Plum Island: The Bioweapons Lab That Allegedly Birthed Lyme Disease
Two miles off the coast of Connecticut. Officially: animal disease research. Unofficially: open-air pathogen experiments by an Operation Paperclip Nazi.
Plum Island Animal Disease Center sits two miles east of Long Island, New York. Founded in 1954 to study foot-and-mouth disease, its first director was Dr. Erich Traub - an Operation Paperclip recruit who had been Heinrich Himmler's personal vaccine doctor and led the Nazi tick-borne pathogen program at Insel Riems during WWII.
According to declassified Army documents (1949-1957), Plum Island researchers conducted open-air tick-pathogen experiments in the early 1950s. Lyme, Connecticut - where Lyme disease was first identified in 1975 - is approximately 8 miles north of Plum Island, directly downwind on the prevailing breezes.
Coincidence? Possibly. Convenient? Definitely.
Investigative reporter Michael Carroll spent a decade researching Plum Island for his 2004 book Lab 257. He found tick research, biosafety failures, and a culture of secrecy. He also found that "the records describing the open-air experiments simply disappeared in 1992." Nothing has ever been formally produced.
The lab was relocated to Manhattan, Kansas in 2023. Plum Island itself is now closed to the public. What happened on it is sealed.