently gave it to themselves through a contaminated batch of a dietary supplement sold in health food stores.  I could find nothing to corroborate this statement.  Again, tularemia is transmitted through tick bites, infected animals, via aerosol of bacteria in the air and through contaminated water, food, and soil.

For more:

Category:

Ticks, Transmission, Tularemia

A Child Can No Longer Walk. Before COVID, There Was Lyme Disease Denial

https://rescue.substack.com/p/a-child-can-no-longer-walk-before

A Child Can No Longer Walk. Before Covid, There Was Lyme Disease Denial.

Lyme disease left her paralyzed at 11. Now 19, the girl blessed by the Pope is suing doctors who refused to treat.

MARY BETH PFEIFFER
APR 29, 2023
Julia Bruzzese, now 19, whose Lyme disease went undiagnosed and untreated for nearly two years, causing paraplegia at age 11. A medical malpractice lawsuit has been filed in New York City on her behalf.

This is a story of medical ignorance: How an infection was allowed to fester even when safe, generic drugs could have stopped it.

No, this is not about covid-19. This is a story of Lyme disease.

Before a pandemic came along, Lyme disease was among the most controversial and, in late stages, abysmally treated infection in medicine.

As covid wanes, the tick-borne illness is still all those things. That is why a nineteen-year-old woman, who represents chronic Lyme sufferers worldwide, is suing a dozen doctors, a pediatric practice, and three hospitals in New York City for medical malpractice.

If anybody can change the image and practice of Lyme disease, it is Julia Rose Bruzzese of Brooklyn, the girl in a wheelchair who met the Pope on an airport tarmac at the age of twelve in hope of a miracle. Maybe, just maybe, she will get it.

First, her odyssey.  (See link for article)

SUMMARY:

  • Julia had a glaring EM rash the doctors simply ignored.
  • This error of ignorance was repeated over two more years and she was accused of making it all up.
  • When her dad suggested it might be tick-borne illness he was treated like he was using profanity.
  • Julia’s lawsuit contends that the continued refusal of doctors and hospitals resulted in her life in a wheelchair and she is seeking judgement and financial damages that would be fair, adequate and just.
  • Her father has fought battles for Julia before when attempting a medical insurance appeal.
  • Author of the article, Mary Beth Pfeiffer, has interviewed scores of others with similar stories of Lyme ruin and denial.
  • Due to this medical controversy another group of doctors has formed the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS) which faults the IDSA for using low-quality and flawed evidence behind their entire paradigm.
    • This group still insists upon using a 30 year old diagnostic test that is wrong some 40% of the time with early infection and anywhere from 70–86% in late infection.  Yet this test is followed like the Rosetta Stone.
    • This group also recommends longer prophylactic antibiotics after tick bites and initial infection, and retreatment for persisting symptoms.  Due to this approach, Julia finally felt her feet for the first time in months.
  • Julia experienced extremely abusive situations by doctors throughout this journey including gas-lighting, taking away her wheelchair to see if she would get up to use the bathroom, poking prods into her lifeless legs when she slept, waking up to a large group of doctors looking down on her to observe a supposed case of “conversion disorder,” being dragged along a hospital hallway, and taking all her weight but then dropping her despite her cries of pain.
  • The family has had financial troubles due to this.
  • Julia has faced frightening litany of symptoms that have progressed and worsened over time due to lack of treatment. She has had GBS, POTS, distended bladder, cognitive impairment, vision and hearing difficulties, insomnia, atrophy, migratory joint pain, encephalitis, seizures, severe fatigue, osteopenia, and many other problems.
  • The defendants have denied all claims in the lawsuit, filed in March 2021.
  • Julia made global news when she sought a blessing from the Pope in 2015.
  • Finally able to obtain testing, she now had evidence of 5 infections: Lyme, Babesia, Tularemia, and Bartonella and received treatment which helped but did not cure her long-ignored condition.
  • Julia’s story is now chronicled in a critically acclaimed documentary that is now screening around the country.
  • The ignorance being experienced is largely to a one-size-fits-all medical model which is a huge ongoing problem.
  • While Julia’s lawsuit is a year or more from trial, another trial is coming in May for a “wrongful death” in a young man who had a negative test but ended up dying from Lyme carditis.  A case report in Cardiovascular Pathology journal two years later documented the damage to his heart. There, in color, were corkscrew-shaped Borrelia burgdorferi spirochetes, the causative agent of Lyme disease. Similarly to Julia, he was not treated with a round of antibiotics that likely would have spared him.  Journal articles continue to minimize the severity of tick-borne illness by insisting that they are self-limiting conditions.  Therefore, doctors are lazy and apathetic toward a complex illness that has and will kill or maim a good number of patients.
  • A false narrative also continues to insist that people are over diagnosed with Lyme due to supposed false positive tests.
  • Despite stories like this (and thousands more) nothing has changed in Lymeland. 
  • What’s the answer?  Good question.  Pfeiffer thinks maybe big money payouts will help our plight. Recently a Maine lawsuit awarded a family 6.5 million from a hospital and doctor in the Lyme carditis death of a twenty-five-year-old man in 2017.
    • The lawyer who won the case is the same lawyer in Julia’s case as well as in the other Lyme carditis death.  He has yet to earn a dime.  How many lawyers will fight for sick Lyme patients without a living wage?  Food for thought.
  • Like all good dads, Julia’s father is worried for her future, but Julia’s greatest weapon continues to be her optimism.  She is in pre-med, paints, crochets, bakes, and is a make-up artist.

Category:

Activism, Babesia, Bartonella, Lyme, Tularemia

Study Shows Expanding Tick Populations in Colorado

https://www.lymedisease.org/study-ticks-colorado/

Study shows expanding tick populations in Colorado

A new study published in the peer-reviewed journal Ticks and Tick-borne Diseases shows that ticks capable of carrying diseases pose an emerging threat in Colorado.

The results demonstrate that American dog ticks are present in 16 Colorado counties where they had not been previously identified by the CDC.

Furthermore, Rocky Mountain wood ticks are found in 38 of the 64 Colorado counties, whereas they had only been identified in 33 previously.

The study leveraged several sources for the study, including ticks collected by citizen scientists as part of a free tick testing program offered by the Bay Area Lyme Foundation.

“The critical takeaway from this study is that Coloradans need to take preventative measures against ticks when outdoors, such as tick checks, and doctors should be more vigilant for symptoms of tick-borne diseases including those carried by Rocky Mountain wood ticks and American dog ticks,” said Linda Giampa, executive director, Bay Area Lyme Foundation.

Citizen science

“This ecology study illustrates the power of leveraging citizen science, and we are grateful for the more than 20,000 ticks that were submitted to our national program and made this study possible.”

Conducted by researchers from Colorado State University and funded by the Bay Area Lyme Foundation, the study aimed to quantify the current county-level distribution of Rocky Mountain wood ticks, Dermacentor andersoni, and American dog ticks, Dermacentor variabilis.

The study evaluated data from ticks collected by citizen scientists and evaluated  at Northern Arizona University as part of Bay Area Lyme Foundation’s Free Tick Testing program, distribution data from the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment, veterinary surveillance at Oklahoma State University, and literature data.

“It was interesting to us to see American dog ticks in unexpected counties in Colorado which appear to be invading from nearby states or traveling with people and pets. And also to show that Rocky Mountain wood ticks appear, for the most part, to inhabit counties at higher elevations than American dog ticks,” said co-author Daniel Salkeld, PhD, Colorado State University.

A red flag

“This study is a red flag that, on the county-level, it is necessary to increase tick surveillance locally, and, on an individual level, to take precautions and know the symptoms of tick-borne diseases.”

Rocky Mountain wood ticks and American dog ticks are both known carriers of Rickettsia rickettsii, which causes Rocky Mountain spotted fever, a disease that is on the rise in the US. They also carry Francisella tularensis which causes tularemia, a potentially life-threatening disease that has seen a spike in incidence in recent data.

According to this study, both species of tick were found on humans and dogs. Rocky Mountain wood ticks appear to be more attracted to humans, with this tick representing 58% of ticks attached to humans, compared to the American dog tick, which represented 92% of ticks attached to dogs.

“The citizen science approach has been critical to supporting our efforts as widespread active surveillance programs in Colorado have had difficulty due to the state’s diverse terrain and no Colorado counties regularly conduct these,” said lead author Elizabeth Freeman, MPH, Colorado State University.

More surveillance needed

“With the knowledge that there is a risk of encountering both the Rocky Mountain wood tick and American dog tick in Colorado, there should be more motivation to further enhance surveillance studies to fully understand the public’s risk of disease.”

Citizen scientists collected and provided the ticks evaluated in the study as part of Bay Area Lyme Foundation’s Free Tick Testing program, which collected more than 20,400 ticks, of which 8,954 are Ixodes ticks capable of carrying the most common tick-borne pathogens.

This new study expands on previous research identifying ticks capable of carrying Lyme and other tick-borne diseases in 83 counties (in 24 states) where these ticks had not been previously recorded.

Some of the new county reports are likely due to travel-associated exposures (e.g., Montana), but many counties, such as those in Colorado, are in close proximity to previously known locations, illustrating either spreading range of ticks or the need for expanded on-the-ground surveillance.

The research was conducted through a partnership between Bay Area Lyme Foundation, Northern Arizona University, Colorado State University and the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen).

Interactive maps show the distribution by county of the tick species collected, including western blacklegged tick, blacklegged tick, American dog tick, lone star tick. Prevalence of Rocky Mountain wood ticks in this study were not previously evaluated and reported.

Ticks sent to the initiative from January 2016 through August 2019 were tested free of charge. These data were categorized, mapped, and recorded, as well as provided to the submitter. Ticks were submitted from every state except Alaska. The program received a six-fold increase in tick submissions over initial estimates, representing unprecedented national coordination of a ‘citizen science’ effort and diagnostic investigation.

Click here to read the study.

SOURCE: Bay Area Lyme Foundation

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I am ever grateful they did not blame the climate.  Independent research has shown the climate is a nothing burger when it comes to tick and disease proliferation despite the continued narrative by corrupt science, politics, and climate alarmists.

Experts continue to speak out to deaf ears.

Category:

Lyme, research, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Testing, Ticks, Tularemia