Typical Lyme Story, Atypical Victim

It is really odd. One of te first things Newby noted when viewing the National Archive collection was that a lotof the photos were missing. There would be a note in a record but the photos were not where they should be. The Utah collection seems to have many photographs recorded only as "Photo of microscopic organism" followed by a number.

He clearly did not wish to make life easy for anyone researching the papers. It is hard to understand.

 

Dark field microscopy is what he used, I think. To this day dark field microscopy is frowned upon relative to its use in identifying spirochetes. Ironic.

 

Re-reading it. It's all pretty eye-opening, but one chapter in particular is fascinating. It concerns Operation Mongoose back in 1962. It arguably should be a must read by anyone with more than a passing interest in weaponizing TBDs, and the motivations behind US involvement in ticks and bio-warfare.

 

No idea seems to have been too crazy. The more you learn the worse it looks.

 

Makes for a good read, though.

She's on my list of author's I'd like to talk to.

 

It would be interesting to know what further research is going on. There were a lot of loose ends. And where did that supposed unexplained wealth come from? And where did the missing specimens disappear to?

Will dig it out again for a reread.

 

I find myself wondering if Willy interacted with Erich Traub of Operation Paperclip fame. I cannot see how they could have avoided at least meeting one another given their respective expertise and frequency of visits to Ft. Detrick, and/or the conference circuit.

 

Who knows? It would be interesting to know the source of the funding for the Friedrich Loeffler Institute in Tubingen and whether money was derived from US aid. The story about Robert Shopes social call on Traub in Munich in the late 1970's is an interesting one, given some of Shope's interests at the time. If it had really been of interest we wouldn't have heard about it.

 

S, what is the thinking about the agent deployed in Operation Mongoose. If it had been seen in a tropical medicine clinic in Cuba, is te most likely candidate Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis, which was on of the favourites. It is said that it can cause severe disease in children.

 

Records are sparse, but apparently enough survive for Newby to piece a narrative together that suggests directives mandating "non-lethal" agents, with an eye toward disabling large swaths of sugar cane laborers for protracted periods to disrupt Cuba's economy.

Weaponizing ticks was happening back in WW 2, so this was just evovling in real time back in the early 60's. Remember, by 1968, according to Newby, cases of Babesia (tick-born) and what would later be labeled Lyme, appeared in Eastern Long Island, NY - not far at all from Lyme CT, but about seven years earlier than Yale's investigation with it's EIS go-to-man.

 

What I as wondering is how far south those would be expected to be seen. If the operation occurred in 1962 and the doctor who had seen the condition before was in Texas at that time, experience with a naturally occurring case in Cuba was probably in the 1950's. Babesia or "Lyme" don't seem likely candidates on that basis. On the other hand the question of the treatment is left vague and the ability to treat the virus, VEE, is unclear.

 

Yes, I wasn't suggesting what was dropped in 1962 was either babesia or Lyme. Indeed, neither seems likely since, according to Newby, one of the crew members brought a contagion back with him and it infected one of his children with a "long, hard-to-remember name." The child recovered. But a long name doesn't seem appropriate for either Borrelia or babs. I'm not even sure of the type of tick deployed, let alone the pathogen.

By 1966, evidently the directives had changed to generate ticks innoculated with multiple pathogens, each of which would be difficult if not impossible to identify, and would be impossible to trace back to their country of origin.

Where I live today, both deer ticks and Lone Star ticks - among others - regularly carry multiple pathogens.

 

It was the long, forgettable, name that made me wonder about VEE. Other agents favoured for morbidity rather than mortality were brucellosis, tularaemia and Q fever all of which ticks might have been persuaded to carry - but there's nothing complex in the names.