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Borrelia burgdorferi (the pathogen that causes Lyme) was named after Willy Burgdorfer. Burgdorfer claimed that the disease was the result of a biological weapons program that went awry. This is an interesting read: https://www.amazon.com/Bitten-History-Disease-Biological-Wea...

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That's a discredited conspiracy theory: https://www.aldf.com/did-lyme-disease-originate-in-the-easte...

>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.

What a lazy "debunking". Of course creating a strain of bacteria would require the original bacteria to already exist.

Discredited and debunked are words that desperately need to be retired. The vast majority of the time, they much more accurately could be replaced with "unpopular" or "disliked by the authority I'm about to appeal to".

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