‘I Believe Americans Have a Right to Know’: New Jersey Representative Presents Bill Asking Government to Disclose Its Involvement in Lyme Disease
by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – A New Jersey Republican Senator is calling for an investigation by the House of Representatives into whether the Department of Defense used weaponized ticks between 1950 and 1975.
Representative Chris Smith, who proposed the amendment requiring the US government to divulge its secrets regarding any potential projects during those decades, said that the 300,000 to 437,00 of new American cases of Lyme Disease every year deserved to know the truth.
“My amendment tasks the DoD inspector general to ask the hard questions and report back,” Smith said, saying the bill included a mandate for the DOD to disclose “the parameters of the program” and “who ordered it.”
Additionally, the bill requires the government to release documents concerning whether any weaponized insects were “released outside of any laboratory by accident or experimental design,” a reference no doubt to the post-WWII experiments on Plum Island to which some attribute the sudden emergence of Lyme Disease in Connecticut.
The bill was tacked on to a defense spending bill but will need Senate approval.