A must-pass defense bill expected to be signed by President Donald Trump this week directs a federal watchdog to investigate a tick-related conspiracy theory that has been promoted by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Buried on page 833 of the National Defense Authorization Act passed by the House last week is language directing the Government Accountability Office to investigate whether Lyme disease was bioengineered by the U.S. military. The bill is expected to pass the Senate unchanged this week.
Lyme disease is actually caused by bacteria transmitted by New England’s deer ticks and California’s Western blacklegged ticks. Reports of Lyme per 100,000 people have nearly doubled nationally, from 3.74 cases in 1991 to 7.21 in 2018, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
More recent estimates put the rate of Lyme diagnoses at about 450,000 Americans per year. Climate change and urban development have pushed Lyme disease to become the most common vector-borne illness in the United States, infecting nearly half a million people annually. But the only available vaccine is for dogs.
Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), who authored the provision, has previously attempted to pass similar language in 2019 and 2021. He has said he was inspired to address the issue after reading a book by author Kris Newby, who promotes the theory that the military created Lyme as a biological weapon.
“We are one step closer to finally determining whether the U.S. government’s bioweapons program contributed to the proliferation of Lyme disease,” Smith said after the House passed the legislation last week. “The hundreds of thousands of New Jerseyans suffering from Lyme disease — in addition to the millions across the United States — deserve to know the truth about the origins of their illness. An enhanced understanding of how Lyme came to be will only assist in finding a cure for this debilitating disease.”
The theory is familiar to Kennedy, who in January 2024 hosted Newby on an episode of his podcast devoted to the conspiracy theory. At the time, he mused that Lyme “is highly likely to have been a military weapon.”
Kennedy came under fire for those comments during his confirmation hearings. Then, he defended himself by saying he never actually believed the conspiracies he helped spread.
In a statement last week, Smith said that if the GAO investigation finds Lyme was not bioengineered by the military, “we turn the page.”
Smith and Kennedy appeared together Monday at a roundtable hosted by the Department of Health and Human Services about Lyme disease. There, Smith lamented how he had been ridiculed for his Lyme legislation in the past, characterizing a Washington Post article fact-checking the claims at the time as “mocking the heck out of me for offering that.”
“They ran the story like we have a tin foil hat on our head,” he said.
He celebrated the Lyme language’s inclusion in the defense bill and thanked Kennedy for speaking out on the issue.
“GAO will be fully empowered to leave no stone unturned with a congressional mandate to get to the bottom of it because they were weaponizing ticks,” Smith said.
Kennedy didn’t respond to Smith’s comments at the roundtable, but at one point during the event he repeated a false conspiracy theory about azidothymidine, a drug to treat AIDS known as AZT.
The drug, he said, “probably killed more people than AIDS did.”
