The Skinny on Lyme Disease

to come see us. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there. This is Stuff you Should Know. Uh, the podcast and Chuck, I have a question for you. You know it kicks me off lime disease. I'm so mad at you blaming me for that one. She's like, you should say this, and I said, you know what, I should totally say that. Uh. Yeah.

This is sort of a follow up to our July two thousand ten episode Why Ticks Suck, which in which which is sort of a legendary episode because we uh falsely promised to send people T shirts if they made it all the way through the episode. We were just kidding, but we still get those requests of where's my shirt? Yes, that's hilarious. I forgot about that and also wants sued today. Yeah,

probably so. Um. I also want to point out and shout out our former website how Stuffworks dot com because a couple of the articles that we used for much of this episode is from the old hs W website. Nice. They're holding it down over there, they're holding it down and this is some good stuff. Yeah. So we're talking today about lime disease in particular, not limes. No, we

should say it's capital l y m E disease. And the reason it's called that is because it's named after a town which is one of three towns where the initial outbreak of lyme disease that led to this bacterial infection persistent bacterial infection um was first uh described medically. But what are the facts of the show? I think, Oh, yeah, sure, who knew it was named after a town Lime, Connecticut? I knew? Did you know that before this? Sure? Did we cover that? And why tick suck? I don't think so,

all right, well you're smarter than me. That No, it's not that. I think. What what got me was I heard about people saying like, no, lyme disease, like people take it for granted, but it's actually some really mysterious illness. And I'm like, what are you talking about? So I think I looked into this year's back and that's what I found out. All right, that was all. So we're equally smart, right exactly. I'm not smarter than you, and what it is smarts. It's just like someone happens to

know one thing, someone else knows another. Sure, I say, they cancel out, we're all smart. There you go. I'm glad you pulled that out because I would have been like, what is smart? Uh? I couldn't have come up with the definition so lyme disease. Um, We'll go ahead and hit you with a couple of stats here. Uh. Lyme disease in the United States is more than doubled since nine. That's astounding, it is, uh And it is spread too.

It used to be very much localized in kind of the Northeast, sort of mid Atlantic areas, some in the South, but now you can get lyme disease, and I believe the entire lower forty eight is that correct? There there are cases in all forty eight states. Supposedly half of the counties in the United States now are considered at

high risk for lyme disease. And like all of this happened just in the last like twenty or so years, Yeah, which is I mean, there's there's a lot of debate over the CDC calls lyme disease endemic, which is a disease that has become a like an ongoing art of an area or region, and some other people are saying, guys,

what what we're talking about here is an epidemic. This is an epidemic, and you should start calling it that because it will kind of raise the alarm to the next level or two where it should be, because this is a very alarming spread of disease that we're seeing right now. Lime disease is the number one vector borne

disease in the United States. It's way more prevalent than things like West Nile or chicken guna or anything like that, but it's still kind of treated as like up there in the northeastern US thing, and that's just not the case. It's it's spread every in every direction except east because it hit the Atlantic, but everywhere else where. It can spread into the interior of the United States and up

into Canada. It's starting to Yeah, and there's also a history continuing to this day even where lyme disease can be UM, overlooked, misdiagnosed, UM, not taken as seriously by your doctor as it should be UM, including what we'll get too later on something called post treatment lime disease syndrome. Uh. And it's all very frustrating if you have been a an individual that has had lime disease. There's a big community out there. People they're like, why woult anyone listen

to us? Why won't our doctors take us seriously? And what do we have to do here? Like do we have to start dropping dead? Yeah, there's a tremendous amount of frustration in in that community because that there's this sentiment among the medical establishment that you know, take some antibiotics. Exactly, it's easy to cure lime disease. Here's some antibiotics. You still have persistent symptoms because are probably in your head.

We're not going to say there in your head, but they're in your head and the people who are experiencing these symptoms are like, no, my life has has been derailed by these symptoms and you guys aren't doing anything about it. It's frustrating. I know there's a lot of people out there that are pretty pretty stoked right now to be hearing this. Yeah, you know, we're advocating for you guys, not patting myself on the back, although I am literally patty like I see you chuck here. That

elbow is sticking out pretty far. So. Lime disease is a disease. It's an infection caused by the bacterium uh bore leah burg door ferry wow borg de ferry, burg de ferry. We're gonna get you an apron and call you the word butcher burg door fairy work, work, work, and we'll get to why it's called that in a bit.

But if you haven't caught on by now, it is transmitted through tick bites, right, So, a tick, and in particular a nymph stage of a tick, which is a like young adul or juvenile tick um, will transmit this bacteria, the Borelia burg door ferry um, into a human. And the reason we usually get it from nymph's chuck is because an adult tick doesn't find humans particularly appetizing, but a nymph tick will because they're stupid. They don't know

anything yet. So as they're feeding on us. After somewhere maybe around twenty four to thirty six hours of feeding, this infected tick that has this bacteria in the bacteria will make its way from the mid gut to the tick saliva, and the tick transmitted transmits it into the human blood stream where it's just absolutely reeks havoc on the human body. Yeah, and you said something really key

there hours later, really really important. They have to be attached to you for that long, sometimes even longer to transmit this bacterium. So if you find a tick on you and you get it off, you don't need to sweat lime disease. No, if you get it off in due time, right exactly, I feel like you see it's still crawling on you. It's unattached. You don't worry about it at all. Um, But when it is attached, and when when it when it has transmitted the bacteria. What

it's transmitted. This b burg door ferry is like really amazing at its job, which is infecting you, giving you a bacterial infection. Um, it has figured out how to zoom through the bloodstream but then also take itself out of the bloodstream by latching onto the cell the walls of your blood vessels. Yeah, this was crazy about the cellular stuff that once it's attached to a cell. They said,

it's like a slinky. It doesn't let go. It just like basically reaches out and grabs the next cell without letting go of the previous cell and just sort of walks end over end, never unattaching itself right exactly. So Um, as it's moving along, it's never it's not going to get kind of you know, washed away in the extracellular matrix.

It's stuck to the cell. If it wants to be stuck to the cell, it can do the same thing to the blood vessel walls to pull itself out of the blood stream and then go attack you know, specific parts of the body. So it's really good at hanging on. That's one thing that makes it kind of pernicious and like another thing exactly, it's basically yeah, it's like the bacteria version of a tick. I didn't think about that, um. And then another thing does Chuck, I think this is

really really recent research. It can actually change its protein expression at a much faster rate than the normal mutation rate for bacteria, something like fifteen times faster. Yeah. Well, what that does is that just makes it really hard for our human immune system to catch up to it, right, because our immune system will produce antibodies based on the

initial infection. But by the time the antibodies come around the um this, the bacteria may have changed the itself so that the antibodies won't recognize so they'll just go right past it because it doesn't it doesn't fit the description that the antibodies have. That's right, And you'll know that something's bad is happening. First of all if you find that tick. But if you get headaches, fever, fatigue

is a huge, huge symptom. But the real tell tale is what's called e m It's an expanding skin rash called er athema migrants and it like, uh, it's that circular pattern. And then we did talk about this on the Ticks episode. But it's a circular pattern with a what looks like a bull's eye in the center of it. Yes, and you can take off your butcher's apron now because you just that was beautiful. Put on your chef's chef's hat.

You're sweating over there. So, UM, that that particular rash, that bull's eye rash, that is like just an absolute telltale sign that you have a lime boreolis bo bore uh boreliosis infection. UM. That only comes around and like maybe se cases. I think if every if every person got that rash, we would not have this this problem with lime disease because it would be caught very quickly because you get that within usually about a week or less of getting infected. But it doesn't come up in

all cases. And um with some of those other symptoms like you said, like weakness, headaches, UM, flu symptoms like those could be a lot of different other things, joint pain, um. And so the lime disease infection goes undiagnosed or misdiagnosed in a lot of cases, are did for many, many years. It's just now that they're starting to kind of recognize it or suspect lime when otherwise they might not have. I mean literally hundreds of things can be can have

the same symptoms as lime disease. So lime has been around for a long time. UM, we'll talk about the history here in a minute, as far as the nineteen seventies go and official recognition, but it's been around, I believe. The Yale School of Public Health find the bacterium and ancient North America like sixty thousand years old before the arrival arrival of humans. Uh, they have an autopsy of a fifty three hundred year old mummy that had lime disease. Yeah,

you know Ootsy the ice Man, remember him, Remember Brutcy. Yeah. I was disappointed that they referred to him as a fifty year old ummy. It's like, no, it's Ootsy that I and everybody knows him, give his name, but he had lime disease. He did. And there was a German physician named Alfred buck Wald who described this that e M skin rash that we now call lime disease about

a hundred and thirty years ago. Right, So, so lime disease has been around a while, but we are just now seeing a huge again, an epidemic of it um and in a massive spread of it not just in North America, but there's also two other kinds of ticks that transmit to other kinds of lime causing bacteria in Europe and Asia and in all three places North America, Europe and parts of Asia. Um, the incidents of lyme disease is picking up at an alarming pace. I think

we should slow down our pace, take a break. We'll come back and we'll talk about Lime, Connecticut right after this. Alright, So, Lime, Connecticut, something is very old hat to you branded about it for years Lime, Old Lime. And what was the third town? I don't remember. No, let's just call it a new Lime. It was not. They're gonna be so mad. They're high school football team is gonna go berserk on Old Lime

this year in the es. So there were a group of children and adults in these towns in Connecticut that we're having all these weird symptoms, uh, swollen knees, skin rashes, headaches, all this severe fatigue. And it's bad enough these days. But in the early nineteen seventies, doctors were definitely did not have this on the radar. And we're very dismissive of what was going on in these towns. And if it were not for the work of Judith Minch and

Polly Murray to just regular moms. Although Polly Murray did work for the World Health Organization for a while they were advocates, they were patient advocates because their families were getting sick and no one would listen. And they were like, someone's got to do something. Something's going on here, and these doctors are not being any help. And it was a big deal. Polly Murray ended up writing a book she made it sort of her life's work, called The

Widening Circle. And because of sort of the persistent sexism and science, they were largely discounted, even though they had a list of thirty seven individuals they researched on their own contacted scientists. Uh, I just we just really need to shout them out. Poly Murray died just about a month ago at the age that right. Yeah, she was a persistent cuss as they call him up in the

Yankee States. So um, On the one hand, yes, from the everything I've read and all the impressions I have, they were very much dismissed and it was very much sexist, and also I think because they weren't doctors. But on the on the other hand, the doctors who were being presented with these cases were like, I have no idea what this is, so let's just pretend it's not real.

But Luckily those two women in the groups that they established, they went on and they contacted Yale Medical School, they contacted the state, and they really kind of put this on the map. But they said, there is a mysterious epidemic that's going on where you have a lot of kids who suddenly have juvenile arthritis out of nowhere. What

are you guys gonna do about it? And because of their agitation, this mystery made its way to the desk or I guess, the microscope of a guy named Willie um Burgdorfer, and he was at the time the world's foremost authority on what's called Rocky Mountain spotted fever, which is another tickborn bacterial infection. Remember that when I was a kid, that was a big news item. It was he was working out in Colorado, and Colorado was ground

zero for Rocky Mountain spotted fever for a while. UM, which is, yeah, you do not want to have that. It's a really bad bacterial infection. But by this time they had done thanks to the legwork UM done by the moms and the patient advocate groups in Lime, Connecticut, UM, it had been pretty well established that the common thread between all these people besides the where they lived. And by the way, it was um Chuck Lime old Liman,

East had him, sorry, East had him Um. Aside from the fact that they all lived in the same region, was that all of them were almost all of them were called being bitten by a tick, and a lot of them had a mysterious rash right before the symptoms presented. So it came to this guy, Willie um Bergdorfer's microscope because they had said, there's something in the ticks here that is creating this disease that we haven't encountered before. That's right, and he had already discovered this bacterium h

called it. How do you how do you pronounce that spirit chet, spire key sparke. But the spiro keet is a type of bacteria and that's what give me the apron. They all right, spiral chet and you just made me think of the older brother Chet and weird science. Now go make yourself one. But wad Man, that guy had some good quotes. Yeah, r I P What what Bill Paxton when, oh he died a couple of years ago. Very sad? Are you sure you thinking of Bill Pullman? No,

Bill Paxston died. It was so sad because I had just listened to his Mark Marin interview and he was like, after that episode, I wanted nothing more than to be Bill Paxton's friend and neighbor. And he just sounded like the best guy and best family man. And he passed away way too early. Yeah, really, I did not know about that. I saw a Frailty not too many weeks ago. It's still pretty good. Was it the first viewing er? No? No, no, I've seen it before, but yeah, great movie. Yeah. But

he wrote and I believe directed and starred in it. Yeah, it was so good and I love a good Powers Booth cast and call for sure it was. It was unusual and surprising, but it wasn't perfect. Very good underrated film. Where are we? Oh? Yeah, we were talking about Rocky mont and spotted fever. Willie Berg door for identifying the spiral keet um that was causing right, spiral check dumb dumb? No,

remember we established were all smart. He Yeah, so he discovered this, uh, this Paara keet and he was honored, uh, this discovery and naming that thing after himself. That's why has that interesting name. I get the impression he didn't name it after himself. They named it after him. Go on, okay, but there's a big difference between him saying this thing is called the burg door fury bacteria and somebody saying we're going to name this after you. I totally agree. Okay,

So burg door fury or burg doorfur. He figures out what is the basis of lyme disease, which is great. That's an enormous breakthrough. It establishes that yes, it is its own thing, it's its own disease. And because it was a bacteria, it's a spira key, which again it's a kind of a snakelike shaped bacteria specific kind that walks like a slinky um. Because it was a bacterial infection,

the medical establishment said, oh, we got this. Here, take some antibiotics and over you know, the course of several years, starting in I think the nineties, is when they really started to say, okay, ay, we can cure lyme disease, especially if we catch it early on um by a two to four week round of antibiotics. Here you go, and they said case closed, were the medical establishment. Let's

go have a party for ourselves. Yeah, and here's the thing, like many times, that can take care of the problem. So it's not like they were just lazy and not doing their work. But I think they closed the book a little too soon, and a lot of people do because that that oral that round of oral antibiotics. Um, if you catch it early, it can really work. But and I think they say, what like nine times out of ten, if you catch it early, then that will

that will work right there. So they're so persistent with that assertion that if you find a tick on yourself and you live in an area where lyme disease is known to thrive, um, if you can't say how long that tick's been on you, they're probably just going to give you a round of antibiotics and lactically. Yeah, and and and again, like you said, in a lot of cases, and I believe, from what I've read, the vast majority of cases in early stage lime disease, that round of

antibiotics should work. Yeah. And they say that if you and this is from the American Lime dias Is Foundation, uh quote, if you live in in endemic area, have symptoms consistent with early lyme disease, and suspect recent exposure to a tick, present your suspicion to your doctor. So that he or she may make a more informed diagnosis. So show up to your doctor and say, yeah, madam sir, I would love to present my suspicions to you. Please

sit down. Well, they're saying sort of, still, you still sort of need to be your own advocate because it is so hard to diagnose still, because if you're going on symptoms alone, like we said, there are hundreds of things that share those symptoms and lime disease may not be the first thing they think of. That's a huge problem with lime disease. Another huge problem is that the test we use to test for line disease doesn't actually

test for the b burg door free um bacteria. It tests for the antibodies that should be present in your blood stream if you have a bacterial infection, not even specific to that one, but a bacterial infection. The problem is it takes days, if not maybe a week or two before your body mounts an effective immune response against

this infection. So if you find a tick and they give you a test, say within the first couple of days, it's gonna come back negative, even though you very much have a burg door free um infection, it's gonna come back negative because it's the antibodies haven't been created yet. The other part of the problem is even if you take a blood test that tests directly for the burg Door free bacterium, it moves out of the blood stream

really easily and within several days. So there's a very brief window of time where you can directly test for the burg Door free um bacteria and find it in a simple a blood test. Yeah, you can also get false positives. Uh. And they're advocating now for two tiered testing for confirmation of the diagnosis. So if you get that first positive test, uh, sometimes now you'll get a different test, a Western blot test that's gonna really get

more specific to that antibody, not just the general antibodies. Right.

So part of the other problem is the a lot what the reason a lot of patient activists and patient advocate groups say no, doctors, you're wrong, like this is not good enough, is that there's a sneaking suspicion among people who have what's called chronic lime or post treatment lime disease syndrome, is that the round of antibiotics, the two to four week round of antibiotics that seemingly cured the lime disease symptoms that you had actually failed to

fully knock out the bacteria that created this infection. This created this lime disease in the first place, that it just burrowed further into your body. And because the medical establishment said we got it, it's fine, You're these antibiotics cured it and didn't go deeper. Um that that bacterial infection is allowed to fester and then present in worse ways later. Yeah, and it's a really big deal because you know what will happen is they'll say, you're cured.

We gave these antibiotics. They worked. But weeks and months and even years later, when people have persistent fatigue and muscle aches and headaches and you know, like your knee joints hurt, they said, like a brain fog can happen.

And these are all things that are I don't want to say generic, but if you walk into your doctor and say I feel like I'm fuzzy and have a brain fog and get headaches and I'm tired, Uh, it's sort of a wide it's hard to pinpoint what's going on and there and they think you're cured of the lime disease. So that's where some of the more dismissive um at least from the lyme disease community. They're saying like, I have this chronic issue, and they're saying, but no,

there's no such thing. It's a chronic issue, right. Well, they're also saying like, look, we gave you a test for lyme disease and you came back negative. You know, we know you had it before we tested you. We came back positive, we treated with antibiotics. Now we've tested you again and it's coming back negative. You don't have

lyme disease anymore. So there's a huge debate whether they're the antibiotic course is not enough and that the lime disease is persisting elsewhere in the body, and that maybe it's changed its form so that it won't show up on the tests like it should, or um there's remnants

of it. I saw one one article that suggested that the cell wall from the spial keet the brig door free spiro key can remain even after the things dead and persistent like joint tissue and cause an immune response there, which would explain this long term arthritis is like a post treatment lyme disease syndromes emptem um or is it that it converts into an entirely different disease, like an

autoimmune disorder. Yeah. Some people think that it could trigger an autoimmune response and the infection is gone, and this is what's happening later on? Is uh, Is you have this autoimmune response, it can lead to other things like rheumatic heart disease. I think we do we cover Gian Bear syndrome or just talk about it in different episodes. We've talked about it, and I think, if I remember correctly,

is g a bar a GiB? I'm pretty sure. Yeah, we could both be wearing the apron for this one, though. We'll split it up. I get the half, all right, I get the top half on Porky pig in it all right. I'm gonna just cover my bits down there. Uh. But regardless of of what's happening, what people know is is that they don't feel right, and it's extremely frustrating to to feel these symptoms months and years later and

not be taken seriously in the doctor's office. Yeah. So a lot of people are saying that we should we these This course of antibiotics shouldn't be two to four weeks, it should be many months because you really need to get all of the spiral keyed out of there or else it's going to persist and you're going to have big problems. And then the medical establishment is saying like this,

what you're talking about doesn't even exist. So there's a lot of frustration, Like you're saying, a big disconnect, and this is something that is probably going to keep playing out, although it seems like it maybe on its way out because of the epidemic proportions lime is taking now in the United States. Yeah, I mean, the statistics are mounting up such that it can't be ignored any longer. Not that it was ignored, but you know, that's probably a

harsh statement, but it's being taken way more seriously now. Yeah, that's something like there's an expectation that there's going to be something like three hundred to four hundred thousand new cases of lime disease in the United States alone, and that tend to of those patients will end up with

chronic lime disease. Yeah. I mean, I spend a fair amount of time hiking around the woods with my dogs and have pulled plenty of ticks off of them, and plenty of ticks off of myself and I have fatigue a lot because I have a four year old and every now and then I'm like, I have lime disease. Well, probably not, and here's why. Well, I've never had the bull's eye. First of all, okay, that's a big one. But also the ticks you pull off of your dog,

those are dog ticks. They do not transmit lime. It's specifically the long lay or black legged tick, which is a type of dear tick. Well, but here's the thing. There are plenty of deer ticks in the woods. Are you saying that they if they would not latch onto a dog, and they'd be like, oh, no, I don't know. I don't know, because there's deer ticks all over the woods. Sure, there definitely are. Um, I don't know if if dear

ticks will latch onto a dog. That's entirely possible they won't since there's such a differentiation between dog ticks and deer ticks. But I do know that dog ticks don't transmit lime. Well, I think we should talk about My favorite thing from the Ticks episode, and this is when I will lay on people from time to time, is remember how ticks attached themselves They just hang out on blades of grass and things and just snap their little

claws constantly, just waiting for something to pass by. Right, they since the CEO two and of the mammal that's walking past, so interesting and Chuck. One thing I read is that somehow the lime lime infected ticks because they're infected themselves. Lime resides as in like small mammals and rodents as a reservoir. They're infected, but they don't have symptoms. Ticks get infected with this stuff and they're just passing it along. It's not like they're the ultimate source of

of lime disease. Ticks are misunderstood. They're really great, right, But from what I saw, the ticks that are infected with the line bacteria are actually better finding hosts than non infected ticks. Like it's somehow enables them to be better parasites. It's interesting. Yeah, that sounds familiar. Did we cover that or do I just know that because I don't,

I don't remember, but I do. I remember you talking about in the Ticks episode about how they wave their arms in the airway somebody passed by, and I remember one of our listeners made some art of that we gotta find it, that's right, and from snapping their little fingers on a blade of grass to my dogs, but to my scrotum, it's quite a it's quite a ride. It's a wild ride. And then to Emily eventually plucking that thing out for me, that's nice, gotta that's what

marriage is all about. Folks. Yeah, you just have your forearm thrust across your eyes. You're like, get it out, get it out. Uh. So let's take another break. Okay, we'll talk a little bit about prevention, and then a little bit about some very recent interesting, uh wacky things going on in Congress about lime disease as a bioweapon. Okay, okay, Chuck, you talked about prevention. How do you keep from having to have a tick pulled from your crotch? Don't ever

go into mother nature. Just stay in your mid century modern home with tiled floors, and don't go into the woods. It sounds delicious. No, I love the woods. You love the woods? Right? Yeah? Yeah, I love watching the woods on television from your mid century house. No I do. I love the woods myself. Yeah, I'm just getting get in the woods. But um, they recommend things like deep

I don't use that stuff on my own body. But some people will say put that all over your body and put it on your clothes and put it on your socks and shoes and just walk around spraying a cloud of it around you constantly while you're in the woods. What I do is I just check for ticks. Yeah, a good thing to do, seriously, it looks super dorky, but what do you care is to tuck your pant legs into your socks. Uh? When? When? And then when you come out, like wear light colors too, because you

can see the ticks a lot more easily. And then when you when you come out of the woods, Um, take your clothes off and take a shower as soon as you can, and just inspect yourself, Inspect your growing, your armpits, your scalp. Part of the problem with lime disease though, is remember you get it from TIMPs? Do you get it from ticks in the nymph stage which are really really small. So you've got to check really really well to see, um, if you have that tick

on you. Yeah, and just while you're at it, take off the adult tis as well. Yeah, don't just leave those and check your dogs. You know you check your dogs under their haunches, like on the armpit of their legs whatever that's called their leg bits. Uh, check behind their ears, check under their collars, because ticks are trying to you know, they're not gonna hang out just like on the top of their back. They may start there, but they're going to try and find a place that's

dark and warm and out of out of view. Yeah. I don't mean to say you can't get lime disease from an adult chuck. It's just that the nymphs are far more likely to feed on a human than an adult is. But a line infected adult tick will transmit

sure line to you too. Very important distinction. So now we move on to the US Congress very recently, about a month ago, and did July I think, Yeah, there was a US House Rep named Chris Smith, Republican out of New Jersey, who introduce legislation that said, hey, Department of Defense, you should review these claims that I'm seeing that our own Pentagon researched using ticks to spread lime

disease as a bioweapon in the mid twentieth century. I'm reading a lot about this in books and articles that we did research on Plumb Island and we we and other insects too, not just ticks, of turning them into bioweapons. And this thing passed. And a lot of this comes from a book written by Chris Newby called Bitten Colon The Secret History of Lime Disease and and Biological Weapons.

And this book, like I think Chris Smith, the representative from New Jersey said, like this book really inspired me to to take up this legislation. Um. But in the book, Newby basically says, the government at Fort Dietrich, Maryland, and I'm Plum Island, New York, before it was turned into an animal disease research center, we're doing it was an insect disease research they were they were looking into, um

well they've they definitely were doing biowarfare research there. Um but and then Fort Dietrich into for however long if they're not still doing it now, but them they were apparently looking into ticks as delivery systems for biological weapons. I couldn't find that that is actually verified, but I find that highly believable. But what Nubia is saying is they were doing that research and then the way we

got lime diseases. Whatever research they were coming up with escaped, say a ticket attached to a bird that flew off a plumb island and landed in the area around Lime, Connecticut. And these ticks got off and they started to breed and they they became endemic in this area. And that's where lime disease came from. There was actually a biological weapon that was produced and then inadvertently, probably not purposefully released into the larger population in the northeast. Yeah. So

here's my question. I haven't read the book. Uh, but are they saying that that that we created lime disease or that we just weaponized it, because those are two

very different things. Yeah. I don't know what she's saying either, And I think, um, she stopped short of saying that, but that it's implied that if you put two and two together, the government was looking into biological warfare and they were talking about, um, you know, using ticks at some point, and you know, it's really close to this ground zero of where the tick epidemic began you put two and two together. That's the impression I have is that she didn't actually come out and say it, but

that she lets the readers surmise for themselves. Which is the problem. Well, I mean that's very easy to disprove if she's actually claiming that they created lime disease, because we just got through saying it was in who was the Mummy? It was aut ars Ago over in the Alps. Uh. Well, true, but it also in the United States. I mean it came around in the Uh we first discovered it in nineteen seventies, and like several different places. It wasn't just

lime Connecticut. They found it in California. And you can't just that just it doesn't add up that it would be popping up in all these random places if it escaped from Long Island Sound in nineteen fifty three, right, which I think somebody who subscribed to this conspiracy theory, and that's very much what it is, is a conspiracy theory that um, well, then the release wasn't purpose or accidental, it was purposeful, and that they spread it around the

northeast California and then Spooner, Wisconsin, which supposedly is the actual place where the first case of lyme disease was described in the United States in nineteen sixty nine, about six years before this cluster of juvenile arthritis cases popped

up in old lime lime in East HadOM. Well, it's a very bad idea if that's what went on, because you have to depend on a lot of things, which is a these ticks definitely finding their way to uh the enemy, be they attached to the enemy successfully and transmit the disease. And then what does it transmit? A very slow acting disease that will give people headaches and

fatigue over the course of a long time. Right, that also produces a one of a kind telltale rash that tells you, supposedly in plenty of time that you have this um this disease that needs to be treated with a simple course of oral antibiotics. Yeah, and it has to be probably in the country. They're not. They don't thrive well in the city. So it's just it doesn't make a good biological weapon. No. And then again, people who subscribed as a conspiracy theories say, well, they can't

all be winners. But maybe it was just something they were experimented with and it wasn't very good. Trust me. I mean, we've done enough research on stuff our American government used to do and continue to do that it's not the most outlandish thing in the world. No, it's not. And that's also why Chris Smith, the representative from New Jersey, shouldn't just be dismissed out of hand, because it's entirely plausible.

It's yeah, it's not just a complete wacko idea. The other reason Christmas shouldn't just be dismissed out of hand is because he is a true lime warrior. He introduced other legislation called the Tick Act, and of course he had to make tick an acronism. That um an acronym, not in an acronism for the ticks, Colon, Identify Control and Knockout Act. He was really grasping like a tick on a blade of grass with that one. But the point is knockouts not one word unless he used his

knockout that's what he's saying. I guess because um. But it would create an additional hundred and eighty million dollar is in federal funding for lyme disease research, which was sorely needed right now. That's awesome. I didn't know he was such an advocate. That's good. He really is. He hates lyme disease like like a lot. I was about to say something, but I wish I could take a pill that would bulk up my analogy region in my brain. Oh, your analogies are great. What were you gonna say, I

want to know we can beep it up. I was gonna get political. I was gonna say, he hates ticks like he hates Okay, can we leave that and bleep it. I don't know, we'll find out right. So, um, the whole idea that it's a bioweapon almost certainly not the case, right, but it makes for good press. I mean, like if you look up like lyme disease and bioweapon. There is a lot of recent articles right now. It just because

a member of Congress introduced this legislation. What a lot of people are all are saying is, look, it makes sense like this conspiracy theory that people would go to that. But on the same at the same time, there's another really great explanation for it, and it's climate change that this whole thing came about in the seventies, because we're starting to see what was called, um, the first epidemic

from climate change. And there's this really great article on a On, which is a great website by Marybeth Phifer spells it like Michelle Phifer with the p called ticks rising, and um, she's an investigative reporter, science journalist who really went to a lot of troubles to explain how climate change has created a new world for ticks and we

are now living in it. Yeah, I mean, in two thousand fourteen, the e p A actually started to use for new indicators about what's going on with climate change and the impact, and one of them was the spread

of lime disease. So like the e p A officially uses that as a factor uh in an indicator in determining the impact of climate change now right, and so the whole the whole basis of this idea is that because of warmer weather, ticks are being killed off in far fewer numbers from over the winter, so they're surviving longer there. Um, as it it gets warmer and warmer, higher and higher up their range is spreading rather rapidly. And wherever these ticks go, lime disease is game to

go with them. So the spread of lyme disease is increasing as the spread of ticks is increasing too, and ticks have gotten totally out of hand in some areas. In that same aon article, um Marybeth Pheiffer was talking about how moose are dying in their thousands in like Wisconsin and the Dakotas because they're being bled to death by a hundred thousand ticks at once. It's amazing that never happened before. And now all of a sudden, it's kind of becoming routine because the ticks aren't dying off

in the winter like they're supposed to. And again it's because of climate change. And then in the Northeast, Chuck, one of the reasons why there's been this explosion of ticks is because there's been an explosion of deer to support the tick population. Sure, back in the day, there were things like mountain lions, and there were predators that would help control the deer population. Wolves, wolves. They're even suggesting reintroducing wolves to help control the deer population. Oh yeah,

you can bet that's going to happen. Really, no, I mean do you think so? Yeah? Totally, Like a three thousand people a year coming down with lime in the United States, they're gonna start reintroducing wolves to combat if it has even a half of a chance to be interested to see if that happens, because humans are gonna want to hunt those wolves. Yeah, you know, it just

brings it out on us for some reason. Huh. Well, I mean they hunted the mountain lions, right, but I think that's the idea of of oh wait a minute, really weird and um circuit. As bad things happen when we overhunt mountain lions and wolves, maybe when we reintroduce them, we won't have to, you know, or we won't follow that impulse, will just let nature take its course. Right. Who knows you got anything else? Man? I got nothing else. So there's a solution around of antibiotics and some wolves

that will cure what ails us. Yeah, advocate for yourself still, people in the wolves persistent. That's good advice for everything. Chuck agreed, Um, almost everything. There's certainly cases where persistence is not a good idea, but you know what I'm saying, right, Okay. Uh. If you want to know more about lyme disease, go check out all of the articles there are to read. And again, go check out the a on article by

Marybeth fight for it's really interesting. Um. And since I said it's interesting, that means it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this neat story about how great stuff he should know listeners are from Portland, Maine. Hey, guys, my wife, daughter and I all stuff you show listeners for years. Decided last minute to buy tickets to the show while on vacation at Old Orchard Beach, Maine, just a short drive south of Portland. We had nosebleed seats

naturally because we waited until just an hour before showtime. Uh. And that was more than cool by us, and we were totally stoked just to be there, whatever the seats. When we got to our balcony seats, a friendly fellow named Matt approached us, said he had three tickets for orchestra seats and asked if we'd like them. The tickets were intended for friends of his who were stuck in labor day weekend traffic couldn't make it to the show.

Turns out he had been scouting the crowd for forty minutes looking for a group of three even in listening the help of the ushers to find three people together, and we were the first group that he saw. Brief walk downstairs and there we were three rows from the stage for the supremely excellent show about podcast topic redacted. Thanks to Matt and his friends being stuck in traffic. We went from not having tickets an hour before showtime to having third row ten minutes before you guys took stage.

We considered it a little piece of true magic. So while I'm confident this lengthy set up and telling you the story is way too long for the air, no, not true, Richard Clark, the whole family would be for ever grateful if you could give Matt and the Connecticut groundskeeper a huge thank you from Rich Susan and Emily and Upstate New York for sharing those seats with us. That is fantastic. I love our shows, man, it's great. People are so kind. And that is from Richard Clark,

not Dick Clark, but rich Clark. Oh that's even better. Dick Clark's taken. That's right. Thank you for rich Clark for recognizing that too. Yeah, thanks for coming to the show, rich and bringing the family. And thank you Matt for being such a cool dude. That was very nice of you.

I'm utterly unsurprised because our fans are pretty great people. Yes, okay, Well, if you want to get in touch with us, you can go on to stuff you should know die com and you can send us a tweet or insta post or a comment or what have you, that kind of thing because all of our social links are there. Or you can just do it the old fashioned way and send an email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of

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