‘Bioweapons’ and cover-ups: The untruths behind RFK Jr.’s disease claims

 https://www.caryinstitute.org/news-insights/media-coverage/bioweapons-and-cover-ups-untruths-behind-rfk-jrs-disease-claims

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has argued that Lyme disease was cooked up by the American military in a Long Island laboratory in the 1950s.

It’s a debunked conspiracy theory that Kennedy has repeated in campaign events and on his podcast in the months before being named by President-elect Donald Trump to oversee national health policy.

In his telling, the tick-borne illness, which can cause debilitating pain and facial paralysis if untreated, was created as a military bioweapon at the Department of Homeland Security’s Plum Island Animal Disease Center. The facility opened in 1954 and is situated across Long Island Sound from the area of Connecticut where Lyme was discovered in the 1970s.

“Clearly this disease was not created by even the most evil genius military biologists in 1954,” said Rick Ostfeld, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. “It is easy to refute with 100 percent certainty.”