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Bacterium that causes it circulated long before the lab opened, decades of evidence show

Claims that Lyme disease was developed as a military bioweapon and escaped from a government lab are flatly contradicted by decades of scientific evidence -- despite what federal regulators have claimed recently, experts say. During a November appearance on the "PBD Podcast," FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, MD, MPH, claimed that Lyme disease originated from "Lab 257 on Plum Island" near Lyme, Connecticut. He alleged that the disease stemmed from U.S. biodefense work involving a former Nazi physician who was spared the death penalty at the Nuremberg Trials and later assisted the military, and that infected ticks were explored as weapons. It echoes a claim from HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who said on his podcast in 2024 that Lyme disease was "highly likely" to have been developed as a military weapon at Plum Island. The idea has also gained traction in Congress, where an amendment tucked into the Defense Department's annual budget bill by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) calls for an investigationopens in a new tab or window into whether the U.S. military ever weaponized ticksopens in a new tab or window with Lyme disease. But scientists who have spent decades studying the disease say the theory has no basis in factopens in a new tab or window. "It's a total disservice to science," Jorge Benach, PhD, a retired professor from Stony Brook University in New York whose research helped identify Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease, told MedPage Today. Said Maria Diuk-Wasser, PhD, an expert on tick-borne diseases at Columbia University in New York City: "The [scientific] community just does not consider that a serious theory." And in a 2019 essayopens in a new tab or window, Sam Telford III, ScD, a longtime Lyme disease researcher at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, directly addressed the conspiracy theory, calling it unsupported by science: "There was no release of the Lyme disease agent or any other onto American soil, accidental or otherwise, by the military," he wrote. When contacted for comment, Telford directed MedPage Today to that essay. Lyme disease -- the most common vector-borne disease in North America -- is transmitted by infected blacklegged ticks. Decades of research show B. burgdorferi was circulating widely long before the animal laboratory at the center of the conspiracy theory ever opened. In 1990, researchers reported finding B. burgdorferi in ticks collected between 1924 and 1951opens in a new tab or window in locations ranging from Massachusetts to Florida and preserved in alcohol at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology -- years before Plum Island's laboratory was established. Medical News from Around the Web"Decades before Lyme was identified -- and before military scientists could have altered or weaponized it -- the bacterium that causes it was living in the wild," Telford wrote. "That alone is proof that the conspiracy theory is wrong." The Plum Island Animal Disease Center did not open until 1954opens in a new tab or window, according to the Department of Homeland Security, with its mission focused on protecting U.S. livestock from threats such as foot-and-mouth disease, not human tick-borne illness. "The truth is far, far more pedestrian" than the conspiracy theory suggests, Benach said. Genetic studies further undermine the claim of a recent or engineered origin. In a 2017 study published by Nature Ecology & Evolutionopens in a new tab or window, researchers who sequenced B. burgdorferi genomes found the bacterium had circulated in North American forests for at least 60,000 years -- long before modern humans arrived on the continent. "There's no evidence at all that there has been any sort of mutation or has been released or created in the near past," said Diuk-Wasser, who contributed to that study. "We're talking tens of thousands of years." Instead, the rise of Lyme disease reflects ecological changes beginning centuries ago, including deforestation and hunting during the colonial period, followed more recently by a population boom in white-tailed deer and climate change -- factors that expanded tick habitats and increased opportunities for transmission, said Katharine S. Walter, PhD, who led the 2017 study at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. "The peer-viewed, scientific evidence shows and demonstrates that the bacteria is ancient in North America," Walter, who is now at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, told MedPage Today. "That is not consistent with this conspiracy theory that says that it was created in a lab on Plum Island." Evidence from outside North America also points to a long natural history. Genetic materialopens in a new tab or window from B. burgdorferi was identified in the remains of a 5,300-year-old mummy discovered in the Italian Alps, marking the earliest documented human caseopens in a new tab or window of Lyme disease and further undercutting claims of a modern laboratory origin. While ancient DNA findings have limitations, they are consistent with a long natural history of the pathogen. "There's at least [5,300] years of evidence of Lyme disease that's been infecting humans," Benach said. Diuk-Wasser pointed out a more practical hole in the conspiracy theory. "Ticks are the worst bioweapon that you could imagine. They're very inefficient. You cannot direct them to a certain population. They bite wildlife, mostly," she said. "If you want to direct it to humans, why would you use something so inefficient?" Meanwhile, operations once housed at Plum Island are being transferred to a new Agriculture Department facility in Manhattan, Kansas -- part of what is known as the animal health corridor. "They're going to take this conspiracy theory to the middle of the heartland, right?" Benach said. MedPage Today reached out to Makary through HHS for comment but did not immediately receive a response. During the podcast appearance, Makary directed listeners to the book "Bitten," which promotes the Plum Island theory. Its author, science writer Kris Newby -- who also appeared as a guest on the episode of Kennedy's podcast during which he made the claim -- did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled the last name of the Stony Brook researcher.

Lyme Disease Did Not Come From a Secret Military Lab, Contrary to FDA Chief's Claim