I received a comment on my, shall we say, “critique” of Johns Hopkins from a troubled fellow by the name of Rick Mertens.

I initially marked it as spam, but my partner convinced me to allow the comment so we could ask the gutless and dataless wonder, “Do YOU know what OspA is?” So far there has been no reply.

Still, we find it curious that a little bit earlier, a visitor using a Johns Hopkins server happened to be on that very same post.

Plus, there were a bunch of hits on that post (which has been quiet for the last week) from around Baltimore and the DC area, so something’s up. Then, whaddya know? Almost simultaneously someone named Rick Mertens asks to join our Facebook group. Huh, that’s funny. The Facebook Rick Mertens looks to have been an Ebola nurse in Sierra Leone. Oddly, I had our visitor pegged for this guy:

Apparently he works for Texas A&M (TAMU), but his office is in Washington, DC. Gosh, he must be really important.

http://agrilife.org/agrilife-offices/federalrelations/

I wonder if he had a hand in this dastardly deed, trying to get TAMU’s research retracted. From RetractionWatch.com:

“A paper suggesting that 45% of deer ticks in Texas have Lyme disease was raked over the coals in a letter to the editor in a recent issue of Parasites and Vectors, though it doesn’t seem like a retraction is forthcoming.”
“The article said that 45% of their specimens from Ixodes scapularis ticks in Texas and Northeastern Mexico had Borrelia burgdorferi, the organism that causes Lyme disease in North America. What had been reported previously is less than 1% of ticks in texas had Borrelia burgdorferi in them.”

That would be pretty slimy, working against your own university, wouldn’t it? Who does this hack work for, anyway, with an office not in Texas, but in DC?

I wonder, too, if one of his big projects prior to leaving the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) was to push through the new Uniform Guidance for Federal Awards.

From HHS Grants Official Calls Shift to Uniform Guidance a Heavy Lift, by Charles S. Clark on govexec.com:

“What is different today, she said, is tougher demands for clarity, consistency and performance measures as laid out by the Office of Management and Budget in its December 2013 uniform grants guidance. The steps required of all 26 grantmaking agencies are aimed at reducing the administrative burden for both agencies and recipients as well as curbing the risk of waste, fraud and abuse.”

“Agencies also have new responsibilities to help maintain the centralized Federal Awardee Performance and Integrated Information Systems database to track contractor misconduct. “It does change the landscape,” Haseltine said, and will “ultimately change the relationships and discussions as we will have higher expectations for data that tells a story.”

Unfortunately, it seems that for TAMU, the story told must be the one OMB wants told. That is the main concern of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

David Abel, in yesterday’s Boston Globe, reported:

“But the group’s efforts have sparked tensions with other open-government advocates, who have argued that it risks opening loopholes that could make it easier for officials and agencies to hide information from the public.”

EXACTLY. The universities need to be free to protect their ongoing research from the government shills who would allow only the “official” story to be told [Rick Mertens].

“Critics say that many of the requests abuse the spirit of open records laws and threaten to stifle research. They also make it harder for public universities to conduct controversial research and attract top faculty, compared with private universities where scientists aren’t generally subject to open records laws, they say.

“Our role is to raise awareness about how scientists are being harassed,” Halpern said.”

This reminds me of another time science was stifled for the sake of preserving Gubmint’s fairy tale. It was when the Under Our Skin crew interviewed Willy Burgdorfer.

“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.

…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.”

What he did tell them:

Allen Steere had to be told twice how to dissect a tick, and the idiot still couldn’t get it.

“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.”

And he dropped this tidbit:

“…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.”

…and this fine and accurate quote:

“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.”

Ya think? Make that now 40 years. Forty years of nothing because THEY HAVE NOTHING.

“This battle cannot be won on a scientific front. We need to mount a socio-political offensive, but we are out numbered and out gunned. We need reinforcements from outside our field.”

-Durland Fish, Stupid Lyme Crook

All the real science says that Lyme is post-sepsis syndrome immunosuppression with reactivated herpesviruses and opportunistic infections of all kinds. The real science acknowledges that OspA is a powerful toxin that shuts off the immune response to fungal-type antigens and that this tolerance can even spread to immune receptors for other types of antigens. 

Even Stupid Lyme Crook Raymond Dattwyler at one time said so.

And so did Stupid Lyme Crook Gary Wormser of the Fauxlicious Ginger Coiffure Society.

Modulation of lymphocyte proliferative responses by a canine Lyme disease vaccine of recombinant outer surface protein A (OspA)
J.W. Chiao, P. Villalon, Ira Schwartz, Gary P. Wormser

“We have previously demonstrated that proteins of B. burgdorferi are capable of modulating human cellular immune responses [7]. Suppression of in vitro mitogen- or antigen-mediated proliferative responses of lymphocytes and reduced production of interleukin-2 (IL-2) from lymphocytes were demonstrated using protein extracts of B. burgdorferi. These early studies were confirmed by a report of de Souza et al. [8], who observed that B. burgdorferi infection in mice resulted in impaired T and B cell proliferation to mitogens and reduced IL-2 and IL-4 production. The nature of the B. burgdorferi proteins responsible for suppression of cellular immunity has not been defined. In this study we examined the modulating activity of a recombinant outer surface protein A (OspA) vaccine preparation on cellular immune responses.”
http://femsim.oxfordjournals.org/content/28/3/193.long (Read more here.)

So NO, they can’t win on science, because even their science said so. They have only won so far by deploying the likes of Edward McSweegan to harass and trash their victims.

Here Karen Forscher, formerly of the Lyme Disease Foundation, even sued his sorry ass for the extreme and unrelenting harassment:

Want to read more about Sweeg’s harassment of the Forschners? Start here, here, and here.

And here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sci.med.diseases.lyme/h2QNU0xYYRU

“These are regarding various charges Ed [McSweegan] made about the LDF. Ed’s deposition. Q’s are by lawyers to Ed. A’s are Eds [sic] answers.”

p229 lines 11-13.
“Q. But you have no  factual basis to rely on?
A. Not at the moment.”

p 288 lines 1-8
“Q. And what was your basis for saying this may invite investigation and
prosecution?
(ed -accusing the LDF of a wide range of things while NIH LD Program Office)
A. Clairvoyance.
Q. Anything else?
A. Wishful thinking. I don’t know.
Q. Clairvoyance and wishful thinking, okay. Anything else’s?
A. No, I didn’t have any knowledge of anything related to investigations at the
time.”

p 147 lines 15-22 p 148 lines 1-6
“Q. Are the things you’ve said about them, the Forschners or the Foundation,
that you believe to be true but that you didn’t necessarily follow up on and
check yourself before you made those statements?
A. For example?
Q Anything
A. I don’t think so.
Q In other words, if you made a statement about the Forschners or the Lyme
Disease Foundation that you didn’t have personal knowledge about, did you make
an inquiry about it before you would make that statement in writing or orally
to make sure it was accurate?
A. Yes, but, in fact, I have no personal knowledge of anything.”
The LDF received a lot of material from Ed during the time he was suing the
LDF.  Much of this crossed lines from NIH to CDC and to the FDA.  Ed appeared
to be very concerned with the activities of various people and we were not the
only ones to receive threats, retaliation, or reporting to federal authorities.
His own colleagues and a grantee was included as targets to be turned in to
federal, state, and local officials accused of serious wrongdoing.

It wasn’t just the LDF.

Clairvoyance?

So, you see, this is nothing new. If anything, they’ve deployed more trolls, and more of them with anonymity, so as to avoid embarrassing articles like Sweeg’s “The Man with No Work.”   Wouldn’t it suck for Rick if someone exposed him as not actually working, but just flying first-class from DC to Texas and back all the time? I can think of worse.

They cannot win on science, so they trash us and call us crazy, without ever answering the question, “What is OspA?” –the answer to which reveals who the real crazies are, selling a “vaccine” made with OspA.

They cannot win on science, so they set up Lyme psych clinics and appoint Pat Smith, a top-level (non)nonprofit obstructionista to the “Programmatic Panel for the Tick-Borne Disease Research Program (TBDRP), a new program in the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Office of Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP).”

Department of Defense? WHAT?

https://www.lymedisease.org/smith-dod-lyme-panel/

Pat Smith: “I am pleased to be appointed to the TBD Programmatic Panel to aid in the determination of grant awards for Lyme disease research.” Um, doesn’t anyone find it awkward, to say the least, that LDA’s top witch is going to work for the Department of Defense?

Have I mentioned that the dufuses at the DOD are frequent visitors here? PattyPie will be in good company. Is the “Lyme Community” really OK with this? Pat Smith, surrogate for the DOD in determining Lyme research grant awards: we’ve hit a new low.

Back to our friend Rick Mertens…

If the commenter really is this OMB, TAMU, DC prick, didn’t anyone tell him not to use his real name and email address when trying to be snarky?

These guys never learn to keep their ego in check. Attack the science with childish insults. If critical thinking is an art, then Rick is a genuine Preschool Picasso.

Categories: Lyme Disease

Tags: Dattwyler, DOD, Durland Fish, immunosuppression, Johns Hopkins, Karen Forschner, LDA, Lyme, McSweegan, OMB, OspA, Pat Smith, Rick Mertens, Steere, TAMU, Under our Skin, Willy Burgdorfer, Wormser