Lyme discoverer Willy Burgdorfer breaks silence on heated controversy
On February 28, 2007, the UNDER OUR SKIN film crew interviewed Willy Burgdorfer, Ph.D., M.D., and Scientist Emeritus at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), for three hours at his home in Hamilton, Montana. Dr. Burgdorfer is the discoverer and namesake of the spirochete (a type of bacterium) that causes Lyme disease, called Borrelia burgdorferi. He has received numerous awards, including the Robert Koch Gold Medal, the IDSA Bristol Award, the Schaudinn-Hoffman Plaque, and the Walter Reed Medal. He is a coeditor of the book, “Aspects of Lyme Borreliosis,” and has published over 220 research papers.
Just as we began filming, there was a pounding on the door, and we found ourselves facing someone who turned out to be a top researcher at the nearby Rocky Mountain Laboratories, a biolevel-4 NIH research facility. Standing on the porch, our uninvited guest said, “I’ve been told that I need to supervise this interview. This comes from the highest levels. There are things that Willy can’t talk about.”
We were stunned. After all, Dr. Burgdorfer had been retired from the lab since 1986. We were there to talk to a private citizen, about the history of a very public discovery that had put him on the short list for a Nobel Prize. Earlier that year, the NIH had refused our requests to interview any of their Lyme researchers. What was going on? Why would the NIH want to censor information about the fastest growing bug-borne disease in the United States?
Fortunately, our iron-willed film director, Andy Abrahams Wilson, turned the NIH handler away, and what followed was an amazingly candid interview about Lyme disease—its dangers and its controversies. Here are highlights from this three-hour interview:
Andy Wilson: Could you describe the “Aha!” moment when you discovered the spirochete that causes Lyme disease?
Dr. Burgdorfer: I remember that time quite well. Allen Steere called me in the summer of 1977 and said, “Willy, I would like to discuss with you the methods you are using in dissecting ticks, and [looking] for microbial agents.” I sat with him about two hours that summer and told him over the phone how to dissect ticks. Then about two months later he called again, and I repeated, again, the same thing. And he finally said [in 1981], “Well, I’m willing to send you some serum [samples]. I want you to examine them for me.”
But it was not an “Aha” [moment]. It was a “What in the hell? What’s in that smear?” And then my work [on relapsing fever] as a Swiss student came back. [I said to myself], “Willy, these are spirochetes!” The slide showed long slender forms, a little bit curved, and they were only in the mid-part of the tick. Nowhere else. There were so many people who said, “That is impossible Willie. You can’t get spirochetes out of hard-bodied ticks.” [But from my work on] relapsing fever ticks from Africa, I knew what a spirochete looked like. The Belgian Congo and Kenya are hotspots for relapsing fever. Even Livingston [the African explorer and Scottish missionary] was exposed, and he called it “tick fever.”
Andy Wilson: And what did they call this spirochete?
Dr. Burgdorfer: I discovered the agent producing Lyme disease, so they called it Borrelia burgdorferi, after my name, Willy Burgdorfer. The initial findings were published right away in Science magazine. And even today, [this discovery] is considered a breakthrough in spirochetal research. There are many laboratories that are using our techniques, applying them to syphilis, because of similarities.
Andy Wilson: What are the similarities between Borrelia burgdorferi and syphilis?
Dr. Burgdorfer: The similarities that I know of are associated with the infection of the brain, the nervous system. The syphilis spirochete, Treponema pallidum has an affinity for nerve tissues. The Borrelia burgdorferi spirochete very likely has that too. Children are especially sensitive to Borrelia burgdorferi.
The Lyme disease spirochete is far more virulent than syphilis. We don’t know the end yet. And [we] can’t even make a [blood] smear with Borrelia burgdorferi and see the organism. It’s there. But you don’t see it. You cannot find this spirochete. Why not? After all, I have a sick person here. He is trembling all over. His synovial fluid is full of spirochetes. But when it comes to blood, it’s not there. So there is something associated with this organism that makes it different.
Andy Wilson: Why is Borrelia burgdorferi so hard to find in the body and culture outside the body?
Dr. Burgdorfer: Borrelia burgdorferi in the tissues of a patient is extremely difficult to demonstrate, because, first of all, you don’t like somebody to take samples out of your brain [to look] for spirochetes. The same with other tissues. Every system in your body can be infected with spirochete. But to prove that is extremely difficult. It demands surgical work, which is very expensive
Andy Wilson: Are you a believer in the idea of persistent Lyme infections?
Dr. Burgdorfer: I am a believer in persistent infections because people suffering with Lyme disease, ten or fifteen or twenty years later, get sick [again]. Because it appears that this organism has the ability to be sequestered in tissues and [it] is possible that it could reappear, bringing back the clinical manifestations it caused in the first place. These are controversial issues for microbiologists, as well as the physicians who are asked to treat patients.
Andy Wilson: How do you feel about the controversy in the Lyme world?
Dr. Burgdorfer: The controversy in Lyme disease research is a shameful affair. And I say that because the whole thing is politically tainted. Money goes to people who have, for the past 30 years, produced the same thing—nothing. Serology has to be started from scratch with people who don’t know beforehand the results of their research.
There are lots of physicians around who wouldn’t touch a Lyme disease patient. They tell the nurse, “You tell the guy to get out of here. I don’t want to see him.” That is shameful. So [this] shame includes physicians who don’t even have the courage to tell a patient, “You have Lyme disease and I don’t know anything about it.”
Andy Wilson: What about the Lyme vaccine?
Dr. Burgdorfer: The [first generation] vaccine was not specific enough and not strong enough. So what is needed is additional work on a vaccine. What we have right now is a good example of work that goes to industry [too soon], and industry says, “Okay fine, get it out. “ And somebody says, well it’s too early. And it’s already on the market … and you see that every day …You see that this company is falling down, and these guys are realizing that the vaccine work is full of holes and never should have come out. A lot of people are going to pay for that. They’re going to get sick with Lyme as a result of the vaccination. Then you’re in trouble.
Andy Wilson: What do you think about the relationship between Lyme and neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease?
Dr. Burgdorfer: Right now they are building a research center at Columbia University, to study this possibility, because many physicians believe that neurologic manifestations, regardless [of] what type, are typical for Lyme disease.
Andy Wilson: What do you most regret about what has happened, in the aftermath of your discovery?
Dr. Burgdorfer: I most regret that the technology used to diagnose and to even treat Lyme disease wasn’t worked all the way through. It [was based on] only a few results, then published. And later on, people [wanted] to take them back. I think Borrelia burgdorferi is too serious an [infectious] agent to play with, and with many laboratories, the severity of the disease is overlooked.
Andy Wilson: What’s the next stage of research?
Dr. Burgdorfer: Neurologic manifestations have to be the next stage of research. Also [Borrelia burgdorferi’s] antigenicity. Ecologically, the diversification of Borrelia is tremendous. Because of the spirochete’s ability to change—to change its physiology, to change its “antigenic” structure for instance—a spirochete may be capable of producing disease or not.
And one piece of work that needs to be done, that has lately been neglected, is development of the spirochete—whether it transfers [genes via] fission, or whether individual spirochetes have the ability to break into spheres or particles. We don’t know yet how they do it but they do. They go into the lymphocytes, they go into every tissue. Just because we have not seen [them], does not mean that they are not there. Once the immune response is down, are [they] capable of re-entering the bloodstream and producing disease?
Andy Wilson: Do you have Lyme?
Dr. Burgdorfer: No. I don’t. But I say that cautiously. Because I have been working with Lyme disease ever since 1981.
_______
Soon after we turned-off the camera and began packing up our gear, Dr. Burgdorfer told us with a wry smile, “I didn’t tell you everything.”
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Great reporting.
[Soon after we turned-off the camera and began packing up our gear, Dr. Burgdorfer told us with a sly smile, “I didn’t tell you everything.”]
… Oh you can’t leave us hanging on that, whats the rest of the story?!?
“I didn’t tell you everything.”
–Wow. Great interview. Did you happen to ask him if the non-treatment of Lyme (a syphilis-type organism) is the de facto continuation (on a national scale) of the CDC’s infamous Tuskegee experiment (with untreated syphilis), which was exposed and discontinued at about the same time the Lyme epidemic took off and has been artificially perpetuated by CDC/EIS “experts” (e.g. through fraudulant treatment guidelines) ever since?
Jerry Leonard
Wow, that last statement is haunting. I wonder what he did not tell…Further, would he be willing to tell all? Was his last declarative an invitation for further questions at a future time?
Why didn’t he tell you everything? We have the right to know the whole truth!
Mom of 5 kids who have been very sick from Lyme and other Tick-borne infections!
THANK YOU WILLY!!
I did have a telephone conversation with Dr. Burgdorferi many years ago when he told me he was recruited from Austria to work in the U.S. biowarfare program. When I asked him whether the organism in question – Borrelia burgdorferi- was an agent studied with respect to biowarfare, he said, “No.” Of course, I did not know if he was telling me the truth. He did talk about the interest of other intracellular agents that have been of interest in biowarfare, such as Q fever, for example — but all of this has been written about. Just go to your local public library, or Amazon.com and search “biological warfare.” You will be surprised by what you read.
Maybe they did not want Willy to spill the beans about his involvement in biowarfare research, but what is the surprise? Well, politically, Nixon said he had closed down the U.S. biowarfare program. Maybe the U.S. never really complied with that and took all their stuff and put it under the aegis of the CIA. Now they call it “biodefense.”
But, one would suspect there is more – something more they have not told us about this organism and about Dr. Burgdorfer.
Lynn Shepler MD JD
ltshepler@aol.com
I suspect the part he didn’t tell was that the USDA and U.S. Army were engaged in tick borne disease research, continuing the work of the Nazis after WWII, on Plum Island off the North Fork of Long Island. I know from personal experience that when you work for the government on secret projects you have to sign a formal document promising not to divulge information under the threat of imprisonment or other sever penalties.
I doubt he wants trouble.
Go to the North Fork of L.I. and you will see ramps to the doors of banks, supermarkets, doctor’s offices, public buildings, all over the place, to accommodate the many “infirm”.
Wow! Do I smell a sequel, hopefully?
All the logical and factual information anyone would want to know (excluding the spheroplast formulary) was published in 1976 by Russell Johnson:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=%22Biology+of+Parasitic+Spirochetes%22&x=19&y=22
It’s not even listed by Amazon any more.
But I have a copy:
http://www.actionlyme.org/BRAIN_PERMANENT.htm
http://www.actionlyme.org/ROCKEFELLER_UNIVERSITY.htm
LOL.
Willy Burgdorfer has a chapter in that 1976 book and he said we will need more spirochetologists in the future. Then Allen Steere came along, LOL.
Thank you:
Dr Burgdorfer, Andy Wilson, Kris Newby, and others who are trying to get this atrocity exposed and solved!
Wow, I’m not sure what to take away from it yet, but I’m glad you put this together.
I am a chronic lyme disease patient and I am looking for a little help with an attempt I’m making to gain public awareness and scrutiny for Lyme’s current status in the medical community. I have been a usability engineer and mechanical/architectural designer, but at this time I am using my current decent health to try and get a proper debate going on the TV show ‘The Doctors’.
On the show’s message boards, in the feedback section, I have made a request for the show to host a lyme debate, fortunately or unfortunately its the only request of its kind.
My goal is to get get the attention of ‘The Doctor’s’ producers with a concentrated, semi-organized voice in one place. But this idea needs help in the form of supporting posts.
If you read the post, please feel free to correct me any where I am wrong, make suggestions for improving my request and offer other suggested experts for the debate panel.
If you support the call for a debate, please add a post on the doctor’s site saying anything, even if you are skeptical!
http://www.thedoctorstv.com/forums/171-Feedback/topics/4462- We-need-a-debate-on-LYME-
If the link doesn’t work, it is: http://www.thedoctorstv.com > Community > Message Boards > Feedback > “We need a debate on LYME!”
If a lyme patient falls in the forest and no one hears do they really have lyme…..? Please make yourself heard, every little bit helps.
We’ve spoken to the producers of THE DOCTORS directly, and we’ve been encouraging them to address Lyme disease, too. I agree that the more that their loyal viewers ask for the show, the more likely they’ll cover it.
Thanks for organizing this effort.
Thanks Kris for sharing this very interesting interview.
What other gems have you got for us?
I too found this interview interesting and alarming. The end note of this interview left me seriously peeved. It is hard not to feel like a game piece in an elaborate game between insurance companies, researchers and even the government. Any sense of real humanity seems long gone. I admire his work but I don’t appreciate the coyness.
I can’t fault you for anything you’ve done because you’ve done such a marvelous job of making and promoting this documentary and changing awareness about lyme.
I would just add had I been there I would have invited the man in and been very friendly, saying you can absolutely sit in as long as we can film you both. Willy Burgdorfer is not going to say anything new to you that he has not said to others including the author of Cure Unknown, etc. Of course it’s important to film him, but even more important would have been to draw the other fellow in and turn the camera on him and politely engage him about his work–and then drop a bombshell question on him at the end, which is, Who asked you to come over here and make sure Willy Burgdorfer did not reveal classified information?
The expression on his face would have been worth a lot.
I have followed this “unknown” disease for 2 years after a whole family of friends, plus another friend finally found out their problem. Sick for 13 years and only had symptoms treated. This would make a great episode on the Doctors show. The family is bankrupt because of no insuance for correct treatment- this is not a “recognized disease” you know. This is America, not a small tropical island. People wake up and be honest with research and development. Polio showed and got attention. Lymes’s should also.
I wonder how many genetically altered spiro (B.B.) were let into the wild to see how an alteration in genetics progresses and how long and if at all pos to spread via (F) the new gene into the wild and it effect on it pathogenicity and immungenicity.
Do you have video? I’d love to hear his voice and expression when he calls it “a shameful affair”
After many years of slowly degenerating (with negative Lyme tests) and 2 years of treatment with a very up-on-things Lyme literate Physician, I now test very positive for Lyme Disease. (Thank goodness at least for a positive test!) My first doctor gave me three weeks of doxycycline and said I was cured. She dismissed my worsening symptoms as “fibromyalgia” and offered me antidepressants. After I showed her information I had downloaded from web pages I now know were accurate, she angrily dismissed the information as “trash”. She has chosen to stay ignorant and continues to betray her Hypocratic oath by doing harm by neglect.
What we perhaps ought to do, is to go to the medical schools who train these doctors and urge them to have the courage to confront this issue openly and without predudice. The evidence that Chronic Lyme exists is there and is supported by good, solid science. This may not help some of us in time, but it would sure help the next generation of Lyme sufferers. Perhaps this interview with Dr. Brugdorfer could be used in part of a presentation.
Did any of you read a piece recently about the group of young Harvard doctors in training who challenged their instructors on their ties to big Pharmaceutical compaies? They discovered, upon survey, that 80% of their instructors were under contract as consultants to pharma. companies and brought their concerns to the head of Harvard Medical School and demanded something be done about it. I understand from the article that the movement is catching fire in med. schools across the country. The article (I wish I could remember where I read it–my Lyme again!) also said that Harvard was going to change its policy about professors being obligated to big pharmaceuticals.
If these students can do something so momentous to change the current medical culture, maybe we can too.
Mary Ekroos
Monstrous, simply monstrous. Dr. Burgdofer has simply stated publicly from a position of “authority” what has been known and has been out there for years. The massive prostitution of science and medicine in the name of egos and profit is a muderous disgrace. How can those frauds in the IDSA (Steere, Wormser et al) be allowed to continue their homocidal charades which have caused “Lyme disease” to be frozen in time for thirty years. They were wrong then and have been proven deadly and wrong time and again since then. How many have, are and will suffer because of this massive failure of honesty, integrity and simply humanity? The Nazis in their death camps really have little on us, except their degree of murder.
“Whenever there is a vision, there will be a provision!”
I suggest: a) we regain control of our own health…
b) read ‘Parasites, the Enemy Within’ by Hanna Kroeger,’Introduction to Parasitology’ by Asa C Chandler, ‘Fight Back Against Arthritis’ by Dr. Bingham… c) diet, exercise, think good thoughts!
Shalom. Love to one and all always. Mathilde
Many Morgellons sufferers test positive for Lymes. But Lymes is not the whole story of Morgellons. Both seem to be incurable and have many symptoms in common. My opinion is that they are both man-made pathogens.
Dee Rohe
AP,BLS,CNC
Mary Elkroos, is this the article about the Harvard medical students? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/03/medical-school-ethics-at-_n_171315.html
Dr. Marcia Angell, a faculty member and former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, is among the professors who argue that industry profit motives do not correspond to the scientific aims of academic medicine and that much of the financing needs to be not only disclosed, but banned. Too many medical schools, she says, have struck a “Faustian bargain” with pharmaceutical companies.
“If a school like Harvard can’t behave itself,” Dr. Angell said, “who can?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/business/03medschool.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&adxnnl=1&ref=business&adxnnlx=1245139201-MNCTarrXM/tl5j7Gni80PQ
This sounds very ominous…..do you know any more about the implications here? I have read a few things about “government” labs involved with bio stuff which is also associated with those strange criss cross patterns….. they call chem-trails “someone” has been making in the sky all over the world. They have found some very nasty stuff on the ground and in the air when there has been chem. Trail activity…….. Some think it has to do with manipulating the weather and others think it has to do with bio testing on the masses. This world gets stranger and stranger.
I do remember that there was an accident at one of the labs up in northern Virginia when we were there…..or a loss of bio stuff about the time everyone was getting sick with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and CFIDS. I was sick with seriously for about two years and then another three until I was functioning again…..One of my doctors told me I had ankolysising spondititis to begin with and then he said I had MS….but my symtoms kept changing and then he just called it Very Strange Disease…..VSD. Walking and thinking were very difficult for about six months to a year. They also found a large amount of Epstein Barr antibodies my blood system….who the hell knows…..
I don’t trust anything they say or do anymore. They denied Gulf War Syndrome for too many years and Agent Orange and DDT and who knows what else. I think they just use populations for experiments however they choose. I wonder how they think they are immune to all the crazy stuff they have been doing for decades.
My mom is laying in the hospital right now fighting for her life, for years of the wrong answers,and nobody aware of the tramatic affects of lyme disease.My mom has suffered pain beyond the limits,still today we are suffering because there isnt anyone who will listen.I feel like screaming out she has lyme disease help her.But ill be laughed at,and put away where i cant be heared. someone please help me.
Dr. Burgdorfer: I most regret that the technology used to diagnose and to even treat Lyme disease wasn’t worked all the way through. It [was based on] only a few results, then published. And later on, people [wanted] to take them back. I think Borrelia burgdorferi is too serious an [infectious] agent to play with, and with many laboratories, the severity of the disease is overlooked.
Absolutly Thank You Dr and I mean Dr.
DR BURGDORFER IF YOU KNOW ANY SECRETS ABOUT LYME DISEASE PLEASE DONT TAKE THEM WITH YOU!!!!!!
[...] Some of you may have already read this interview conducted by Andy Wilson from the film crew of “Under Our Skin” on Feb, 28 in 2007, although the interview was not released until last month. My computer crashed or I would have sent this out sooner. The credibility of Dr. Burgdorfer can not be questioned, however, his knowledge of the disease epidemic is clearly censured. (See additional information at the end of this pinterview) This interview with can also be viewed at the Under Our Skin Blog: [...]
[...] Under our Skin [...]
Thank you so much for your courageous work, ndy and Dr. B! This is incredibly frightening! There is no logic to MDs resistance to “chronic Lyme” is possible, given that it IS a spirochete. There are extremely elusive organisms? Treponema p. (syphilis. is known to “hide” or go “dormant” but patients can relapse, even up to 30 years later! The conspicuous failure of the “medical-industrial complex” on Lyme/Morgellons only reinforces suspicion of “engineered organisms” and CDC/NIH/DOD collusion. I have chronic Lyme/Morgellons (2 yrs.)years now. I have seen MDs at some of the allegedly best hopsitals in the world. The blatant medical mismanagement and sometimes abusive treatment I got from most MDs has been stunning! We are the prototypical example of why our healthcare system needs to be overhauled! It is an obscene waste of very expensive provider/personal resources for the series of MD and their endless tests we get, to find out what’s wrong, since it can’t possibly be Lyme-related with negative WBs & Elissas! If you think Chronic Lyme is controversial, factoring Morgellons into the mix makes is the kiss of death, I fear! Im mad-as-hell! If we could unite our pro-active Lyme-Morgellons advocate comm-unities in political action or even including massive class-action civil litigation, we might get somewhere. The cruelty is, I am still (barely) working full-time, and MUST for at least another year, to keep my health insurance and retire w/ a pension. I can barely get through the work day, much less do even rudimentary housekeeping (which is a hefty job with Morgellons.) Social life is a memory! My “fellow-travellers” suffer the same devastating fatigue and cognitive changes,& chronic pain that sucks the life out of us! I hope I even make it to retirement, so I can take my fury “to the streets!” I was a damn good activist in the past and the thought of aiming my outrage at the agencies who have created/perpetuated this public health disaster insires me to fight on!
As another comment said, Dr. B…PLEASE, somehow find a way to share all of what you know. Cofidentiality agreements be damned! With the greatest of respect for the position Dr. B is in, I consider it immoral to withhold scientific information and verifiable evidence that would serve the greater good! He’s a pretty clever man. Let’s pray he can find a way to “move this debate” along.
Very frightening and discouraging. Thank you for the interview.
Frightening that you should mention Burgdorferi & BIOWARFARE in the same sentence, because my husband swears that it was after the government SPRAYED CENTRAL NEW JERSEY FOR SUPPOSSEDLY THE GYPSY MOTH THAT LYME DISEASE EXPLODED HERE!
I honestly did not believe him @ first, but after reading this website, I am convinced he is RIGHT. My dog died from lymes, my girlfriend’s baby died from lymes, she has lymes, I am in 2nd stage lymes, my sister has lymes, & my father is dying from 3rd stage lymes-suffering from involuntary movement.
I can’t believe my government would stoop to Saddam Hussain’s method of releasing mustard gas on the Kurds.
Someone once said that knowledge is power, and if this is true then I should feel powerful, but I don’t because after 9 years of Lyme disease and reading everything possible about this horrible disease, I still feel like I am at square one. What can I do with my knowledge? Like all the other people with this dreadful disease I am screaming for help, an answer, a miracle, and no one hears me, or no one has an answer would be more accurate. I thank Andy Abrahams for his incredible film (Under our Skin. I had the pleasure of meeting him at the premiere of the movie recently in Beverly hills. It took Mr Abrahams over 4 years to make this film and he had over 300 housr of footage that he condensed to 2 hours. This movie is great and I hope that there is more on the way.
There is no intention of a cure for this.
Whoever has contracted this powerful ‘genetically altered spirochete’, which is conveniently undetectible in your skin tissues, will, in fact, eventually die from this- I will die from this.
Why would a ‘genetically altered spirochete’ be released into the wild to progress?
It wouldn’t be to exacerbate the passing of the latest ‘Health Care Reform Bill’, in which is something powerfully dominent & perilously hidden that is meant to be missed-would it?
http://www.cchrint.org/videos/experts/schaler/
This video uncovers the truth in psychiatry.