FDA Commissioner: HIV “May Very Well Have Come From a Lab”
During a recent podcast appearance, Dr. Marty Makary promoted lab origin conspiracy theories involving HIV, Lyme disease, and one dead raccoon.
The commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Marty Makary, promoted several conspiracy theories on a recent podcast, including claims about the origins of AIDS, Lyme disease, and a dead raccoon.
Last month, Makary sat down for an interview with right-wing podcaster Patrick Bet-David to discuss a range of topics, from vaccines and autism to Tylenol. During the conversation, Bet-David asked the nation’s top food and drug regulator where AIDS originated.
“You know, speaking of the film Thank You, Dr. Fauci, they explore a non-traditional narrative which has not gotten the attention it deserves, and that is that it may very well have come from a lab in Africa,” Makary said, referring to a 2024 pseudoscientific documentary in which he appeared.
Directed by Jenner Furst, known for projects like Murdaugh Murders, Thank You, Dr. Fauci makes the case that AIDS, Lyme disease, Ebola, and COVID-19 were the result of human experimentation rather than natural spillover—claims that are not widely accepted by experts nor supported by available evidence.
Pressed on his response, Makary conceded, “I don’t know where HIV came from,” before citing the film’s lab leak narrative about Lyme disease.
“Where did Lyme disease come from? I can tell you with a high degree of probability it came from Lab 257 on Plum Island…25 miles from Lyme, Connecticut, where the first case was described,” the FDA commissioner said, explaining that Lyme disease was really the work of a Nazi scientist who had been recruited by the U.S. and spared from execution at Nuremberg.
Makary also cited as further evidence of scientific malfeasance the so-called “Montauk Monster”—a partially decomposed carcass that washed up on Ditch Plains Beach on the east end of Long Island in 2008. A photo of the carcass went viral due to its unusual appearance, with some observers speculating that it might have been an escaped experiment from Plum Island, about 10 miles offshore from Montauk. While the remains were never tested, experts concluded it was most likely a raccoon.
“[Lyme disease] was not the only thing that showed up nearby,” Makary said. “They found half-rat, half-deer carcasses on…Montauk…What the hell is going on there? Again, a bunch of mad scientists doing things.”
(Video from the “PBD Podcast” used pursuant to fair use for news reporting.)
“Makary’s claims are not new and are completely baseless,” molecular biologist and science communicator Dan Wilson told Important Context. Wilson, who is a scientific advisor to the Accountability Journalism Institute, noted that “HIV has been genetically determined to have first jumped to humans in Central Africa in the early 1900’s, before any genetic engineering was possible” while “Lyme disease has always been present in the Americas with cases having been recorded in Native Americans before colonialism.”
“Not only are these ideas wrong, they are shameful and disrespectful to everybody suffering from these diseases,” Wilson added. “We should not accept this blatant denial of reality from anybody in public health, let alone the head of the FDA.”
The Trump administration has broadly embraced lab leak narratives, which the president and his allies popularized in 2020 as the pandemic spiraled. Makary is one of two Trump-appointed public health officials to have been affiliated with the controversial COVID lab leak group BioSafety Now. The other is National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. In April, the White House replaced the federal COVID.gov website with a page titled “LAB LEAK: The True Origins Of COVID-19.” The following month, Bhattacharya publicly endorsed the lab leak at his first agency-wide town hall.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. not only subscribes to the COVID lab-leak narrative but has also repeatedly promoted the idea that Lyme disease began as a bioweapon. Earlier this week, Scientific American reported that the president was expected to sign a defense bill that includes language ordering an investigation into the origins of Lyme disease.