re: Tuskegee experiment

quote:

---

July 16, 2019 - 08:40 PM EDT
House calls for investigation into whether Pentagon tried to weaponize ticks

---

quote:

---

The House has called for an investigation into whether the Department of Defense experimented with weaponized ticks decades ago and if it affected the spread of Lyme disease across the country. The amendment, introduced by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), would have the Defense Department’s Inspector General “conduct a review of whether the Department of Defense experimented with ticks and other insects regarding use as a biological weapon between the years of 1950 and 1975.” Under the amendment, the inspector general would will also have to disclose “the scope of such an experiment” and determine whether any insects “were released outside of any laboratory by accident or experimental design.”

---

quote:

---

With Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases exploding in the United States—with an estimated 300,000 to 437,000 new cases diagnosed each year and 10-20 percent of all patients suffering from chronic Lyme disease—Americans have a right to know whether any of this is true. And have these experiments caused Lyme disease and other tick-borne disease to mutate and to spread?” Smith said on the House floor Thursda

---

quote:

---

So...Did the Pentagon Use Ticks for Biological Warfare? Kyle Mizokami Kyle Mizokami
Popular Mechanics
July 17, 2019, 2:57 PM CDT

---

quote:

---

The call for information comes after the publication of the book Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons. A major allegation in the book is that Willy Burgdorfer, the discoverer of the bacterium that causes Lyme Disease, claimed that the disease was the result of a biological weapons program that went awry. Burgdorfer himself was involved in biological warfare programs that involved using blood-sucking insects, including fleas, ticks, and mosquitoes, as vectors for the transmission of human diseases.

---

quote:

---

According to the book, there were plans to drop weaponized bugs from the air to incapacitate enemies. This is similar to attempts by Imperial Japan to weaponize insects, typically fleas infected with plague and cholera, where they were used against the civilian population in China. The Japanese military organization responsible for the research, Unit 731, was later rounded up by the U.S. military after the war. Despite committing serious, egregious crimes against humanity, including vivisection, members of the unit were only lightly punished by the Allies, reportedly in exchange for research data.

---

quote:

---

Lyme Disease affects approximately 30,000 people a year, primarily in the northeastern United States. The book alleges biowarfare research involving ticks took place at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and Plum Island, New York—both areas where CDC maps note the disease is very prevalent, but the CDC itself does not have an opinion on the allegation.

---

quote:

---

The same government that's responsible for essentially giving African americans advanced stage syphillis is accusing its citizens of racism and white supremacy.

If you asked 10 african american millennials, how many do you think would even know about the Tuskegee experiment?

---

quote:

---

Many aspects of the conduct of the Tuskegee study are beyond dispute. The men who took part were not told their diagnosis and were misled into believing they were receiving treatment, when in fact most were never adequately treated, even when penicillin became available. However, a pervasive myth that must be dispelled is that patients were deliberately infected with syphilis. The truth is that the infected men had had syphilis for several years at the time they were recruited.

It is debatable whether the study was racist. All the patients and controls were black (as was 82% of the population of Macon County in 1930), but this was because the study has its origins in earlier work supported by the philanthropic Rosenwald Fund, with the motivation of promoting the welfare of African Americans. Although the Rosenwald Fund decided not to support the Tuskegee study of untreated syphilis, it was endorsed by the Tuskegee Institute—an entirely African-American organisation—and black health-care professionals were involved at all stages of the study. Indeed, as late as 1969, the Macon County Medical Society, consisting mostly of black doctors, agreed to assist the USPHS in continuing the study.

---

quote:

---

Most know the story.

---

quote:

---

An ancillary point is that Jim Crow Laws were the result of State-mandated discrimination, NOT the free market.

---

quote:

---

Tuskegee Airmen?

---