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JACQUELINE LUQMAN: Unlikely. So the appearance of these other pathogens at the same time that are related, point to something outside of just a natural occurrence.
KRIS NEWBY: Right. And also, strange new species of ticks out of their natural habitat. For example, the Lone Star tick, which is very aggressive and man-biting and spreads disease faster than the traditional native ticks in and around Long Island. So there are documented reports about Lone Star ticks being released in Norfolk, Virginia on the coast, and a year after those experiments, they're around Long Island. And so it appears that birds helped spread them farther north.
JACQUELINE LUQMAN: Now, the interesting thing about this story is that as fast as it has come out and there has been attention given to it, some in the more established media circles have already come out and tried to discredit, not necessarily your book. They have not tried to do that directly, but they've tried to discredit interestingly enough, Dr. [Burgdorfer]. In a Washington Post article, they quote a scientist who says this of Dr. [Burgdorfer]. The scientist is Michael T. Osterholm, the Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. And he said of Dr. [Burgdorfer] that there's just no credible evidence behind the stories about weaponizing ticks " or Burgdorfer's " I'm sorry, I mispronounced his name " Dr. Burgdorfer's involvement with such a project. What do you say to this claim that there is no credible evidence behind the man who you admitted, you said yourself identified the Lyme pathogen, also saying that the Pentagon was weaponizing ticks with not just that pathogen but others?
KRIS NEWBY: Well, I have him on video saying he weaponized ticks and I have a plethora of documents confirming that, including a progress report to the NIH Director saying Willy Burgdorfer is an outstanding employee and he's been for three years working on classified programs for the Army that involves ticks. So I would say to Dr. Osterholm, I hope you read the book and then perhaps you'll be convinced.
JACQUELINE LUQMAN: So you have a paper trail proving that Dr. Burgdorfer was an employee of the Department of Defense and that he was a part of this program and worked on this program.
KRIS NEWBY: He was an employee of the NIH, but he had contracts from Fort Dietrich, Maryland to do many, many biological weapons experiments. So I have quite a long paper trail to that, and it's all posted publicly on the various archives.
JACQUELINE LUQMAN: And it's all in your book?
KRIS NEWBY: Yeah, I mean, the key evidence. There's much more, as you can see behind me. It's all there.
JACQUELINE LUQMAN: So ultimately, let's go back to this amendment that representative Chris Smith has introduced, which he says is partially inspired by your book, not entirely, but partially inspired by your book and other articles on this subject. As I said, this amendment has to be reconciled to the Senate defense bill. It may not make it into the final approved bill for the Department of Defense, and if that doesn't happen, if there's no investigation into this issue, what do you want people to understand about this issue? Is this just another one of those kind of general, "Don't trust the government," conspiracy theories or is there really something here that we should take very seriously?
KRIS NEWBY: Well, I've been working on this book for five years and then through the documentary that's another five years, I can say with some authority that the tick-borne epidemic in the US is reaching really serious levels, and the CDC certainly has come out this year to support that premise. I think everybody now knows somebody who has Lyme disease and they have a horror story. And so this denialismI have to be really clear, it's not just Lyme disease. It's the co-infections, too. So when you have the Lyme bacteria plus the co-infections, which may or may not have bio weapons' ancestry, you get this really bad chronic disease. We need to quit denying that this is a problem and start trying to understand what's in the ticks, where are they spreading, and we need to develop treatments for the people with the chronic forms of tick-borne diseases. I mean, for Lyme disease alone, there's only been I think five to seven randomized treatment trials. The last one was 18 years ago, and that's not good enough for the rate at which these diseases are spreading.
JACQUELINE LUQMAN: So people are suffering from a disease that is spreading far rapidly than the research for the treatment or even the attention that the medical community should be paying to it, is keeping pace with it.
KRIS NEWBY: Right. I think there's been a hyper focus on Lyme disease only and the scientists who have all the grants to study it are saying, "Oh, Lyme disease is easy to treat, easy to cure, and if you have lingering symptoms, then you're a hypochondriac or you have an autoimmune disease." And I'm hoping that the book opens their eyes to look at the co-infections that might be worsening the original Lyme infection in these people.
JACQUELINE LUQMAN: Well, we will be fascinated to see what will happen with this amendment that has been introduced by Representative Chris Smith that was partially inspired by the book Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weaponsthat was written by Kris Newby. Thank you so much, Kris, for joining me to talk about your book and this issue today. It was a wonderful conversation and fascinating.
KRIS NEWBY: Thanks so much.
JACQUELINE LUQMAN: And thank you for watching. This is Jacqueline Luqman and this is The Real News Network in Baltimore.
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