16 Jul, 2019
The US Congress has backed an amendment to the 2020 US Defense budget which could force an investigation into allegations that the pentagon had weaponized insects, including ticks, in a secret program.
Rep. Christopher Smith (R-New Jersey), co-chair of the House Lyme Disease Caucus, asked a series of hard-hitting questions about the alleged ‘bioweaponization’ program and its potential side-effects, including the possible spread of a bacterial infection.
“Americans have a right to know whether any of this is true,” Smith said in a news release. “And have these experiments caused Lyme disease and other tick-borne disease to mutate and to spread? Who ordered it? Were any ticks released by design?”
Lawmakers are considering whether or not to include Smith’s amendment in the final version of the budget which will ultimately be presented to President Donald Trump.
The amendment to the House version of the Defense budget for 2020 would require the Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General to explain whether the US military had indeed experimented with weaponizing ticks and other insects between 1950 and 1975.
If found to be true, the inspector general must present Congress with information regarding the full extent and scope of the research.
Rumors have persisted for years of researchers at New York’s Plum Island and Maryland’s Fort Detrick conducting experiments on insects to turn them into biological weapons though no conclusive evidence of such biowarfare programs has been found. Yet.
