Hi Folks
This is not my usual random rant. I’ve been bit by a bug.
You like big gov? You think it does your bidding? You. I’m talking to you. The good guy, who wants everything to be nice, and thinks FedGov ought to make it so.
Ever hear of Lyme disease? In the Northeast, we know it quite well. Too well. It takes an able-bodied man and turns him into jello. It’s carried by a tick so tiny it’s been likened to a penciled period.
Lyme disease appeared in Connecticut, ten miles from the island called Plum, off the island called Long. Strangely enough, there was, on this island, a government lab, specializing in infectious insect diseases. You know where you write to get a job there? Oak Ridge, Tennessee. If that doesn’t chill you, look it up; it will. When the government arrived on the island, there was no such thing as Lyme disease. Anywhere. We were free to wade through ferns, pick blueberries in the brush, and lie down in the daisies without carrying away a small sucker so powerful it can lay a man down and he’ll never get up again.
The little critter for a long time was confined to the island that gave it birth. Well, not exactly “birth”. The disease was created, not procreated. By us. Us. US. With your tax dollars, baby. You paid for Lyme disease.
It took a while, but it moved off the island. Took the ferry to Connecticut and radiated outward until today it has come around to bite us in the ass. In some cases, literally.
This year there are an unprecedented number of ticks. There are very few other insects. The bees are dying out. Nobody is sure why. At night, there is total silence, where once the chirp of crickets was so deafening, you had to hide inside. You can leave the doors open, without screens. There is nothing to fly in, except, at night, moths. And did I mention, there are plenty of ticks and a lot of Lyme disease?
Now, we leave the realm of the factual and enter the arena of conjecture, which some people refer to as paranoia. If you search around the web, you will find that the spirochete that causes Lyme disease carries its own little payload – a genetically engineered (smaller than a bacteria, but bigger than a virus) organism – a mycoplasma. It has been found in most, but not all, people diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. And Lou Gehrig’s disease. Crohn’s disease. Fibromyalgia. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Alzheimer’s. And the chart-topper, AIDS.
These diseases have been around forever, haven’t they?
Well, no, they have not been around forever. I never heard of any of them when I was a kid. The dudes some of these diseases were named after, probably weren’t even born yet.
There is a new thing being diagnosed as all of the above, and present is the genetically engineered organism, mycoplasma fermentens, which more often than not, accompanies Lyme. That particular organism is patented by a US Army doctor, Dr. Lo, and behold, he is one of those who reports finding it in AIDS patients, and who names it as the cause of Chronic Wasting Disease. Let’s call it MF, with apologies to your mother. MF may be contagious from person to person. Still want your government to do things? You know once you get them started, it’s hard to get them to stop.
The little bugger was turned into powder. Weaponized. MF is found in Gulf War Syndrome patients. An Iraqi (sadly, degreed by Cornell) went to work on Plum Island, and before Gulf War I, went back home and became head of Micoplasma research at the old U of B.
But back to the silent summer. Is MF what’s killing the insects, or is the government killing the insects in their failing attempts to stop the 21st century edition of the Plague? It hardly matters; why did we make this thing? To keep up with the Joneses, because the Joneses over there across the sea are making bugs.
It’s biological warfare, baby. We found evidence of it all over Iraq, but we didn’t care about it. We carted it away. We were dogs sniffing for nukes; we just by-passed the biologicals.
So if you’re worried that someday something’s going to get out of a government lab and do in mankind, forget about it. You’re too late. It happened.
You can’t put it back in the box. Ask Pandora.
Global warming? You should live so long.
