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RFK Jr. & Kris Newby Podcast - Bioweapons and Lyme Disease - 1/19/24

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Posted 2/24/2024 7:05 PM (GMT 0)

duncan said...
Great discussion. I will leave you with this question, Garzie: What are the odds that a non-testable Rickettsia would appear in the same area around the same timeframe as the Babesia you just mentioned and a new Borrelia species?
.

OK i will answer, since its a new point at least

frankly, i would say pretty good odds to my mind

let take lyme out of it for a second for the sake of an example

so taking something more mundane - lets say you have reason to believe there is a new type of ant or butterfly or beetle in an area - so you send some experts there to have a look and see what they find - and after a lot of digging about looking under rocks and stuff they find 2 new butterflies and a moth.

what would be surprising about that ?

they are still discovering new species of bartonella at the rate of 1 every year or so
new species of borrelia every few years
Babesia are definitely not all catalogued
and i think i read that there are new chlamydia species being discovered in biting arthropods too
so essentially - its still a case of the more we look the more we find

its a big world out there and there is still a lot undiscovered - and there was even more undiscovered in the 1980's
Posted 2/24/2024 9:47 PM (GMT 0)

Garzie said...
its a big world out there and there is still a lot undiscovered

Here's something I read a bit earlier that's loosely related at a high level:

Scientists Confirm Underwater Mountains Harbor Abundant Life Off Chile’s Coast

VALPARAISO, Chile – An international group of scientists, led by Dr. Javier Sellanes of the Universidad Católica del Norte, may have discovered more than 100 new species living on seamounts off the coast of Chile. The recent Schmidt Ocean Institute expedition resulted in identifying deep-sea corals, glass sponges, sea urchins, amphipods, squat lobsters, and other species likely new to science.

“Full species identification can take many years, and Dr. Sellanas and his team have an incredible number of samples from this amazingly beautiful and little-known biodiversity hotspot,” said Schmidt Ocean Institute Executive Director Dr. Jyotika Virmani. “ Schmidt Ocean Institute is a partner with the Nippon Foundation – Nekton Ocean Census Program, which has set a target of finding 100,000 new marine species in the next ten years and, once identified, these new species will be a part of that.”

Source: https://schmidtocean.org/underwater-mountains-harbor-abundant-life
Posted 2/25/2024 12:20 PM (GMT 0)
Garzie, let me see if I am understanding you correctly. Are you suggesting that because new microbes are being discovered ever day - and lots of them - that we should accept as SOP an unusual appearance of THREE tickborne diseases, where hitherto they were unknown, that are clustered, within suspect vicinity to a major government bio lab purported to research ticks, all around approximately the same time? Moreover, ignore the stated misgivings of Bb's discoverer and the reported Rickettsial link?

So, write it off to serendipity because there is a constant stream of new discoveries?

Well, sure, that's a reasonable approach.

Still, some of us may be curious because the chances of all these chances falling into place, you know, by chance, and the CDC/NIH/IDSA involved....
Posted 2/25/2024 1:34 PM (GMT 0)
i am suggesting that when you look in hitherto unexplored places you will often find new things

so in this case they found new things in that region because that is where they looked - places they didn't have a reason to before -and they were looking there because they expected to find new things there - that to my mind is not at all unusual

if the world is full of microbes of amazing diversity - then when you look in any given place closely enough - you will find new ones - and often more than one. in fact often when looking for something specific - its normal to find a number of candidates for the offending item/item of interest - and have to whittle that list down - which seems to be exactly what is described here.

we are developing new techniques to do this all the time - so every decade we find things that were hidden in plain sight - or not discovered before

we have since found in ticks multiple species of filarial worms, bartonella, anaplasma, erhlichia, neoerhlichia Wolbachia, coxellia, mycoplasma, mycobacteria, various pyroplasms like babesia and theiliaria as well as borrelia - relating to lyme and TBRF and some that belong to niether - and the list keeps growing

here is an example of a recent study of ticks from small mammals from Australia - they found over 40 species of microbes inside ticks there in 2021.
this is a relevant example - as to that point there were only 3 officially recognised tick born infections in Australia Queensland tick typhus ( Rickettsia australis ), spotted fever ( Rickettsia honei subspp.) and Q fever ( Coxiella burnetii ) [8].
but this study also found
-many species of borrelia - including those that cause lyme
-bartonella
-Neoehrlichia and Ehrlichia .
-Anaplasma
-many others
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/tileshop_pmc_inline.html?title=click%20on%20image%20to%20zoom&p=pmc3&id=8767321_mgen-7-0730-g003.jpg

here are just the borrelia they found - remember - to this point there is officially no Lyme in Australia - but then researchers look inside ticks and mammals - and lo and behold - they find many species - 14 of them capable of causing lyme disease
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/corecgi/tileshop/tileshop.fcgi?p=pmc3&id=503771&s=133&r=1&c=1

coincidence? - evidence of wrong doing? - or just how nature is ?

full paper here https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc8767321/

i don't think its even serendipity - as in a coincidence - its just the normal way of things

again - to take the view that there is something beyond pure chance going on here - i think its necessary to start with the belief that there is something suspicious there - and then look for evidence to support that view.
this would be exactly the form of breakdown in critical reasoning i have been alluding to.

the CDC and its bizarre position on Lyme disease is another entire discussion - i see this as corrupt but also as an entirely understandable phenomenon, fully consistent with the incentives at work - incentives to do with the economics and vested interests involved - but these specific incentives do not transfer to creating bioweapons and getting into it would take the thread off in an altogether different tangent.

for the purposes of this discussion - the CDC is who sends out a researcher to investigate wherever an potential new disease outbreak is found in the USA - toxic lake algae, Zika virus etc
and if we look outside of the USA - researchers in other countries are finding multiple species of hitherto unexpected pathogens in ticks there also.
Posted 2/25/2024 2:00 PM (GMT 0)
No, they didn't find new things in that region because that is where they looked. They found new things because there were three distinct outbreaks of diseases making many people sick with weird symptoms, and the EIS and others were more or less compelled to investigate..

Turns out all three discrete infections involved vectors - vectors being studied in an isolated high-level lab within a short birds fly. This may be coincidental, but I wouldn't just assume that considering all the factors involved, including....

...the bizarre and counter-intuitive reluctance of the CDC (and the NIH and IDSA) to properly address and characterize the TBDs/Lyme epidemic. See, I disagree with you - I don't think this is another subject. I think it directly is relevant to any human involvement in nudging nature.

There are just so many pieces to this puzzle. Add to that the idea of a composite agent, or even a chimera, and follow that to see if there's merit. It's a devilishly difficult and murky thing. It might prove a dead end. But it's the human response, the history of trying to mischaracterise the disease and the extent of disability incurred that leads me to frown on the concept that it's nature alone behind what's happened, abetted by serendipity, and we're all just fortunate we had intrepid Science unfurling for our sake as it soldiered on.

Post Edited (duncan) : 2/25/2024 6:41:29 AM (GMT-8)

Posted 2/28/2024 6:44 PM (GMT 0)
i wasn't familiar with the context in which Alan MacDonald used the term "Chimera" with reference to borrelia

a quick google on his name and that term brought up this pre-print paper
https://f1000research.com/posters/1097654

in it he is using the term to describe naturally occurring hybrids of TBRF borrelia species and Borrelia Burgdorferi found in the brain tissue of a deceases patient.

he notes that this form of hybridization or DNA sharing is well documented in other bacteria in nature - and in spirochetes in general - in particular horizontal transfer of plasmids is a well known phenomenon - i.e. bacteria are known to be able to transfer plasmids ( packets of genetic material ) to one another when they grow in close proximity to one another.

Alan said...
Chimera of microbes in the wild have been documented for enteric bacteria in sewage sludge and for spirochetes in termite intestinal tracts.

thus a mammalian host with infection of both TBRF and BB would be just such a condition.

he made no suggestion that there was any indication of human genetic engineering involved - and in fact goes on to describe some of the mechanisms by which this is known to occur in nature.

so again his use of term Chimera - when taken in the actual context he used it - refers to natural processes and clearly does not represent evidence of human intervention or genetic engineering of any kind.

it seems to me that the only way to uphold the belief that it does - would be to start with a belief that such practices were factual and then selectively sample the information landscape for half truths or comments like the above taken out of context to support that view.

this is exactly the sort of faulty reasoning process that i am advocating against - as it ultimately becomes a self fulfilling prophecy - but one that brings no benefit to the operator of such thinking practices - however appealing it might be on an emotional basis.

i think its important to discuss this topic here in this community - because navigating a complex and controversial information landscape is exactly what we all have to do on a regular basis to make regular decisions and course corrections in our own treatment journeys.

our chances of doing this well are much better if our reasoning processes are robust and evidence based
however, none of us inherently do this perfectly right out of the gate, its a learned skill - and we can only learn how to do it better if we can raise and discuss ways in which such reasoning can get off track.

so i would like to than you again for taking part in the discussion and raising awareness of what i think is an important and helpful topic.

all the best!
Posted 2/29/2024 12:04 PM (GMT 0)
"it seems to me that the only way to uphold the belief that it does - would be to start with a belief that such practices were factual and then selectively sample the information landscape for half truths or comments like the above taken out of context to support that view.

this is exactly the sort of faulty reasoning process that i am advocating against - as it ultimately becomes a self fulfilling prophecy - but one that brings no benefit to the operator of such thinking practices - however appealing it might be on an emotional basis"

What a curious way to couch an observation.

Im a bit confused as to which "practices" you are referring. Serial passaging of a pathogen through mice cells to achieve desired virolence was, I thought, pretty widely acknowledged. Packaging pathogens, too, particularly via the weaponization of ticks, but far from exclusively ticks. There are several well sourced books on the subject. As for the chimera theory, it is just that: a theory. I didn't say MacDonald concluded in was a result of a BW. I read somewhere of morphing bacteria with select viruses, can't recall where, but even there if I remember rightly, it was a theory. The proposed affect could just be formulaic package, e.g. take one virus, add to two bacteria, throw in a dash of parasite, induce immune tolerance etc etc.

Is this what happened? I don't know. Is it possible? It would appear Yes, it could have been prior to 1969.

It's ALL theory. But then again, pretty much everything about Lyme persistence and its sustained virolence- or even lack thereof - is ALL theory since the diagnostics are appallingly bad. Isn't that in large measure why we're here?

I'm confused as to where "faulty reasoning" comes into play. This is not a pride thing. My brains are swiss cheese, and I'm at least still self-aware to realize that. smile And I'm adverse to the espionage schtick in general; it's much easier to ascribe this stuff to polishing legacies and diagnostics patents' golden parachutes. So explain away.

Post Edited (duncan) : 2/29/2024 4:10:47 AM (GMT-8)

Posted 3/4/2024 3:16 PM (GMT 0)

Garzie said...
several countries have experimented with biological weapons in the recent past - before there were conventions on such things

and most of not all biolabs have leaks of some sort - these are both undisputed facts

but how do the "lyme is a engineered biological weapon" believers square this belief with the basic facts of natural history?

borrelia burgdorferi has been found in
- frozen ice men from the alps region of Italy - circa 3000 years ago
- mummies in Egypt - circa 4000years ago
- inside ticks preserved in amber - several hundred thousands of years ago

Hi Garzie,

This is something I was stuck on as well. The facts that you state here are true.

However, the thing I didn't realize is that this is the way "weaponization" works. The scientists are not clever enough to create the spirochete from scratch. They are, however, clever enough to take something that already exists in nature, and make it more virulent through selective breeding.

You can see this process at work in things like farm animals or domesticated animals such as dogs and cats. Dogs were originally wolves, but the docile wolves have been domesticated, and bred for certain attributes to make different strains of dogs. From the docile wolf, you get many breeds, boxers, pomeranians, rodegian ridgebacks, maltese, great dane, ect.

They do the same thing with lyme disease spirochetes. Yes, the ice man did have a strain of spirochete. However it was the spirochete that was non-weaponized and the original one found in nature. So the ice man could live quite effectively with this original strain, and it probably did not cripple him. However, once the scientists got their hands on it in the 20th century, they managed to turn this more innocent strain of spirochete into several branches of virulent strains, and these new virulent strains are what cripple us today.

So when they say Lyme Disease was 'released' in Lyme Connecticut, it's kind of a half truth. The spirochete was always around in nature. What was 'released' in Lyme Connecticut was the new 'weaponized' spirochete that was never seen before in nature and much more devastating than the original spirochete.

....

One question that I have for Kris Newby is... In her research, did she think that these scientists who develop biological weapons are mandated to have a "cure" for the weapon before it is released? Or, in other words, as part of their weapon development process, are they required to develop a cure alongside the weapon, so that they have a way to neutralize the effect of the weapon, in the event that someone 'important' happened to get infected with the weapon.

Post Edited (gfields) : 3/4/2024 7:24:45 AM (GMT-8)

Posted 3/4/2024 6:04 PM (GMT 0)
hi gfields,

i understand its your belief that lyme disease is a human modified version of a natural pathogen

but the points you indicate as evidence to support this belief have been discussed here in the thread above and shown to be misconceptions

for example - there is NO EVICENCE that the borrelia found in the ice mummy in the alps was a different older borrelia to modern day lyme.
the researches simply reported that they had recovered 66% of the genome that matched borrelia burgdorferi - the rest of the DNA was simply not recovered / missing - as is common with ancient DNA due to natural degradation of the sample over time.

they DID NOT state the the remaining 33% was different to BB - that would be pure speculation
note - albescence of evidence is not evidence of absence (or difference in this case)

ref the diversity of dogs in the world today as an analogy that could be used to support how it could be possible to arrive at the extremely broad and well demonstrated diversity Lyme disease causing borrelia species we see in the word today.
i would point out that its been demonstrated by DNA studies that the domestic dog branched from the wolf around 130,000 years ago and was then selectively bread by different groups of humans for different purposes in different geographies and environments and cultures - over many tens of thousands of years - and that is what has lead to the diversity we see in dogs today.

i think your example actually supports the opposing view
just think about the scale of deliberate human organisation and work required to bring about this number of borrelia species - present in something like 150 countries - all with their gradation of species and strains - all embedded in their own ecosystems with associated hosts and vectors often specific to each region ( its transmitted by different tick species on different continents) - and somehow make them all appear as if they had naturally evolved in those environments over many many thousands of years - and to do this in a few decades - would be absolutely enormous exercise - to the point of being beyond anything of its kind ever seen. i am not sure we even know how to simulate and embed this type of diversity in nature even today. it would also require a conspiracy of many scientists in each country - and for this massive coordinated international effort all to somehow stay secret for decades despite the necessarily very large number of people involved. we would then also have to imagine a compelling motive for such global espionage on this scale to be worthwhile.

then there is the problem - also already mentioned above - that lyme disease as we know it today was recorded in Europe well before the 1950's - so it was documented as present before the supposed engineering and release the pathogen took place - and in fact both lyme and TBRF were described in other countries even well before that.

ref bioweapons engineering methods - again i don't think we have any actual evidence that scientists in the 1950's were genetically engineering spirochetes via selective breeding programs or any other method.

in the end people people have every right to believe whatever they want to believe - but none of the so called evidence for Lyme being developed as a bioweapon in the USA in 1950-1960 discussed here has stood up to basic scrutiny.
Posted 3/5/2024 12:33 AM (GMT 0)
Just an FYI Kris Newby author of "Bitten" specifically states it was NOT Lyme that the gov was trying to weaponize, it was Rickettsia.

I had an email exchange with Kris and she told me this

--"As a person who has had Lyme disease, I would NEVER minimize the seriousness of it. I’m only saying that I didn’t find evidence that it was on the gov’t list of go-to bioweapons. I did find ample evidence that the gov’t weaponized rickettsias, and that mixed infections of multiple tick-borne diseases can be chronically disabling."--

this article is a great rundown of her research

https://www.lymedisease.org/members/lyme-times/special-issues/lyme-book-reviews/kris-newby-bitten/

Also Willy Burgdorfer, discoverer of the lyme spirochete, died of "Parkinsons" disease. Interesting. Was it actually Parkinsons? Or some kind of tick related disease?

As far as RFK jr goes, he doesn't believe in the AIDS virus, which is possibly the stupidest notion I have ever heard in my adult life. So I am extremely skeptical of anything that comes out of his mouth. Stick to real researchers like Newby is what I suggest.
Posted 3/5/2024 12:44 AM (GMT 0)

Somebody said...
Two IDSA mouthpieces mislead again on BITTEN. I clearly state #LymeDisease wasn't the bioweapon, it was probably a rickettsia. (BTW, Telford told me he hasn't read the book, and both of his parents were in Army Counterintelligence. https://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/what-if/lyme-disease-bioweapon.htm?utm_medium=share&utm_campaign=hsw_share&utm_source=twitter via
@howstuffworks

https://twitter.com/krisnewby/status/1167223180047470592

that is a tweet by Kris Newby in relation to some idiotic article written by some moron named Telford which attempts to debunk Newby's research. If RFK jr is claiming that the gov was genetically engineering and experimenting on the Lyme bacteria then his claim sharply disagrees with Newby's research. Between the two of them I trust Newby 1000X more than RFK jr.

Post Edited (Lapis_29) : 3/4/2024 4:49:18 PM (GMT-8)

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