Washington D.C. – Ahead of a roundtable discussion today led by HHS Secretary Kennedy on “policy for Lyme disease and related chronic conditions”, the big question is: Will RFK Jr. double down on his wild theory that the tick-borne illness was manufactured as a military bioweapon? Kennedy reiterated his fringe belief during his confirmation process earlier this year.
“Secretary Kennedy’s debunked belief that Lyme disease was purposely created by the U.S. military is emblematic of a larger problem: That someone who so easily latches onto and promotes unfounded conspiracy theories like this is overseeing our public health,” said Kayla Hancock, director of Public Health Watch, a project of Protect Our Care. “Finding a cure or preventive treatment for this disease that destroys so many Americans’ quality of life will only be hindered by Kennedy’s embrace of pseudoscience and vaccine skepticism, and his aversion to understanding even the disease’s root causes. If Donald Trump cared at all about strengthening our public health, he would remove his health secretary, who is actively leaving Americans more vulnerable to disease.”
WHAT TO KNOW:
There is still no vaccine for Lyme disease, in part due to the same misinformation pushed by Kennedy about vaccines supposedly causing the illness. Lyme disease is a serious illness with cases primarily concentrated in New England that impacts nearly 500,000 people every year. The disease can lead to distressing and even disabling symptoms in 10 to 20 percent of cases, and reportedly has an annual cost of diagnosis and treatment totaling almost $1 billion. Kennedy’s bizarre stance about a serious disease is emblematic of why he has no business serving as Health Secretary.
Kennedy Spread A Conspiracy Theory Claiming That It Was “Highly Likely” That Lyme Disease Was A Military Bioweapon. In 2024, during an episode of his podcast discussing Lyme disease, Kennedy launched into a tirade about the disease supposedly being a bioweapon: “Another thing that keeps us from enjoying the outdoors and keeps us locked inside and the idea that this may have been, is highly likely to have been a military weapon, and we cannot say 100percent for sure, but we do know that they were experimenting with tics there. The tics, as you show, are an epidemic because of what happened at Plum Island and the other labs. […] We also know that they were experimenting with diseases of the kind, like Lyme disease, at that lab, and they were putting them in tics and then infecting people.” During his 2025 confirmation hearing Kennedy affirmed to Sen. Michael Bennet that he “probably did” spout these wild conspiracy theories about Lyme.
- Kennedy’s Bioweapon Conspiracy Theory Has Been Discredited. The conspiracy theory that Lyme disease was supposedly created by the U.S. military as a bioweapon has been thoroughly debunked. The American Lyme Disease Foundation wrote, “Some claim that Lyme disease was introduced into the northeastern region of the U.S.by a man-made strain of Borrelia burgdorferi that escaped from a high containment biological warfare laboratory on Plum Island. However, there is ample evidence to indicate that both Ixodes ticks and B. burgdorferi were present in the U.S. well before the Plum Island facility was ever established.” According to a Washington Post op-ed written by infectious disease professor Sam Telford, “It’s an old conspiracy theory enjoying a resurgence with lots of sensational headlines and tweets. Even Congress has ordered that the Pentagon must reveal whether it weaponized ticks. And it’s not true.”
RFK Jr. Blamed Vaccine Gain-Of-Function Research For The Creation Of Lyme Disease. As Rolling Stone reported, Kennedy convened a panel of health misinformation advocates in 2023, during which they discussed the origins of infectious disease and their relationship to vaccines: “At one point, he baselessly asserted that vaccine research had been responsible for the creation of some of the deadliest diseases in human history, including HIV, the Spanish flu, and Lyme disease.” Kennedy reportedly also promised he would “end all gain-of-function research…It’s just a disaster, it’s given us no benefits. It’s given us everything from Lyme disease to Covid, and many many other diseases. RSV, which is now one of the biggest killers of children, came out of a vaccine lab.”
- The Previous Lyme Disease Vaccine Was Pulled In Part Because Of The Same Type of Misinformation Spread By Kennedy. Dr. Robert Smith of MaineHealth said that the previous Lyme disease vaccination, which was on the market in the mid-90s, was removed from the market in part because of misinformation that the vaccine caused the very disease it was intended to cure. According to the Portland Press Herald, “There were a number of reasons the previous human vaccine was removed from the market, Smith said, including misinformation that the vaccine caused Lyme disease, and that the disease had not reached the high number of cases now being reported, especially in the Northeast. Knight said the new vaccine will likely be more effective than the previous one, which was only on the market for a few years starting in the late 1990s.”
###