Synopsis of "Bitten" the Book

Stuffing fleas, ticks, and mosquitoes with deadly microbes—What could go wrong?

BITTEN is a history of the U.S. military’s Cold War tick weaponization program, mainly told through interviews, letters, and lab notes of the Lyme bacterium discoverer, NIH scientist Willy Burgdorfer. By weaponization, I mean that the military was stuffing fleas, ticks, and mosquitoes with combinations of deadly and incapacitating bacteria and viruses. Their goal was to create the perfect stealth weapon to drop on enemies, i.e., to weaken a target population and tie up medical resources. So, on the one hand, the government was trying to save lives from deadly diseases; on the other hand, they were creating new, more deadly “franken-germs” in what I’d call crude gain-of-function experiments.

Q: What were some of the more outrageous experiments you discovered?

·      The CIA ran a pilot study (Operation Mongoose, Task 33b) where infected ticks were dropped on Cuban sugarcane workers to try and destroy Fidel Castro’s #1 cash crop.

·      The Army funded uncontrolled releases of radioactive, aggressive Lone Star ticks on the US Atlantic bird flyway. (Lone star ticks spread deadly Spotted Fever and alpha-gal red meat allergy.)

·      There was a coverup of a potentially weaponized germ, which I nicknamed “Swiss Agent USA.” During his Lyme outbreak investigation, Dr. Burgdorfer was told to omit the presence of this potentially disease-causing agent, a rickettsia, in his Science magazine Lyme discovery article.

·      In the 60s, the military moved away from bug-borne weapons, shifting to brewing bioweapons by the ton in large stainless-steel tanks. The germs would be dried, milled, and potentially sprayed from planes, boats, buoys, and vehicles. There were a number of feasibility pilot studies of live bacteria on the unsuspecting American public, including one in the NYC subway system. Ticks can spread some of the aerosolized biological agents, such as tularemia and the Rocky Mountain Spotted fever rickettsiae.

Q: Why do these Cold War experiments matter today?

Because the ticks and the germs released during the Cold War continue to spread and cause disease. Think of it as an American Chernobyl with long term damage to the ecosystem. We still don’t know where and when these disease agents were released. Declassifying these documents can help public health officials and healthcare providers track, diagnose, and treat these diseases. And if these germs have been genetically altered, we need more thoughtful strategies for treatment.

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Kris Newby is an award-winning medical science writer and the senior producer of the Lyme disease documentary UNDER OUR SKIN. Her book BITTEN: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons won three international book awards for journalism and narrative nonfiction. Previously, Newby worked for Stanford Medical School, Apple, and other Silicon Valley companies.

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