"Lyme Disease Almost Certainly Came from These [Gain-of Function] Experiments"

Reviewing the evidence that Lyme disease emerged from US biodefense Lab 257 on Plum Island

On July 28, 2026, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a government-wide policy of ending federal funding for dangerous gain-of-function (DGOF) research.

A few readers—including a couple of angry readers—have asked me to explain why Kennedy just stated on Fox News that Lyme disease “almost certainty came from these [Gain-of-Function] experiments.”

Some readers may recall that, last November, in a conversation on the PBD Podcast, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary stated that “with a high degree of probability,” Lyme disease came from the U.S. biodefense “Lab 257 on Plum Island just outside of Connecticut.”

Makary elaborated that the pathogenic agent was developed primarily by the German veterinarian and animal virus specialist, Dr. Erich Traub, who previously conducted biological warfare research for Nazi Germany and was brought to the United States after the war as part of Operation Paperclip to acquire German scientific research while denying it to the Soviets.

Dr. Erich Traub

As evidence, Makary cited the published literature on the U.S. bioweapons program to develop insects and arachnids as disease vectors. He specifically mentioned the book, Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons, by Kris Newby.

I was already familiar with the theory that the causative agent of Lyme disease—a spiral-shaped bacteria (spirochetes) from the Borrelia genus, primarily Borrelia burgdorferi—came out of Lab 257 on Plum Island. The bacteria was first isolated and described in 1982 by Wilhelm Burgdorfer, a Swiss-American medical entomologist who worked at NIAID.

The first cluster of Lyme disease cases in humans was identified in 1975 in Old Lyme, Connecticut, after two mothers noticed their children's unusual arthritis symptoms.

I hadn’t given this theory much thought until I saw the reflexive, widespread, and lockstep proclamations that Dr. Makary’s statement is a “debunked conspiracy theory.”

Whenever I hear loud cries that a statement is a “conspiracy theory!” I am inclined to believe that he who is making the statement is on target. He may not know all of the particulars, and he may be wrong about certain details, but he is likely barking up the right tree.

Surveying the literature on the internet and doing an AI search yields a feeble “debunking” of this “conspiracy theory”—namely, that after Borrelia burgdorferi was isolated in 1982, researchers found evidence that the bacteria had been circulating for thousands of years in animals and humans. This argument is so childish and flimsy that only a hack propagandist would write it.

To assert that the bacteria was around long before Dr. Erich Traub served as a consultant at the U.S. biodefense lab on Plum Island in the 1950s in no way debunks the theory. The bacteria readily infects lab monkeys, especially rhesus macaques, which develop symptoms similar to humans, including arthritis, carditis, and neurological issues.

It is therefore a perfectly plausible theory that Traub et al. conducted serial passage experiments of Borrelia burgdorferi on rhesus macaques to make it more virulent to primates.

This is consistent with the OspC type A genotype of Borrelia burgdorferi being linked to more severe inflammation and arthritis in Lyme disease cases. This is the genotype that is prevalent in the Northeast, starting around Connecticut, characterized by specific, conserved amino acid sequences in its variable loop regions, making it a key marker for pathogenic strains.

The entire biodefense industry justifies the billions of dollars it receives from the US government by claiming that nature—or specific human habitations in the world such as China—are constantly producing new bacteria and viruses against which the human organism is defenseless.

Infectious diseases posed an enormous problem for human civilization between 1347 and 1900—a period of rapid global exploration, trade, population growth and urbanization accompanied by appalling hygienic conditions and nutrition among the urban poor. However, living standards in the modern, industrialized nations of the West are not comparable to those that prevailed prior to 1900.

\Consider that London—the largest and wealthiest country in the world during the 19th century—didn’t even have a functioning sewer system until the 1880s.

Because nature isn’t producing the pathogens that are the justification of the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex and its bloated funding, biodefense/bioweapons lab scientists and vaccine developers have been obliged to create pathogens such as virulent Borrelia burgdorferi, human transmissible H5N1, and SARS-CoV-2.

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