More fake news from NPR...

I thought I read that deer carry the ticks through the woods, but don't necessarily have lyme disease themselves.

The ticks get the lyme from the mice. Ticks contract it as larvae when they feed on infected mice.

I think in some areas they were killing deer to help rid the area of lyme disease and there was no reduction of lyme cases because the squirrels and mice were still transporting ticks throughout the area.

Am I wrong in all of this?

Every authority begins with "Lyme is a tick borne disease". The tick is getting infected from somewhere. Blood from animals regardless of the animal makes the most sense to me.

Occam's Razor logic I think.

I doubt ticks are factories or origin points for these bacteria. Makes more sense that they are also infected.

But don't people find larvae on themselves after they walk in the woods? Isn't that what those super tiny, tiny ones are?

dacarte3 said...

There's really no point in pondering where it "starts". It started when they came into existence millions of years ago.

or when genetically modified organisms were commercialized for crop pest control thirty years ago which is about when these emerging organisms, which were with us millions of years ago, for some reason transformed into hostile super bugs that cause all of us much more pain in what seems to be a concerted effort on the part of these organisms.

This has culminated with strange happenings such as Funelliformis Mossae a well known fungus well documented as only affecting plants, until April of 2017 when Dr. Fry and others disclosed for the first time ever in a Pubmed article that this fungus was found in the hearts of two human cadavers. The clinical repercussions of which remain unknown.

ChickenArise said...

dacarte3 said...

There's really no point in pondering where it "starts". It started when they came into existence millions of years ago.

or when genetically modified organisms were commercialized for crop pest control thirty years ago which is about when these emerging organisms, which were with us millions of years ago, for some reason transformed into hostile super bugs that cause all of us much more pain in what seems to be a concerted effort on the part of these organisms.

This has culminated with strange happenings such as Funelliformis Mossae a well known fungus well documented as only affecting plants, until April of 2017 when Dr. Fry and others disclosed for the first time ever in a Pubmed article that this fungus was found in the cadavers of the hearts of two humans. The clinical repercussions of which remain unknown.

Yes. Humans have sped up and "altered" how these microbes evolved.

The environmental pressures has cause certain aspect of natural selection and evolution to occur. The environmental pressures being man-caused (antibiotics, antibacterial everything, pesticides, etc). Evolution happens much much quicker with bacteria (since their life span is minscule) versus humans.

The bacteria is evolving and becoming what feels like "super" bugs relatively speaking. Relative to our current human immune system, that will need to evolve eventually as well to deal with it. However we evolve so much slower.

That's where herbs come in. Its a life form much more evolved than both humans or microbes and we have the intelligence to take compounds from them, that they have already been using since the beginning of life to fight off microbes.

Our next evolutionary step will be about being smarter, more than anything physical.

I don't know how I feel about the whole plum island thing. I've done a little bit of gene engineering in bacteria myself and while i don't claim to be an expert in it or have government level resources, it is honestly still a very primitive science from my experience. There's not much "engineering" stealth pathogens so much as there is rearranging genes that already exist or making simple mutations and observing the outcome. All of these things are certainly possible in the biowarfare domain but one thing sticks out to me... Borrelia carries 22 plasmids. Most bacteria don't carry more than one as their genome becomes unstable. In my mind I can't conceive of anything short of highly selective pressure resulting in this. It's very unlikely that a human could have designed this without some sort of precedent. Even then, it would be another 50 years before we knew enough about it to really play god with it. I'm not saying the military hasn't tinkered with the borrelia genome. I'm sure it has. Maybe a stroke of luck on their end brought a few more virulent strains. But i really struggle to imagine they created something that has no natural precedent. The stealth design is a highly sophisticated behavior that has resulted from hundreds of millions of years of evolution and is not unique to Lyme. In fact, intracellular infections were the first types of infections to ever exist since we come from a world where all organisms were at one point unicellular. The amazing scope and redundancy of our immune defenses chronicles a history of constant struggle and adaptation to these little ******s. Lyme is but a small window into a much bigger issues.

As for where it starts, i don't think this is a thing worth debating. As dacarte said, this started billions of years ago. Spirochetes, if i remember correctly, are one of four of the most ancient microorganisms and Lyme disease is just one segment of their evolutionary continuum. This disease arose like all diseases. Out of an ancient stew of microorganisms that parasitized each other for nutrients. As bacteria turned into protozoa and protozoa turned into metazoa these parasites retained their original strategies and developed them further, taking advantage of the changing evolutionary landscape and finding new pathways to get to their next meal. There is no real focal point of emergence here. No defined start or end to the spirochetes legacy in regards to current times. The spirochetes were here before us, and so EVERYTHING has evolved in their presence. Mice, ticks, and deer were probably swapping spirochetes long before anything we recognize as modern Lyme disease came into existence. As for not hanging out in the world, transmission through urine into the environment and uptake by grazing is one of the most ancient modes of spirochete transmission. I would expect it actually does do a bit of hanging around. But nonetheless it clearly prefers it's direct transmission

Psilociraptor -

I agree that the B spirochete is a million years old - my reference was an attempt to explain the recent morph into such a dangerous, stealthy pathogen, which is why I called it "modern Lyme".

You're more of an expert than I am in this subject so I'm just piecing together my research on Lyme and other historical references. And I'm anxious to continue learning so please share what you got.

SOMETHING happened to cause that sudden shift in modern Lyme in the 70s since an organic evolution functions on an entirely different timeline. B was relatively benign for most of those millions years. ;)

Now, an evolution was already in progress, as you aptly described. Add in the transplant of all those deer into the northeast back in the 1800s(?) maybe that happened earlier - I forget. And mix in the rapid development of the northeast in the subsequent century. And compound that with the changing climate of the planet... and whatever else has initiated a shift into rodents as the main carriers and the toxification of our water, air, food, and overall reduction in general public health. There were many factors and I'm sure I'm forgetting several.

But something had to catalyze a very quick change to make it so different and virulent and communicable in such a short time period (in evolutionary terms). Elena Cook has done some excellent research into the background of The Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), which was an elite, quasi-military unit of Infectious Disease experts set up in the 1950's to develop an offensive biowarfare capability--and their Operation Paperclip, post-WWII German decent.

She also shared evidence that Lyme was included in the bioweapon development lists of three (or four - I forget) labs from lists that were publicized a decade or so ago (which are no, not surprisingly, links that no longer work... but I did see them a couple years ago). Subsequently the lists were revised by the labs to remove Lyme.

Here is her website - give it a good read and let us know what you think. www.elenacook.org/bwsept06.html

The origins of these EIS researchers Cook cites align with other research out there regarding the origins of our NASA and advanced technology programs and other state-sponsored, government and corporate research and development organizations post-WWII. The public version of WWII is likely not the actual version of events and it's fairly well known now that most of the **** and German leadership were assisted out of the country under cover. I think if the American people knew how much these people are responsible for the sudden "superiority" of the US, they would be horrified.

It also seems likely that there is much, much more advanced science and physics than the public is aware of... you know... under the guise of national safety/security. That is the modern M.O. for covert ops and secret programs. Ever wonder where the missing $trillions have gone?

But back on subject -
I wasn't at Plum Island so I am not 100% sure of its connection. But put the Lyme timeline, the history of the controversy/players and everything else into context, and the lab's proximity to the primary location of its introduction into society, the lab probably has a relationship to the modern Lyme epidemic. And what I didn't communicate very clearly in my other post is that I feel the military origins of modern Lyme pretty much ensure that the overt sabotage of Lyme diagnosis and treatment by the CDC, NIH and IDSA is probably being controlled and ensured.

I'm sure there's a lot more than we know but my money is on some funny bio-science. And I suck because I can't explain it nearly as well as you can!

-p