?House passes amendment ordering Pentagon to review whether U.S. experimented with weaponizing ticks

美國(guó)眾議院通過(guò)一項(xiàng)修正案，指示五角大樓審查美國(guó)是否嘗試將蜱蟲(chóng)武器化

來(lái)源：《衛(wèi)報(bào)》 翻譯：世界播

The US House of Representatives has called for an investigation into whether the spread of Lyme disease had its roots in a Pentagon experiment in weaponising ticks.

美國(guó)眾議院呼吁調(diào)查萊姆病的傳播是否源于五角大樓的一項(xiàng)將蜱蟲(chóng)武器化的實(shí)驗(yàn)。

The House approved an amendment proposed by a Republican congressman from New Jersey, Chris Smith, instructing the defence department’s inspector general to conduct a review of whether the US “experimented with ticks and other insects regarding use as a biological weapon between the years of 1950 and 1975”.

眾議院批準(zhǔn)了新澤西州共和黨議員克里斯·史密斯提出的一項(xiàng)修正案，該修正案指示國(guó)防部監(jiān)察長(zhǎng)對(duì)美國(guó)是否“在1950年至1975年期間，用蜱蟲(chóng)和其他昆蟲(chóng)作為生物武器進(jìn)行實(shí)驗(yàn)”進(jìn)行審查。

The review would have to assess the scope of the experiment and “whether any ticks or insects used in such experiment were released outside of any laboratory by accident or experiment design”.

審查將必須評(píng)估該實(shí)驗(yàn)的范圍，以及“在這種實(shí)驗(yàn)中使用的任何蜱蟲(chóng)或其他昆蟲(chóng)是否因意外或?qū)嶒?yàn)設(shè)計(jì)而被釋放到任何實(shí)驗(yàn)室之外”。

The amendment was approved by a voice vote in the House and added to a defence spending bill, but the bill still has to be reconciled with a Senate version.

該修正案經(jīng)眾議院口頭表決通過(guò)，并被添加到國(guó)防開(kāi)支法案中，但該法案仍需與參議院版本進(jìn)行協(xié)調(diào)。

Smith said the amendment was inspired by “a number of books and articles suggesting that significant research had been done at US government facilities including Fort Detrick, Maryland, and Plum Island, New York, to turn ticks and other insects into bioweapons”.

史密斯表示，該修正案的靈感來(lái)自“一些書(shū)籍和文章，這些書(shū)和文章暗示稱(chēng)，美國(guó)政府已經(jīng)在包括馬里蘭州德特里克堡和紐約普拉姆島在內(nèi)的機(jī)構(gòu)設(shè)施中進(jìn)行了大量試驗(yàn)，目的是將蜱蟲(chóng)和其他昆蟲(chóng)轉(zhuǎn)化為生物武器”。

A new book published in May by a Stanford University science writer and former Lyme sufferer, Kris Newby, has raised questions about the origins of the disease, which affects 400,000 Americans each year.

斯坦福大學(xué)科學(xué)作家、萊姆病前患者克里斯·紐比今年5月出版了一本新書(shū)，對(duì)萊姆病的起源提出了質(zhì)疑。據(jù)統(tǒng)計(jì)，美國(guó)每年有40萬(wàn)人感染萊姆病。

Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons, cites the Swiss-born discoverer of the Lyme pathogen, Willy Burgdorfer, as saying that the Lyme epidemic was a military experiment that had gone wrong.

這本名叫《叮咬：萊姆病和生物武器的秘密歷史》的書(shū)引用出生于瑞士的萊姆病病原體發(fā)現(xiàn)者威利·伯格多弗的話寫(xiě)道，萊姆病的流行是一次出錯(cuò)的軍事實(shí)驗(yàn)導(dǎo)致的。

Burgdorfer, who died in 2014, worked as a bioweapons researcher for the US military and said he was tasked with breeding fleas, ticks, mosquitoes and other blood-sucking insects, and infecting them with pathogens that cause human diseases.

伯格多弗于2014年去世，生前曾是美國(guó)軍方生物武器研究人員。他透露，自己的任務(wù)是培育跳蚤、蜱蟲(chóng)、蚊子和其他吸血昆蟲(chóng)，并讓它們感染導(dǎo)致人類(lèi)疾病的病原體。

According to the book, there were programs to drop “weaponised” ticks and other bugs from the air, and that uninfected bugs were released in residential areas in the US to trace how they spread. It suggests that such a scheme could have gone awry and led to the eruption of Lyme disease in the US in the 1960s.

根據(jù)這本書(shū)，有一些美軍項(xiàng)目在研發(fā)可以從空中投放的“武器化”蜱蟲(chóng)和其他蟲(chóng)子，而未受感染的蟲(chóng)子則會(huì)被釋放到美國(guó)的普通居民區(qū)，目的是追蹤它們是如何傳播的。書(shū)中懷疑，這樣的項(xiàng)目可能會(huì)出錯(cuò)，并最終導(dǎo)致20世紀(jì)60年代萊姆病在美國(guó)的爆發(fā)。