US Labs Create Tick Colonies To Study Foreign Highly Pathogenic Disease With 30% Mortality

The White Coat Waste Project uncovered 10 existing USDA contracts to work on mRNA vaccines, including one that is studying Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), a highly pathogenic tick-borne disease with a 10-40% case fatality rate. The research grant is given to the Agricultural Research Service in Manhattan, Kansas, in combination with researchers at the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF), which was formerly on Plum Island, where researchers were studying Lyme disease near Lyme, Connecticut, where the first outbreak occurred.

The research involves multiple partner facilities, including UC Davis and Texas Tech, where tick colonies have been established after they have procured the ticks from African countries where the disease is endemic. CCHF has never been found in the United States – it is endemic to Africa, Asia, and some European countries, including southern Russia.

The disease was first discovered in 1944 in Crimea and studied by researchers from the Soviet Union, now Russia. Despite more than 80 years since the discovery of the disease, there is no widely licensed vaccine available for CCHF. The Soviet Union developed a vaccine in 1970 that is still used today for parts of the region, but has had questionable efficacy and has not been widely adopted.

Russia has been involved in vaccinology since the clinical trials of Sabin’s polio vaccine in the Soviet Union, but has been unable to develop a product for CCHF, a disease that is endemic in the country. The United States, meanwhile, is engaging in research with this disease that has never been on American soil, including the creation of tick colonies in multiple animal agricultural hubs. 

The research is analyzing the transmission of the tick-borne illness in cattle, sheep, and goats.  They are conducting the research in Manhattan, Kansas, Lubbock, Texas, and Davis, California – three livestock and dairy agricultural hubs in the United States. The virus can be transmitted to livestock or humans from infected ticks and can be transmitted from human to human. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates the mortality rate to be 30% with death occurring in the second week of infection.

“It seems as if many infected ticks are being shipped to Texas Tech, Kansas, and UC Davis, needlessly putting these centers for livestock at risk for a horrible disease that is not a threat at this time,” said Kris Newby, Stanford Science Writer and Senior Producer of the documentary “Under Our Skin.”

Newby said when the Plum Island facility moved to Manhattan, Kansas, she questioned why it would be transferred there. “It just makes no sense to have it in the middle of our livestock industry,” she said. “It’s just so dangerous. Better to have it at Rocky Mountain Lab, where there’s nothing there.”

Newby is also the author of “Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons,” and she explained that during her research into Lyme disease, she found that lab accidents happened regularly.

“Going through Willy’s [Burgdorfer] life and all his letters, there were always accidents. He hired a new lab guy, and the lab guy just didn’t know that the African ticks are fast movers. On the first day, he got bitten from one of the African ticks and he got really, really sick and they fired him. Another time Willy was sending the African ticks to the bioweapons lab at Grosse Isle, Canada and he thought they were clean ticks, but they had deadly relapsing fever.  So they had to destroy all the colonies and luckily no one got bitten. Ticks are super hard to control – Especially if you have an influx of new people who aren’t experienced with them.”

Newby also wrote a Substack post detailing the experiments of Dr. Daniel E. Sonenshine, who released 152,000 radioactive lone star ticks over the course of three years in the late 1960s. Dr. Soneshine received the ticks from Burgdorfer’s lab, and shortly after, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever cases started arising – first on Montauk, Long Island, and then nationwide. Newby questions whether Burgdorfer sent ticks that were unexposed to the “many exotic tick-borne microbes housed in Burgdorfer’s lab” and whether Dr. Soneshine had a lab capable of handling biolevel-3 safety precautions. Newby explains the dangers of releasing ticks into a new environment, where they can transmit diseases to animals that have not developed natural immunity.

Professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases at North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine and Bartonella expert Dr. Ed Breitschwerdt told Newby that the Kansas laboratory has good people and is the only biosafety level 4 animal lab in the United States. He did agree that funding would be better spent on the currently underfunded Lyme/Bartonella/Babesia crisis, which is an active threat in the country. According to the CDC, about 476,000 people may be diagnosed and treated for Lyme disease each year.

Lyme-literate physician Dr. James Neuenschwander recently sat down with appeared on The HighWire to break down why chronic Lyme remains so widely misunderstood and why so many patients are still dismissed.

Up to 40% of Lyme cases are not detected in the early stages. Dana Parish, author of “Chronic: The Hidden Cause of the Autoimmune Pandemic” and host of the Dana Parish Podcast, is still dealing with her Lyme disease more than a decade after infection. She said, “Unless eradicated very early, Lyme is not curable. You strive to ‘bang it into submission,’ as my heroic Lyme doctor says, and hope not to be in the 40 percent or so who relapse.”

EcoHealth Alliance, the research organization headed by now debarred Peter Daszak, also received funding from the Department of Defense to research CCHF to “combat weapons of mass destruction.” That grant was $3.7 million and ran from 2020 to 2024. The recently uncovered contract started in 2021 and ends in March of 2026 with an unknown contract amount.

While the EcoHealth Alliance grant to study CCHF mentions the purpose of combating weapons of mass destruction, this ongoing USDA research is said to be conducted for biodefense purposes. Specifically, the goal is to determine the “risk for the establishment of tick host vectors in the United States considering climatic and ecological conditions.” The tick species and the disease are only endemic in the eastern hemisphere.

WCWP was the organization that first uncovered that EcoHealth Alliance was involved in gain-of-function research with coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, approved by NIAID head Dr. Anthony Fauci, which the FBI and CIA both state is the most likely source of the COVID-19 virus that sparked a worldwide pandemic. WCWP celebrated the announcement that the CDC will be closing all monkey studies by the end of the year.

The organization has challenged government agencies to end animal-based research, which often includes dangerous research that could create new harms for American communities if lab leaks occur. The NIH has a directive to end gain-of-function research despite GoF advocate Jeffery Taubenberger sitting as the NIAID Director, serving in Dr. Fauci’s former position. The USDA, meanwhile, is also funding research on highly pathogenic biosafety level 4 (agents that cause severe or fatal disease) diseases, including several that are not an active threat to any communities in the United States.

One contract uncovered by WCWP is studying novel-design vaccine antigens for the African Swine Fever, a highly contagious viral disease that has a mortality up to 100% for domestic herds. ASF has never been found in the United States and is most prevalent in Africa and Asia. 4-week-old piglets will be immunized intramuscularly at weeks 0 and 3. Pigs in the study will be euthanized two weeks after the booster to collect the spleen and drain lymph nodes. This is a $225,000 contract with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that concludes in September 2026.

“Recklessly importing deadly exotic diseases like African swine flu and other hemorrhagic fevers to the U.S.—where they have never been found—for dangerous animal experiments that can leak and cause outbreaks in animals and people is a recipe for disaster,” said Justin Goodman, M.A., Senior Vice President, Advocacy and Public Policy for WCWP.

The WCWP uncovered other USDA grants related to research for animal mRNA vaccine development. While the NIH stated it would start ending all mRNA research, the USDA has made no such promise. There have been several concerns that have been raised regarding the safety of eating meat, eggs, and dairy that come from animals that have received mRNA vaccines. There are licensed mRNA vaccines for swine, but currently, none are licensed for use in the United States against any other form of livestock.

Last December, The HighWire Host Del Bigtree interviewed physician and cattle rancher Brooke Miller, MD, who expressed concerns about mRNA vaccination in livestock. Miller said the industry’s testing transparency has been “opaque.” He said pig ranchers who use Sequivity mRNA vaccines by Merck are required to sign a non-disclosure agreement, which Miller said brings up a lot of red flags. Miller also said the first year he didn’t vaccinate his cattle, his ranch had nearly a 100% pregnancy rate, when they usually have 4-5% with miscarriages when the cows are vaccinated.

“The USDA should stop forcing taxpayers to fund cruel animal experiments for livestock vaccines that private ag and pharma companies will profit from, just like the NIH shouldn’t be footing the bill for Big Pharma’s beagle testing,” Goodman said. “If these multi-billion-dollar industries need or want to develop these products, they can pay for it themselves.”