 House passes amendment ordering Pentagon to review whether U.S. experimented with weaponizing ticks 美国众议院通过一项修正案，指示五角大楼审查美国是否尝试将蜱虫武器化 来源：《卫报》 翻译：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. 美国众议院呼吁调查莱姆病的传播是否源于五角大楼的一项将蜱虫武器化的实验。 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”. 众议院批准了新泽西州共和党议员克里斯·史密斯提出的一项修正案，该修正案指示国防部监察长对美国是否“在1950年至1975年期间，用蜱虫和其他昆虫作为生物武器进行实验”进行审查。 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”. 审查将必须评估该实验的范围，以及“在这种实验中使用的任何蜱虫或其他昆虫是否因意外或实验设计而被释放到任何实验室之外”。 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. 该修正案经众议院口头表决通过，并被添加到国防开支法案中，但该法案仍需与参议院版本进行协调。 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，该修正案的灵感来自“一些书籍和文章，这些书和文章暗示称，美国政府已经在包括马里兰州德特里克堡和纽约普拉姆岛在内的机构设施中进行了大量试验，目的是将蜱虫和其他昆虫转化为生物武器”。 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. 斯坦福大学科学作家、莱姆病前患者克里斯·纽比今年5月出版了一本新书，对莱姆病的起源提出了质疑。据统计，美国每年有40万人感染莱姆病。 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. 这本名叫《叮咬：莱姆病和生物武器的秘密历史》的书引用出生于瑞士的莱姆病病原体发现者威利·伯格多弗的话写道，莱姆病的流行是一次出错的军事实验导致的。 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，生前曾是美国军方生物武器研究人员。他透露，自己的任务是培育跳蚤、蜱虫、蚊子和其他吸血昆虫，并让它们感染导致人类疾病的病原体。 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. 根据这本书，有一些美军项目在研发可以从空中投放的“武器化”蜱虫和其他虫子，而未受感染的虫子则会被释放到美国的普通居民区，目的是追踪它们是如何传播的。书中怀疑，这样的项目可能会出错，并最终导致20世纪60年代莱姆病在美国的爆发。 |
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