Date: 1954–Present
Location: Plum Island, New York
The Conspirators: US Department of Agriculture, US Department of Homeland Security, other government agencies
The Victims: Unsuspecting innocent civilians
According to conspiracy theorists, Plum Island, New York, is home to a secret government laboratory. It’s been blamed for everything from creating bizarre hybrid creatures to creating diseases in order to wipe out large segments of the American population. Most notably, it has been blamed for creating Lyme disease and releasing it onto the public. Conspiracy theorists charge that Plum Island’s primary duty is the creation of germ warfare agents, which it regularly tests on the local population.
The Plum Island Animal Disease Center works primarily to keep foot-and-mouth disease at bay to protect the American agriculture industry.
Plum Island is a real place, and has long been associated with the American government. The island is strategically located right in the middle of the narrow entrance to Long Island Sound, where most of New York’s busiest and most important harbors are located. Ever since the days of the American Revolutionary War, it has been under government control.
In 1897 a defensive fort called Fort Terry was built on the island, but after World War II, the fort became obsolete. In 1952 the US Army Chemical Corps took a look at the island and planned to build a chemical weapons factory on it. However, the new buildings were taken over by the Department of Agriculture in 1954 before any chemical weapons work was started.
It turned out that the Department of Agriculture was strategically more important to the United States than chemical weapons. Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), a rapid-spreading viral infection, was turning out to be a clear and present danger to Americans, specifically via the livestock industries. FMD rarely kills the livestock it infects, but it makes them unsuitable for milk or meat production. Just think of the ripple effects throughout the economy and food security if a nation the size of the United States suddenly lost all its livestock industries: cattle, pigs, sheep. The Plum Island Animal Disease Center (PIADC) was established to work on treatments for FMD but also for all other threats to livestock: swine fever, vesicular stomatitis, rinderpest. The Department of Agriculture saw the same benefits as the Army did with the Plum Island location. It’s far out from shore, and so it is effectively isolated from the vulnerable population, yet it’s close to cities all around so workers could get there easily.
On Plum Island the livestock are kept indoors, and the entire facility is negatively pressurized so that air only flows in, not out. The deeper inside you go to the higher security levels, the lower the pressure. Yet, at least twice animals have been found to be infected where they weren’t supposed to be, but all such accidents have, apparently, been contained within the facility. News reports of such accidents began to drive increased suspicion of the facility—suspicion that, at least at certain times in its history, was not entirely unjustified.
The main source of the conspiracy theories about PIADC was a 2004 book called Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government’s Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory. Conspiracy theorist author Michael Carroll made many imaginative claims about the island, including one that said Plum Island created Lyme disease. Carroll also pointed to pretty much every animal disease outbreak on the continental United States that he could find and made speculative charges that Plum Island was somehow responsible. Carroll planted the seeds of conspiracy, and they’ve only grown—like a viral outbreak. For example, Plum Island was notably featured in a 2010 episode of the TV show Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura, where he approached the island by boat and was refused permission to land, thus proving (according to the show) that the darkest of the theories about it must all be true.
Because FMD continues to be a serious concern, it is essential to continue to research treatment and prevention. So PIADC has their hands full with real work, that’s thoroughly proven to exist, and would scarcely have time or staff available for fanciful projects like creating hybrid monsters or unleashing disease outbreaks on American civilians for their own amusement. And when it comes to Michael Carroll and his claims of Lyme and other diseases? Lyme disease predates written human history; its bacterium was even discovered in Ötzi (also known as the Iceman), the ice mummy who died in the Alps 5,300 years ago. Carroll’s claims are clearly at variance with the known histories of these diseases.
And when it comes right down to it, there is little secrecy at PIADC. The facility is well known, listed in the telephone directory, and shown on public map databases. The microbiologists and other scientists who work there are listed on their website, and they publish the research in scientific journals. A lot of them are from Yale University and the University of Connecticut. Many of them discuss their current projects on their pages at the PIADC website. Want to know what really goes on at PIADC? Email and ask any of the scientists who work there, using their contact links. You could choose to decide that they’re lying, but since their publications verify their work, you’d have a hard time proving it to anyone.
But just because there’s not a lot of secrecy about the island, that doesn’t mean it’s easy to get there. To maximize the containment of diseases and minimize any risk of anything getting out, access to the island is strictly controlled and visitors are seldom permitted. This is why Jesse Ventura and his camera crew were not allowed to simply roll up to the island and go blustering about, not because the scientists are secretly breeding hybrid monkey soldiers, or whatever it is that Ventura suspected.
In addition, the events of 9/11 drew increased attention to the security at PIADC. It’s possible that some terrorists could break in, steal a disease agent, and wreak havoc on the American economy by spreading FMD or another disease. There was even a highly publicized strike by maintenance workers on the island in 2002, and since security can’t be maintained without maintenance, the striking workers were immediately fired and replaced—which highlighted another security problem: vulnerability to work stoppages. Security has been tightened since 9/11, while at the same time, containment technology has been improving to the point that the isolated location on an island really isn’t needed anymore. So it appears that the future of the PIADC will be to move to a new, modernized location in Kansas where the additional physical space and improved access will allow construction of a BSL-4 (biosafety level 4) facility. Level 4 is the highest level of safety, which simply wasn’t possible at Plum Island’s small and aging facilities.