This top-secret Pentagon project went on for 25 years and may have involved these creepy bugs.
And now the American people may find themselves “ticked off” over this Department of Defense program.
Because this Republican Congressman just asked the one question the Pentagon fears most.
Many Americans have always been a bit unwilling to completely trust their government.
This is the natural outgrowth from a country formed on individualism and on the idea that we will not be abused by a tyrannical government.
This distrust is healthy, and unfortunately in many cases, has been well-deserved.
One area of government abuse and excess has been in the matter of human experimentation.
The United States government has a long, sad history of medical experiments on human test subjects that are, at the very least, unethical.
Many times these experiments were performed illegally, without the knowledge, consent, or even informed consent of the test subjects.
Such tests have occurred throughout American history, but particularly in the 20th century.
These experiments include exposing humans to various chemical and biological weapons, human radiation experiments, injection of toxic and radioactive chemicals, surgical experiments, interrogation and torture experiments, tests involving mind-altering substances, and many more.
Tests have been performed on prison inmates, children, the sick, and mentally disabled individuals, often under the guise of “medical treatment.”
In many of the studies, a large portion of the subjects were poor, racial minorities, or criminals.
Funding for many of these experiments was provided by the United States military, the Central Intelligence Agency, or private corporations involved with military activities.
These human research programs were usually highly secretive, and in many cases, information was not released until decades after the studies were done.
Now we may be finding out about another such test very soon.
And this one could have major repercussions.
House lawmakers passed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) last week that ordered the Pentagon to reveal whether the U.S. military used ticks as biological weapons.
That’s right, the amendment by Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ), requires the Pentagon to examine and report to Congress “whether the Department of Defense experimented with ticks and other insects regarding their use as biological weapons between the years 1950-1975.”
Smith took to the House floor saying the amendment tasks the Department of Defense’s inspector general, “to ask the hard questions and report back.”
“If true, what were the parameters of the program? Who ordered it?” Smith asked during a debate for the amendment.
“Was there any accidental release anywhere or at any time of any of the diseased ticks?”
Smith says he decided to add the amendment after reading some scientific material that suggested, “significant research had been done at U.S. government facilities including Fort Detrick, Maryland and Plum Island, New York to turn ticks and other insects into bioweapons.”
If this is true, the next steps are to find out if these weaponized ticks were put onto human test subjects, or purposefully or accidently released – and if so, how many and where.
Ticks of course are common carriers of a number of different diseases like Babesiosis, Ehrlichiosis, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Anaplasmosis, and the most well-known, Lyme disease.
These diseases, especially Lyme disease, cause a wide array of symptoms which makes proper diagnosis both difficult and rare.
Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever is fatal if not properly diagnosed and treated within the first few weeks of symptoms.
Each year, more than 30,000 cases of Lyme disease are reported in the United States.
The vast majority of these cases are in the Northeast, which is where the two military installations that may have performed the experiments are located.
Some widely respected studies estimate the number of Lyme disease cases may actually be as high as 329,000 per year.
And these numbers have been rising steadily for the last few decades, leading some doctors and scientists to sound the alarm of a possible impending epidemic.
So the next time you are outside and pull a tick off yourself or a family member, take a minute and wonder, is that a government tick?