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Selects: The Skinny on Lyme Disease · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey guys, it's Josh Josh Clark. No, not that Josh
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Clark you went to high school with. Sorry to get
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: your hopes up like that. This is Josh Clark from
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: that podcast you listen to Stuff You Should Know, And
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: for this week's SYSK Select, I'd chosen our September twenty
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: nineteen episode on lime disease. This one's pretty fascinating because
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: it turns out lime disease has a ton of intrigue
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: associated with it. It started out with a cluster of
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: weird symptoms of people in Connecticut, and then they finally
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: figured out it was coming from tics. But the mystery
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: wasn't over because people started developing chronic lime and at
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: first the medical community didn't believe they had any disease whatsoever.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: They thought it was all in their heads. Well they
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: were wrong. You can find out about all this and
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: more in this episode on lime disease.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there. This
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: is Stuff you Should Know the podcast. Yeah, Chuck, I
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: have a question for you. Yes, you know it kicks
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: me OFFLME disease.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: I'm so mad at you.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Blame you me for that one. She's like, you should
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: say this, and I said, you know what, I'm I
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: should totally say that.
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah. This is sort of a follow up to our
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: July twenty seventh, twenty ten episode Why Ticks Suck In,
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: which which is sort of a legendary episode because we
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: falsely promised to send people T shirts if they made
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: it all the way through the episode. That's right, We're
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: just kidding. But we still get those requests of wears
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: my shirt.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Yes, that's hilarious. I forgot about that and also get
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: sued today.
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Probably. So. Also want to point out and shout
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: out our former website HowStuffWorks dot com because a couple
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: of the articles that we use for much of this
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: episode is from the old HSW website.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Nice, they're holding it down over there.
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: They're holding it down and this is real good stuff.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So we're talking today about lime disease.
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: In particular, not limes.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: No, we should say it's capital l ym disease. And
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: the reason it's called that is because it's named after
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: a town which is one of three towns where the
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: initial outbreak of lime disease that led to this bacterial
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: infection persistent bacterial infection was first describe medically.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: One of the facts of the show. I think, oh yeah, sure,
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: who knew it was named after a town, Lime, Connecticut?
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: I knew did you know that before this?
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Sure?
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: Did we cover that? And why tik suck?
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: I don't think so.
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: All right, well, you're smarter than me that.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: No, it's not that. I think what got me was
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: I I heard about people saying, like, no lime disease,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: like people take it for granted, but it's actually some
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: this really mysterious illness. And I'm like, what are you
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: talking about? So I think I looked into this year's
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: back and that's what I found out.
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: All right, that was all So we're equally smart.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Right exactly, I'm not smarter than you.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: What is smart? It's just like someone happens to know
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: one thing, someone else knows another. Sure, I say, they
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: cancel out, we're all smart here you goo.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: I'm glad you pulled that out because I would have
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: been like, what is smart? I couldn't have come up
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: with the definition.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: So lime disease, We'll go ahead and hit you with
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: a couple of stats here. Lime disease in the United
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: States is more than doubled since nineteen ninety seven.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: That's astounding, it is.
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: And it has spread too. It used to be very
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: much localized in kind of the Northeast, sort of mid
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: Atlantic areas, some in the South, but now you can
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: get lime disease. And I believe the entire lower forty
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: eight is that correct.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: There are cases in all forty eight states. Supposedly half
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: of the counties in the United States now are considered
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: a high risk for lime disease. And like all of
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: this happened just in the last like twenty or so years. Yeah,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: which is I mean, there's a lot of debate over
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: the CDC calls lime disease endemic, which is a disease
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: that has become a like an ongoing part of an
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: area or region, and some other people are saying, guys,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: what we're talking about here is an epidemic. This is
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: an epidemic, and you should start calling it that because
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: it will kind of raise the alarm to the next
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: level or two where it should be. Because this is
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: a very alarming spread of disease that we're seeing right now,
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: lime disease is the number one vector borne disease in
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: the United States. It's way more prevalent than things like
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: West Nile or chicken gooony or anything like that, but
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: it's still kind of treated as like up there in
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: the northeastern US thing, and that's just not the case.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: It's spread in every direction except east because it hit
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: the Atlantic, but everywhere else where. It can spread into
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: the interior of the United States and up into Canada.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: It's starting to.
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's also a history continuing to this day
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: even where lime disease can be overlooked, misdiagnosed, not taken
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: as seriously by your doctor as it should be, including
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: what we'll get to later on something called post treatment
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: lime disease syndrome. And it's all very frustrating if you
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: have been an individual that has had lime disease. There's
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: a big community out there of people that are like,
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: why won't anyone listen to us, Why won't our doctors
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: take as seriously? And what do we have to do here?
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: Like do we have to start dropping dead?
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a tremendous amount of frustration in that community
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: because there's a sentiment among the medical establishment that.
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: You know, he takes some antiotics.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Exactly, it's easy to cure lime disease. Here's some antibiotics.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: You still have persistent symptoms. Those are probably in your head.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: We're not going to say they're in your head, but
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: they're in your head. And the people who are experiencing
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: these symptoms are like, no, my life has been derailed
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: by these symptoms, and you guys aren't doing anything about it.
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: It's frustrating. I know there's a lot of people out
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: there that are pretty pretty stoked right now to be
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: hearing this. Yeah, you know for sure we're advocating for
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: you guys. Sure, not patting myself on the back, although
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: I am literally patty like.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: I see you chuck here. That albow is sticking out
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: pretty far. So.
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: Lime disease is a disease. It's an infection caused by
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: the bacterium boro lea burgdorfrairi wow borg da faery burg
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: dea fraiari.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: We're gonna get you an apron and call you the
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: word butcher.
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: Burgdor fairy work more. And we'll get to why it's
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: called that in a bit. But if you haven't caught
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: on by now, it is transmitted through tick bites.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Right, So, a tick, and in particular a nymph stage
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: of a tick, which is a young adult or juvenile tick,
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: will transmit this bacteria, the Borellia burgdor fairy, into a human.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: And the reason we usually get it from nymphs chuck
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: is because an adult tick doesn't find humans particularly appetizing,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: but a nymph tick will because they're stupid, they don't
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: know anything yet. So as they're feeding on us. After
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: somewhere maybe around twenty four to thirty six hours of
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: feeding this infected tick that has this bacteria in it,
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: the bacteria will make its way from the mid gut
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: to the tick saliva and the tick transmit it transmits
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: it into the human bloodstream, where it just absolutely wreaks
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: havoc on the human body.
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and you said something really key there, twenty four
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: thirty six, forty eight hours later, really really important. They
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: have to be attached to you for that long, sometimes
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: even longer to transmit this bacterium. So if you find
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: a tick on you and you get it off, if
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: you don't need to sweat lime disease, no, if you
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: get it off in due time.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Right exactly, If like you see it's still crawling on you.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: It's unattached, you don't worry about it at all. But
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: when it is attached and when it has transmitted the
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: bacteria what it's transmitted, This be burgdor Ferry is like
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: really amazing at its job, which is infecting you, giving
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: you a bacterial infection. It has figured out how to
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: zoom through the bloodstream but then also take itself out
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: of the bloodstream by latching onto the walls of your
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: blood vessels.
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this was crazy about this cellular stuff that once
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: it's attached to a cell. They said, it's like a slinky.
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: It doesn't let go. It just like basically reaches out
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: and grabs the next cell without letting go of the
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: previous cell and just sort of walks end over end right,
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: never unattaching.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Itself right exactly. So as it's moving along, it's never
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: it's not going to get kind of you know, washed
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: away and the extracellular matrix it's stuck to the cell.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: If it wants to be stuck in the cell, it
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: can do the same thing to the blood vessel walls
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: to pull itself out of the bloodstream and then go
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: attack you know, specific parts of the body, So it's
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: really good at hanging on. That's one thing that makes
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: it kind of pernicious. And then another thing exactly, it's
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: basically yeah, it's like the bacteria version of a tick.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: I didn't think about that. And then another thing it does, Chuck,
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: I think this is really really recent research. It can
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: actually change its protein expression at a much faster rate
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: than the normal mutation rate for bacteria, something like fifteen
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: times faster.
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And what that does is that just makes it
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: really hard for our human immune system to catch up to.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: It, right, because our immune system will produce antibodies based
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: on the initial infection, but by the time the antibodies
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: come around, the bacteria may have changed itself so that
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: the antibodies won't recognize it. They'll just go right past
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: it because it doesn't it doesn't fit the description that
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: the antibodies have.
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: That's right, And you'll know that something bad is happening
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: first of all if you find that tick. But if
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: you get headaches, fever, fatigue is a huge, huge symptom.
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: But the real telltale is what's called em It's an
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: expanding skin rash called erythema migrants and it's like it's
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: that circular pattern. And then we did talk about this
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: on the Ticks episode. But it's a circular pattern with
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: what looks like a bull's eye in the center of it.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Yes, and you can take off your butcher's apron now
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: because you just that was beautiful, put on your chef's
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: chef's hat.
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: You're sweating over there.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: So that that particular rash, that bullseye rash, that is
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: like a just an absolute telltale sign that you have
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: a line boreolis boreliosis infection that only comes around and
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: like maybe seventy to eighty percent of cases. I think
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: if every person got that rash, we would not have
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: this problem with lime disease because it would be caught
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: very quickly because you get that within usually about a
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: week or less of getting infected. But it doesn't come
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: up in all cases. And with some of those other
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: symptoms like you said, like weakness, headaches, flu like symptoms
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: like those could be a lot of different other things,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: joint pain, and so the lime disease infection goes undiagnosed
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: or misdiagnosed in a lot of cases, are did for
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: many many years. It's just now that they're starting to
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: kind of recognize it or suspect lime when otherwise they
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: might not have.
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean literally hundreds of things can be can
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: have the same symptoms as lime disease. So lime's been
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: around for a long time. We'll talk about the history
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: here in a minute, as far as the nineteen seventies
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: go and official recognition, but it's been around. I believe
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: the Yale School of Public Health find the bacterium in
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: ancient North America, like sixty thousand years old before the
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: arrival of humans. They have an autopsy of a fifty
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: three hundred year old mummy that had lime disease.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know Utzi the Iceman, remember him?
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: I remember Uzzy?
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I was disappointed that they referred to him as
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: a fifty three hundred year old mummy. It's like, no,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: it's Utzi the ice everybody knows him, give him his name.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: But he had lime disease.
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: He did. And there was a German physician named Alfred
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: Buckwald who described this that em skin rash that we
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: now call lime disease about one hundred and thirty years ago.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Right, So lime disease has been around a while, but
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: we are just now seeing a huge again an epidemic
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: of it, and in a massive spread of it, not
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: just in North America, but there's also two other kinds
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: of ticks that transmit two other kinds of lime causing
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: bacteria in Europe and Asia, and in all three places,
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: North America, Europe, and parts of Asia, the incidence of
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: lime diseases picking up at an alarming pace.
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: I think we should slow down our pace. Take break. Okay,
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: all right, we'll come back and we'll talk about Lime
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: Connecticut right after this. All right, So Lime, Connecticut. Something
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: is very old hat to you.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: Right it for years Lime Old Lime?
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: And what was the third town? I don't remember, No,
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: let's just call it New Lime. It was.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: Notice, they're going to be so mad. Their high school
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: football team is going to go brazik on Old Lime
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: this year.
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: In the nineteen seventies, though, there were a group of
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: children and adults in these towns in Connecticut that were
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: having all these weird symptoms swollen knees, skin rashes, headaches,
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: all this severe fatigue. And it's bad enough these days,
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: But in the early nineteen seventies, doctors were definitely did
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: not have this on the radar and were very dismissive
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: of what was going on in these towns and if
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: it were not for the work of Judith Minch and
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: Polly Murray too, just regular moms. Although Polly Murray did
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: work for the World Health Organization for a while. They
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: were advocates. They were patient advocates because their families were
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: getting sick and no one would listen. And they were like,
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: someone's got to do something. Something's going on here, and
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: these doctors are not being any help, right, And it
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: was a big deal. Polly Murray ended up writing a book.
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: She made it sort of her life's work in nineteen
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: ninety six, a book called The Widening Circle. And because
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: of sort of the persistent sexism and science, they were
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: largely discounted, even though they had a list of thirty
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: seven individuals they researched on their own, contacted scientists. We
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: just really need to shout them out. Polly Murray died
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: just about a month ago at the age of eighty five.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Oh is that right? Yeah, Yeah, she was a persistent
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: cuss as they call them up in the Yankee States.
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: So on the one hand, yes, from the everything I've
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: read and all the impressions I have. They were very
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: much dismissed, and it was very much sexist and also
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: I think because they weren't doctors. But on the other hand,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: the doctors who were being presented with these cases were like,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: I have no idea what this is, so let's just
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: pretend it's not real. But luckily those two women in
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: the groups that they established, they went on and they
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: contacted Yale Medical School, they contacted the state, and they
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: really kind of put this on the map. They said,
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: there is a mysterious epidemic that's going on where you
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: have a lot of kids who suddenly have juvenile arthritis
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: out of nowhere. What are you guys going to do
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: about it? And because of their agitation, this mystery made
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: its way to the desk or I guess, the microscope
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: of a guy named Willie Bergdorffer, and he was at
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: the time the world's foremost authority on what's called Rocky
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: Mountain spotted fever, which is another tickborn bacterial infection.
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: I remember that when I was a kid, that was
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: a big news item. It was a scary one.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: He was working out in Colorado, and Colorado was ground
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: zero for Rocky Mountain spotted fever. For a while, which is, yeah,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: you do not want to have that. It's a really
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: bad bacterial infection. But by this time they had done
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: thanks to the legwork done by the moms and the
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: patient advocate groups in the Lime, Connecticut, it had been
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: pretty well established that the common thread between all these people,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: besides where they lived and by the way, it was
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: chuck lyme Old Lime and East HadAM sorry East HadAM
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: aside from the fact that they all lived in the
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: same region, was that all of them were almost all
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: of them were called being bitten by a tick, and
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: a lot of them had a mysterious rash right before
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: the symptoms presented. So it came to this guy, Willie
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: Bergdorffer's microscope because they had said, there's something in the
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: ticks here that is creating this disease that we haven't
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: encountered before.
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: That's right, and he had already discovered this bacterium called
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: it How do you how do you pronounce that spirit.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: Chat spira keet, spire key, But spira keet is a
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: type of bacteria, and that's what that's what they all, right,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: spirra chet and you just made me think of the
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: older brother Chet and weird.
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: Now go make yourself one. But what.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: Man? That guy had some good quotes.
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, rip what what Bill Paxton when he died
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: a couple of years ago? Very sad?
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: Are you sure I'm thinking of Bill Pullman?
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: No, Bill Paxton died. It was so sad because I
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: had just listened to his uh Mark Maron interview and
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: he was like, after that episode, I wanted nothing more
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: than to be Bill Paxton's friend and neighbor. He just
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: sounded like the best guy and best family man. And
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: he passed away way too early.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, really, I did not know about that.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: I saw Frailty not too many weeks ago. It's still
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: pretty good.
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: Was it the first viewinger?
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: No? No, no, I've seen it before.
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: But yeah, man, great movie.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But he wrote and I believe directed and starred
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: in it.
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah. It was so good. And I love a good
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: Powers Booth cast and call.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: For sure it was. It was unusual and surprising.
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: But it was perfect, very good, underrated film. Where are we? Oh?
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we were talking about Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Willie
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: Bergdorfer identifying the spiro keet that was causing.
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: Lime hirakeet right, spira chet What a dumb, dumb.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. No, remember we established we're all smart.
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: He Yeah, So he discovered this, this parakeet, and he
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: was honored by this discovery and naming that thing after himself.
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: That's why it has that interesting name.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: I get the impression. And he didn't name it after himself.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: They named it after him to go on.
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, but.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: There's a big difference between him saying this thing's called
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: the Burgdorferey bacteria and somebody saying we're going to name
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: this after you.
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: No, I totally agree.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Okay, So Burgdorfrey or Burgdorfer. He figures out what is
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: the basis of lime disease, which is great. That's an
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: enormous breakthrough. It establishes that yes, it is its own thing,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: it's its own disease. And because it was a bacteria,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: it's a spier key, which again it's a kind of
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: a snakelike shaped bacteria specific kind that walks like a slinky.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Because it was a bacterial infection, the medical establishment said, oh,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: we got this here. Take some antibiotics, and over the
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: course of several years, starting in I think the nineties,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: is when they really started to say, okay, we can
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: cure lyme disease, especially if we catch it early on
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: by a two to four week round of antibiotics. Right,
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: here you go, and they said, case closed, we're the
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: medical establishment. Let's go have a party for ourselves.
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And here's the thing, Like many times that can
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: take care of the problem. So it's not like they
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: were just lazy and not doing their work. But I
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: think they closed the book a little too soon, and
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: a lot of people do because that oral that round
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: of oral antibiotics, if you catch it early, it can
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: really work. But and I think they say, what like
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: nine times out of ten, if you catch it early,
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: then that will that will work right there.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: So they're so persistent with that assertion that if you
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: find a tick on yourself and you live in an
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: area where lime disease is known to thrive, if you
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: can't say how long that tick's been on you, they're
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: probably just going to give you a round of antibiotics portolactically. Yeah.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: And again, like you said, in a lot of cases,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: and I believe, from what I've read, the vast majority
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: of cases in early stage lime disease, that round of
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: antibiotics should work.
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And they say that if you and This is
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: from the American Lime Diesus Foundation quote. If you live
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: in an endemic area, have symptoms consistent with early lime disease,
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: and suspect recent exposure to a tick, present your suspicion
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: to your doctor so that he or she may make
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: a more informed diagnosis.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: So show up to your doctor and say, yeah, madam,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: I would love to present my suspicions to you. Please
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: sit down.
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: Well, they're saying sort of, still, you still sort of
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: need to be your own advocate because it is so
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: hard to diagnose. Still, because if you're going on symptoms alone,
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: like we said, there are hundreds of things that share
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: those symptoms and lime disease may not be the first
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: thing they think of.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: That's a huge problem with lime disease. Another huge problem
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: is that the test we use to test for lime
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: disease doesn't actually test for the b burgdorfree bacteria. It
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: tests for the antibodies that should be present in your
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: bloodstream if you have a bacterial infection, not even specific
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: to that one, but a bacterial infection. The problem is
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: it takes days, if not maybe a week or two
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: before your body mounts an effective immune response against this infection.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: So if you find a tick and they give you
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: a test, say within the first couple of days, it's
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: going to come back negative. Even though you very much
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: have a Burgdor free infection, it's going to come negative
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: because it's the antibodies haven't been created yet. The other
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: part of the problem is even if you take a
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: blood test that tests directly for the Burgdor free bacterium,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: it moves out of the blood stream really easily and
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: within its several days. So there's a very brief window
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: of time where you can directly test for the Burgdor
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: free bacteria and find it in a simple blood test.
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you can also get false positives, and they're advocating
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: now for two tiered testing for confirmation of the diagnosis.
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: So if you get that first positive test sometimes now
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: you'll get a different test, a Western block test, right,
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: that's gonna really get more specific to that antibody, not
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: just the general antibodies.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Right. So part of the other problem is the reason
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: a lot of patient activists and patient advocate groups say no, doctors,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: you're wrong, like this is not good enough, is that
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: there's a sneaking suspicion among people who have what's called
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: chronic lime or post treatment lime disease syndrome is that
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: the round of antibiotics, the two to four week round
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: of antibiotics that seemingly cured the lime disease symptoms, that
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: you had actually failed to fully knock out the bacteria
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: that created this infection, that created this lime disease in
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: the first place, that it just burrowed further into your body.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: And because the medical establishment said we got it, it's fine,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: these antibiotics cured it and didn't go deeper, that bacterial
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: infection is allowed to fester and then present in worse
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: ways later.
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's a really big deal because you know
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: what will happen is they'll say, you're cured. We gave
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: these antibiotics. They worked. But weeks and months and even
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: years later, when people have persistent fatigue and muscle aches
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: and headaches and you know, like your knee joints hurt,
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: they said, like a brain full can happen. And these
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: are all things that are I don't want to say generic,
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: but if you walk into your doctor and say I
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: feel like I'm fuzzy and I have a brain fog
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: and get headaches and I'm tired, it's sort of a
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: wide it's hard to pinpoint what's going on. Sure, and
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: they think you're cured of the lime disease. So that's
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: where some of the more dismissive, at least from the
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: lime disease community. They're saying, like, I have this chronic issue,
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: and they're saying, but no, there's no such thing as
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: a chronic issue. Right.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: Well, they're also saying like, look, we gave you a
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: test for lime disease and you came back negative. Right
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: you know, we know you had it before we tested you.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: We came back positive, We treat you with antibiotics. Now
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: we've tested you again and it's coming back negative. You
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: don't have lime disease anymore. So there's a huge debate
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: whether they're the antibiotic course is not enough and that
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: the lime disease is persisting elsewhere in the body, and
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: that maybe it's changed its form so that it won't
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: show up on the tests like it should, or there's
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: remnants of it. I saw one article that suggested that
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: the cell wall from the spiro keat the brigdor free
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: spiro keet can remain even after the thing's dead and
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: persistent joint tissue and cause an immune response there, which
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: would explain this long term arthritis is like a post
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: treatment line disease syndrome symptom. Or is it that it
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: converts into an entirely different disease, like an autoimmune disorder.
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, some people think that it could trigger an autoimmune
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: response and the infection's gone, and this is what's happening
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: later on. Is you have this autoimmune response, it can
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: lead to other things like rheumatic heart disease. I think
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: we do we cover Keon Bear syndrome or just talk
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: about it in different episodes.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: We've talked about it, and I think if I remember
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: correctly as Gia Barre.
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: GiB, I'm pretty sure.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we could both be wearing the apron for this
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: one though.
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: Well, we'll split it up. I get the doer half.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: All right, I get the top half. I'm porky pigging
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: it all right.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: I'm going to just cover my bits down there. But
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: regardless of what's happening, what people know is is that
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: they don't feel right, and it's extremely frustrating to feel
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: these symptoms months and years later and not be taken
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: seriously in a doctor's office.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so a lot of people are saying that these
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: this course of antimbiotics shouldn't be two to four weeks,
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: it should be many months, because you really need to
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: get all of the spiral keet out of there or
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: else it's going to persist and you're going to have
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: big problems. And then the medical establishment is saying, like
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: what you're talking about doesn't even exist. So there's a
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: lot of frustration that you're saying a big disconnect, and
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: this is something that is probably going to keep playing out,
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: although it seems like it may be on its way
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: out because of the epidemic proportions line is taking now
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: in the United States.
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, the statistics are mounting up such that
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: it can't be ignored any longer. Not that it was ignored,
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: but you know that's probably a harsh statement, but it's
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: being taken away more seriously now.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw something like there's an expectation that there's
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: going to be something like three hundred to four hundred
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: thousand new cases of lime disease in the United States alone,
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: and that ten to twenty percent of those patients will
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: end up with chronic lime disease.
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, I spend a fair amount of time
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: hiking around the woods with my dogs and have pulled
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: plenty of ticks off of them and plenty of ticks
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: off of myself. And I have fatigue a lot because
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: I have a four year old and every now and
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: then I'm like, do I have lime disease?
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Well? Probably not, And here's why.
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: Well, I've never had the bulls eye. First of all, okay,
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: that's a big one.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: But also the ticks you pull off of your dog,
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: those are dog ticks. They do not transmit lime. It's
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: specifically the long late or black legged tick, which is
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: a type of deer tick.
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: Well, but here's the thing. There are plenty of deer
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: ticks in the woods. Are you saying that they if
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: they would not latch onto a dog, and they'd be.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: Like, ooh, no, I don't know. I don't know, because
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: there's deer ticks all over the woods. Sure, there definitely are.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: I don't know if deer ticks will latch onto a dog.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: It's entirely possible they won't, since there's such a differentiation
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: between dog ticks and deer ticks. But I do know
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: that dog ticks don't transmit lime.
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: Well, I think we should talk about my favorite thing
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: from the ticks episode, And this is one I will
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: lay on people from time to time is remember how
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: ticks attach themselves. Sure, they just hang out on blades
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: of grass and things and just snap their little claws constantly,
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: just waiting for something to pass by.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: Yet they think can latch onto, right, they sense the
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: co two of the mammal that's walking past.
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: So interesting and chuck.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: One thing I read is that somehow the lime lime
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: infected ticks because they're infect of themselves. Lime resides as
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: in like small mammals and rodents as a reservoir. Yeah,
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: they are infected, but they don't have symptoms. Ticks get
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: infected with this stuff and they're just passing it along.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: It's not like they're the ultimate source of lime disease.
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: No, ticks are misunderstood.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: They're really great, right, But from what I saw, the
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: ticks that are infected with the lime bacteria are actually
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: better at finding hosts than non infected ticks. Like it
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: somehow enables them to be better parasites. It's interesting.
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that sounds familiar. Did we cover that or do
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: I just know that?
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: Because I don't, I don't remember, but I do I
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: remember you talking about in the Tics episode about how
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: they wave their arms in the air when somebody passed by,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: and I remember one of our listeners made some art
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: of that. We got to find it.
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: That's right. And from snapping their little fingers on a
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: blade of grass to my dog's but to my scrotum,
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: it's quite a to ride.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: It's a wild ride.
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: And then to Emily eventually plucking that thing out for me,
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: that's nice, gotta that's what marriage is all about, folks.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you just have your forearm thrust across your eyes.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: You're like, get it out, get it out.
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: Uh. So let's take another break. Okay, we'll talk a
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: little bit about prevention and then a little bit about
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: some very recent interesting wacky things going on in Congress
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: about lime disease as a bio weapon.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: Okay, okay, Chuck, you talked about prevention. How do you
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: keep from having to have a tick pulled from your crotch?
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: Don't ever go into mother Nature. Just stay in your
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: mid century modern home with tiled floors, and don't go
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: into the woods. Sounds delicious, No, I love the woods.
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: You love the woods? Right? Yeah?
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love watching the Woods on television.
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, from your midcentury house.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: No, I do. I love the woods myself.
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm just kidding, get in the woods, but they
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: recommend things like deet. I don't use that stuff on
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: my own body, but some people will say put that
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: all over your body and put it on your clothes,
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: and put it on your socks and shoes and.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: Just walk around spring a cloud of it around you
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: constantly while you're in the woods.
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: What I do is I just check for ticks.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a good thing to do, Seriously, it looks super dorky,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: but what do you care is to tuck your pant
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: legs into your socks. Yeah, sure, when and then when
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: you come out, like wear light colors too, because you
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: can see the ticks a lot more easily. And then
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: when you when you come out of the woods, take
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: your clothes off and take a shower as soon as
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: you can, and just inspect yourself. Inspect you're growing your armpits,
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: your scalp. Part of the problem with lime disease, though,
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: is remember you get it from TIMPs? Do you get
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: it from ticks in the nymph stage which are really
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: really small. So you've got to check really really well
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: to see if you have that tick on you.
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and just while you're at it, take off the
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: adult tics as well. Yeah, don't don't just leave those
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: and check your dogs. You know, you check your dogs
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: under their haunches, like on the armpit of their legs
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: whatever that's called their leg pits. Check behind their ears,
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: check under their collars, because ticks are trying to you know,
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: they're not going to hang out just like on the
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: top of their back. They may start there, but they're
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: going to try and find a place that's dark and
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: warm and out of view.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't mean to say you can't get lime
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: disease from an adult chuck. It's just that the nymphs
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: are far more likely to eat on a human than
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: an adult is. But a lime infected adult tick will
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: transmit sure lyn to you too.
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: For sure, A very important distinction. So now we move
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: on to the US Congress. Very recently, about a month ago,
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: end of July. I think, yeah, there was a US
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: House rep named Chris Smith, a Republican out of New Jersey,
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: who introduced legislation that said, hey, Department of Defense, you
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: should review these claims that I'm seeing that our own
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: Pentagon researched using tics to spread lime disease as a
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: bioweapon in the mid twentieth century. I'm reading a lot
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: about this in books and articles that we did research
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: on Plumb Island and and other insects too, not just ticks,
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: of turning them into bioweapons, and this thing passed. And
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: a lot of this comes from a book written by
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: Chris Newby called Bitten Colon The Secret History of Lime
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: Disease and Biological Weapons.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: And this book, like I think Chris Smith, the representative
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: from New Jersey said, like, this book really inspired me
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: to take up this legislation. But in the book, Newby
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: basically says, the government at Fort Dietrich, Maryland, and on
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: Plum Island, New York, before it was turned into an
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: animal disease research center, we're doing.
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: It was an insect disease research center before that, I guess.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: They were looking into well, they definitely were doing biowarfare
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: research there.
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: Early early nineteen fifties, Yeah.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: And then Fort Dietrich for however long if they're not
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: still doing it now, But they were apparently looking into
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: ticks as delivery systems for biological weapons.
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: I couldn't find that that is actually verified, but I
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: find that highly believable. But what Newby is saying is
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: they were doing that research and then the way we
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: got line diseases, whatever research they were coming up with, escaped,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: say a tick attached to a bird that flew off
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: of Plumb Island and landed in the area around Lyme, Connecticut,
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: and these ticks got off and they started to breed
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: and they became endemic in this area. And that's where
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: lime disease came from. There was actually a biological weapon
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: that was produced and then inadvertently, probably not purposefully released
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: into the larger population in the northeast.
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So here's my question. I haven't read the book,
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: but are they saying that that we created lime disease
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: or that we just weaponized it, because those are two
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: very different things.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know what she's saying either, and I
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: think she stopped short of saying that, but that it's
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: implied that if you put two and two together, the
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: government was looking into biological warfare and they were talking about,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: you know, using ticks at some point, and you know,
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: it's really close to this ground zero of where the
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: tick epidemic began. You put two and two together, that's
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: the impression I have is that she didn't actually come
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: out and say it, but that she lets the readers
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: surmise for themselves, which is the problem.
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, that's very easy to disprove if she's
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: actually claiming that they created lime disease, because we just
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: got through saying it was in who was the Mummy Utsi?
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: It was in Utsi years ago over in the Alps. Well, true,
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: but it also in the United States. I mean, it
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: came around in the We first discovered it that in
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: nineteen seventies, and like several different places. It wasn't just
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: lime Connecticut. They found it in California, right, And you
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: can't just that just it doesn't add up that it
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: would be popping up in all these random places if
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: it escaped from Long Island Sound in nineteen fifty three.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: Right, which I think somebody who subscribed to this conspiracy
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: theory and is very much what it is, is a
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: conspiracy theory that well, then the release wasn't purpose or accidental.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: It was purposeful that they spread it around the northeast
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: California and then Spooner, Wisconsin, which supposedly is the actual
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: place where the first case of lime disease was described
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: in the United States in nineteen sixty nine. Yeah, about
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: six years before this cluster of juvenile arthritis cases popped
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: up in old Lime Lime in East HadAM.
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: Well, it's a very bad idea if that's what went on,
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: because you have to depend on a lot of things,
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: which is A these tics definitely finding their way to
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: the enemy. B they attached to the enemy successfully and
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: transmit the disease. And then what does it transmit? A
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: very slow acting disease that will give people headaches and
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: fatigue over the course of a long time.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: Right, that also produces a one of a kind, telltale rash,
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Right that tells you, supposedly in plenty of time that
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: you have this this disease that needs to be treated
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: with a simple course of oral antibiotics.
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it has to be probably in the country.
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: They don't thrive well in the city, right, So it's
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: just it doesn't make a good biological weapon.
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: No. And then again people who subscribed as conspiracy theory say, well,
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: they can't all be winners. But maybe it was just
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: something they were experimenting with and it wasn't very good.
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: Trust me. I mean, we've done enough research on stuff
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: our American government used to do and continue to do that.
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: It's not the most outlandish thing in the world.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: No, it's not. And that's also why Chris Smith, the
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: representative from New Jersey, shouldn't just be dismissed out of
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: hand because it's entirely plausible. It's yeah, it's not just
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: a complete wacko idea.
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: The other reason Christmis shouldn't just be dismissed out of
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: hand is because he is a true lime warrior. He
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: introduced other legislation called the Tick Act, and of course
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: he had to make tick an achronism, that an acronym,
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: not a an acronism, stand for the Ticks Colon, Identify
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: Control and Knockout Act. He was really grasping like a
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: tick on a blade of grass with that one.
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: But the point is, but knockout's not one word unless
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: you use it as knockout.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: Well, that's what he's saying, I guess, because the work
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: goes act. But it would create an additional one hundred
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: and eighty million dollars in federal funding for lime disease research,
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: sorely needed.
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: Right now, that's awesome. I didn't know you was such
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: an advocate. That's good.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: He really is. He hates lime disease like like a lot.
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: I was about to say something, but I wish I.
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: Could take a pill that would bulk up my analogy
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: region in my brain.
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: Oh, your analogies are great.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: What were you going to say? I want to know
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: we can beep it off.
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: And I was going to get political. I was going
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: to say, he hates ticks like he hates Okay, can
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: we leave that and bleep it. I don't know, we'll
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: find out, all right.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: So the whole idea that it's a bioweapon almost certainly
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: not the case, right, but it makes for good press.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, like if you look up like lyme disease
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: and bioweapon. There is a lot of recent articles written
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: on it. Just because a member of Congress introduced this legislation.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: What a lot of people are saying is, look, it
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: makes sense, like this conspiracy theory that people would go
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: to that. But on at the same time, there's another
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: really great explanation for it, and it's climate change that
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: this whole thing came about in the seventies, because we're
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: starting to see what was called the first epidemic from
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: climate change, and there's this really great article on Aon,
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: which is a great website by Mary Beth Pfeiffer spells
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: it like Michelle Pfiffer with the p called ticks Rising,
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: and she's an investigative reporter of science journalists who really
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: went to a lot of trouble to explain how climate
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: change has created a new world for ticks and we
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: are now living in it.
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, in twenty fourteen, the EPA actually started
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: to use four new indicators about what's going on with
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: climate change and the impact, and one of them was
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: the spread of lime disease. So like the EPA officially
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: uses that as a factor in an indicator in determining
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: the impact of climate change now right.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: And so the whole basis of this idea is that
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: because of warmer weather, ticks are being killed off in
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: far fewer numbers from over the winter, so they're surviving
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: longer as it gets warmer and warmer, higher and higher
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: up their range is spreading rather rapidly. Oh yeah, and
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: wherever these tics go, lime disease is game to go
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: with them. So the spread of lime disease is increasing
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: as the spread of ticks is increasing too, And ticks
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: have gotten totally out of hand in some areas. In
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: that same Aon article, well, Mary Beth Pfeiffer was talking
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: about how moose are dying in their thousands in like
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: Wisconsin and the Dakotas because they're being bled to death
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: by one hundred thousand ticks at once.
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: It's amazing that.
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: Never happened before. And now all of a sudden, it's
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: kind of becoming routine because the ticks aren't dying off
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: in the winter like they're supposed to. And again it's
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: because of climate change. And then in the Northeast, Chuck,
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: one of the reasons why there's been this explosion of
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: ticks is because there's been an explosion of deer to
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: support the tick population.
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: Sure, back in the day, there were things like mountain lions,
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: and there were predators that would help control the deer population. Yeah, wolves, wolves.
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: They are even suggesting reintroducing wolves to help control the
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: deer population.
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you can bet that's going to happen.
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: No really, no, I mean do you think so? Yeah?
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: Totally. Like if three hundred thousand people a year are
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: coming down with lime in the United States, they're going
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: to are reintroducing wolves to combat if it has even
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: a half of a chance.
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: I'd be interested to see if that happens for sure,
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: because humans are going to want to hunt those wolves.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it just brings it out in us
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: for some reason. Huh.
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean they hunted the mountain lions, right.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: But I think that's the idea of oh wait a minute,
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: really weird and circuit as bad things happen when we
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: overhunt mountain lions and wolves, maybe when we reintroduce them,
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: we won't have to, you know, or we won't follow
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: that impulse. We'll just let nature take its course.
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: Who knows you got anything else? Man?
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: I got nothing else.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: So there's a solution around antibiotics and some wolves, and
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: that'll cure what ails us.
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, advocate for yourself still, people, sure, and the.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: Wolves be persistent. That's good advice for everything. Chuck agreed. Everything.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: There's certainly cases where persistence is not a good idea,
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: But you.
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: Know what I'm saying, right, I do know.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: Okay. If you want to know more about lyme disease,
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: go check out all of the articles they are to read.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: And again, go check out the aon article by Mary
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: Beth fight for It's really interesting and since I said
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: it's interesting, that means it's time for listener mayil.
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: I'm going to call this neat story about how great
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: stuff you should know listeners are. Oh, I like that
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: from Portland, Maine. Hey, guys, my wife, daughter and I
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: all stuff you should know listeners for years. Decided last
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: minute to buy tickets to the show while on vacation
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: at Old Orchard Beach, Maine, just a short drive south
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: of Portland. We had nosebleed seats, naturally because we waited
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: until just an hour before showtime, and that was more
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: than cool by us, and we were totally stoked just
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: to be there, whatever the seats. When we got to
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: our balcony seats, a friendly fellow named Matt approached us,
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: said he had three tickets for orchestra seats and asked
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: if we'd like them. Tickets were intended for friends of
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: his who were stuck in labor day weekend traffic couldn't
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: make it to the show. Turns out he had been
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: scouting the crowd for forty minutes looking for a group
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: of three, even in listening to the help of the
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: ushers to find three people together, and we were the
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: first group that he saw. Brief walked downstairs and there
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: we were three rows from the stage for the supremely
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: excellent show about podcast topic red acted. Thanks to Matt
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: and his friends being stuck in traffic, we went from
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: not having tickets an hour before showtime to having third
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: row ten minutes before you guys took stage. We considered
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: it a little piece of true magic. So while I'm
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: confident this lengthy setup and telling you the story is
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: way too long for the air, no, not true, Richard Clark,
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: the whole family would be forever grateful if you could
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: give Matt and the Connecticut groundskeeper a huge thank you
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: from Rich, Susan and Emily in upstate New York for
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: sharing those seats with us.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: That is fantastic. I love our shows, man.
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: It's great. People are so kind. And that is from
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: Richard Clark, not Dick Clark, but rich Clark.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: Oh that's even better. Yeah, Dick Clark's taken.
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: Thank you for rich Clark for recognizing that too.
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: Thanks for coming to the show, Rich and bringing the family.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: And thank you Matt for being such a cool dude.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: That was very nice of you. I'm utterly unsurprised because
• 47:18
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• 47:22
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