Thursday 9 December 2010

Lyme Disease and Biowarfare: Another Accidental Release of Information

Lyme Disease and Biowarfare:
Another Accidental Release of Information

By Elena Cook
http://www.elenacook.org
Once again, there has been an accidental release of information from the US biological warfare establishment, confirming that the agent of Lyme disease is a bioweapon.
In patent no. WO/2008/147879 filed with the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), UMDNJ Biomedical Informatics expert Ryan Golhar PhD describes "a processing technique, associated method, product description, and related software... for achieving rapid identification of DNA".(1) The author explains how his invention may be used to detect a very wide range of biological warfare pathogens:
"The present invention provides methods and devices for the identification of bioagents via the presence of their nucleic acids. In the context of the present invention, a 'bioagent' is any organism, living or dead, or a nucleic acid derived from such an organism. Examples of bioagents include but are not limited to cells (including but not limited to human clinical samples, bacterial cells and other pathogens) viruses, toxin genes and bioregulating compounds). Samples may be alive or dead or in a vegetative state (for example, vegetative bacteria or spores) and may be encapsulated or bioengineered."
Golhar then goes on to list the many biowarfare pathogens, which may be detected using his technique. The list is subdivided into bacterial, viral, toxin, and fungal weapons. The list of bacterial agents is as follows:
"Bacterial biological warfare bioagents capable of being detected by the present methods include, but are not limited to, Bacillus anthracis (anthrax), Yersinia pestis (pneumonic plague), Franciscella tularensis (tularemia), Brucella suis, Brucella abortus, Brucella melitensis (undulant fever), Burkholderia mallei (glanders), Burkholderia pseudomalleii (melioidosis), Salmonella typhi (typhoid fever), Rickettsia typhii (epidemic typhus), Rickettsia prowasekii (endemic typhus) and Coxiella burnetii (Q fever), Rhodobacter capsulatus, Chlamydia pneumoniae, Escherichia coli, Shigella dysenteriae, Shigella flexneri, Bacillus cereus, Clostridium botulinum, Coxiella burnetti, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Legionella pneumophila, Borrelia burgdorferi (Lyme disease), and Vibrio cholerae."
Emphasis mine.
The official position of the public health agencies in the US and other NATO countries is that Lyme disease is rare, difficult to acquire, easily cured with a short course of antibiotics, and almost never causes chronic neurological disablement.
Tens of thousands of patients, their lives blighted by lifelong suffering, beg to disagree. They have organised themselves into campaigns, mostly in the US, but some abroad.