OPINION: Story of Lyme disease: When have we seen this before?

The story of Lyme disease is eerily familiar to current events.

Dr. Willy Bergdorfer in 1981 discovered that Lyme disease was caused by a microscopic corkscrew-shaped organism, a spirochete called Borrelia Bergdorfer (named after him). More than 300,000 new cases are diagnosed every year and this is increasingly a worldwide public health problem.

In 2013, the Infectious Disease Society of America held its annual meeting in San Francisco. Those with Lyme and associated tick-borne diseases, family members and doctors were there protesting the medical-pharma-governmental complex, which stated the disease typically is mild and easy to treat. However, a University of California-Davis professor had found that Lyme-infected mice still had live spirochetes in them after the standard of care course of antibiotics

Ironically, guidelines from the IDSA stated chronic Lyme disease isn’t even a persistent infection, but rather it is an autoimmune disease or a psychological condition that magnifies only as daily living and aging changes. Using these guidelines, insurers denied payment for medical treatment and testing, while many academics received hefty fees to testify as expert witnesses in insurance cases.

Some state medical commissions sanctioned or took licenses of physicians who practiced outside these guidelines.

In 2008, the Connecticut attorney general, in an anti-trust settlement statement, said: “My office uncovered undisclosed financial interests held by several of the most powerful IDSA panelists. The IDSA’s guidelines improperly ignored or minimized consideration of alternative medical opinion and evidence regarding chronic Lyme disease, potentially raising serious questions about whether the recommendations reflected all relevant science.”

In response, the IDSA said: “No changes or revisions to the 2006 Lyme guidelines are necessary at this time.” The disputed guidelines and tests are still influencing Lyme patients’ care.

Kris Newby, author of “Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons,” describes her difficult medical history and that of her husband with Lyme and associated diseases. To get documentation for the book, she describes the five-year-plus history of Freedom of Information Act requests to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the absurd delays of the CDC.

“Finally the CDC sent three-thousand-plus FOIA pages, and I then understood its motivation for having delayed their release,” she wrote. “The emails revealed a disturbing picture of a nonofficial group of government employees and guideline authors that had been setting the national Lyme disease research agenda without public oversight or transparency.

“Bottom line, the guidelines authors regularly convened in government-funded, closed-door meetings with hidden agendas that lined the pockets of academic researchers with significant commercial interests in Lyme disease tests and vaccines,” she wrote.

The FOIA emails between the CDC and the IDSA showed, Newby wrote, a specific mission: a covert “disinformation war” and a “socio-political offensive” ... “to discredit Lyme patients, physicians and journalists who questioned the group’s research and motives. In the FOIA-obtained emails, Lyme patients and the treating physicians were called ‘loonies’ and ‘quacks’ by Lyme guidelines authors and NIH (National Institutes of Health).”

A Stanford University infectious disease specialist who evaluated Newby many years prior revealed to her and her husband that in that earlier evaluation, he was forbidden to treat chronic Lyme disease.

To Newby, the obvious question is: “Were the government officials responsible for managing Lyme disease health policy inappropriately influenced by outside commercial interests? ... I found that a majority of the authors of the 2006 IDSA Lyme diagnosis and treatment guidelines held direct or indirect commercial interests related to Lyme disease. By defining the disease and endorsing tests or vaccines for which they were patent holders, they and their institutions made more money.”

In 1980 the Bayh-Dole Act enabled universities and nonprofit research institutions to own, patent and receive royalties developed under federally funded research programs.

Wrote Newby: “Scientists within these institutions began furiously filing patents on the surface proteins and DNA of the Lyme spirochete, hoping to profit from future vaccines and diagnostic tests.”

Public health agencies and institutions became partners with Big Pharma instead of protectors of the public, with loss of trust of infected patients at all levels of the medical system.

“On a most discreet (strictly need-to-know) basis, (the U.S. Department of) Defense is to submit a plan by 2 February on what it can do to put a majority of workers out of action, unable to work in the cane fields and sugar mills, for a significant period of time for the remainder of the harvest. It is suggested that such planning consider non-lethal BW (biologic warfare), insect-borne,” according to Task 33, Cuba Project, in “Top Secret Memorandum,” written by Brig. Gen. Edward Geary Lansdale on Jan 19, 1962.

Boxes filled with thousands of ticks were emptied over Cuba. The pilots wore uniforms of Air America, the sham airline run by the CIA for covert operations.

Many other risky open-air tests were conducted in the 1960s and ’70s by the CIA, the U.S. Army, and the Department of Defense, including coastal tests such as Shipboard Hazard and Defense. Simulated and live biological and chemical warfare agents were sprayed over the North Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and other areas.

During interviews with Newby, Dr. Bergdorfer, who was terminally ill and had acquired many thousands of dollars from unknown sources, was asked about ongoing biological warfare activity by the U.S.

He paused for about 30 seconds, while considering his personal risks for speaking. Then he responded about his bio-weapon projects that had been developed at Fort Detrick, Md.

Incidentally, Fort Detrick scientists had previously deemed Agent Orange to be safe.

So why am I writing about Lyme disease now?

It is an important topic of its own, especially for those suffering from the debilitating problems of the disease and the difficulty of getting the medical system to appropriately treat them.

Lyme disease is a superb example of institutional and governmental development of a bio-weapon, its release, the money made at all levels, the cover-up of its development, labeling as disinformation any questioning of the official narrative, disallowed treatments and physicians censored or licenses taken.

Most importantly, patients were deprived of requested treatments.

We have seen this scenario of gaslighting of patients and courageous doctors played out recently, this time with some citizens voluntarily surrendering constitutional and human rights, induced by a long-planned campaign of inducing fear — so much fear that some families are broken because some members will or will not wear ineffective masks or will or will not take certain vaccines.

Historically, pandemics occur two or three times a century, so we shouldn’t expect another naturally occurring one for years. Perhaps the recent malaria, Dengue fever or leprosy outbreaks will suffice the insiders’ purposes. Or the so-called climate crisis will serve that purpose.

Please read Newby’s book and watch the documentary “Under Our Skin.”

Eggleston, M.D., is a retired ophthalmologist. His email address is rjeggleston@gmail.com.