|
Chronic Lyme disease scams dangerous in many ways
Yesterday’s Chicago Tribune included a long feature story by reporters Patricia Callahan and Trine Tsouderos on a nationwide scare over a non-existent malady called chronic Lyme disease.
ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross, who treated Lyme disease when he practiced as a rheumatologist, comments that, “while it can sometimes be difficult to diagnose, Lyme disease is very real. It is transmitted by the bite of a deer tick, typically in the northeast and in Wisconsin and Minnesota, usually during the summer months. An infected tick transmits the Lyme bacterium in its bite, but the condition is usually responsive to a variety of oral antibiotics. On rare occasions, intravenous treatment is required.”
Unlike Lyme disease, however, chronic Lyme disease is a pseudo-disease. “Every infectious disease expert agrees on this,” says Dr. Ross, “Yet since researchers at Yale first figured out what Lyme disease was in the late 1970s, there has gradually appeared this faddish diagnosis, chronic Lyme disease. It’s replaced fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome as a diagnosis for many people complaining of vague generalized symptoms, especially fatigue. A range of physicians — some well-intentioned, many not — have turned to it as an explanation. From this have come an assortment of expensive and potentially dangerous treatments for a condition that simply does not exist.”
The Tribune reporters describe numerous patients undergoing costly and difficult long-term antibiotic treatments. ACSH’s Susan Ingber notes that, “long-term antibiotic treatment is dangerous for public health as it can lead to the development of disease-resistant strains of bacteria.” The reporters go on to detail cases in which unapproved treatments with heavy metals and unknown substances led to patient deaths. In addition, the article examines the ways in which proponents of expensive treatments for this fictitious ailment have gained influence over politicians, journalists and philanthropists — in spite of the repeated warnings and advisories of medical authorities.
ACSH would like to commend the authors on a piece of superb reporting exposing this dangerous deception.
Lyme-Aware (December 9, 2010)
The treatment guidelines are only based on four clinical trials by the NIH, yet there are over 25 studies that prove the guidelines are insufficient and that chronic Lyme does exist. As with other diseases, the treatment should be based on the individual’s needs based on both clinical symptoms diagnosis and blood work. I know from experience that the treatment guidelines are insufficient. The standard 10-day and 28 IV treatments did not work for me. Within six weeks from initial treatment, I was completely disabled and bedridden. It affected both my central nervous and peripheral nervous systems, which Dr. Steere has shown that CNS symptoms are very common. I had the tick, bulls-eye rash (which most don’t see) and all the symptoms. If I had received the treatment according to my needs, I would have never lost my job and two years of my life. It took extended treatment of unconventional and conventional medicine to recover.
Response to Chicago Tribune's Misinformation Attempts, “fails to educate herself in the actual science or history of what she writes about” http://bit.ly/egAQdq
Bryan Rosner (December 10, 2010)
I wrote an article on the existence of chronic Lyme disease citing studies from around the world, read it and decide for yourself:
http://www.lymebook.com/chronic-lyme-disease-science
Phyllis Mervine, President, CALDA (December 10, 2010)
Rheumatologists like Dr. Ross are probably the most vulnerable to believing that the chronic form of Lyme disease is, as he states, a “pseudo-disease.” Rheumatologists are trained to diagnose and treat diseases affecting the joints, not brain diseases.
Lyme disease was first described by a rheumatologist because the characteristic swollen knee is so obvious. However a large percentage of people with Lyme suffer with neurologic problems after the infection moves to their brains. Neurologic Lyme is harder to cure. As the NIH clinical trials proved, these people may have disability comparable to people with congestive heart failure and fatigue as bad as people with MS.
But Dr. Ross can’t see it, therefore he thinks it doesn’t exist.
Half the patients treated with short term antibiotics fail the treatment and become chronic. For any other disease this abysmal failure would point to a need to reassess the treatment protocol. Some people find relief with more antibiotics, sometimes for prolonged periods. Why not? We let cancer patients choose treatment with dangerous therapies, and some of them die anyway. Antibiotics aren’t even that dangerous. Patients have the right to choose the treatment they prefer.
The Tribune article is one-sided and full of anecdotes, personal attacks and misrepresented “science.” Apparently that’s good enough some people. But “superb reporting”? Give me a break!
For accurate information on Lyme disease, visit lymedisease.org
Mel Thornburg (December 11, 2010)
ACSH should be ashamed of such absurd slurs to humanity, such as to commend the author for pointing out Chronic Lyme, or more commonly known as Neuroborreliosis as a dangerous deception. You are a dangerous one. By presenting non factual facts that leave 80% of the populations to live and die by their idiotic syndrome of unknown origin. When all you have to do is read and correlate published medicine on Borrelia and related diseases that has exploded in the last 2 yrs. despite understood insults such as this, that these patients should be left to die with their crippling disease du jour because they cannot be helped by giving antibiotics for over 4 weeks. Or even 3 mths...This is an insult to modern medicine that we don't have ways to protect the patient from harm by giving antibiotics long term. Most all chronic diseases use antibiotics long term. To deny Neuroborreliosis patients this right is a crime. On the other side is medications such as cladribine (approved in Russia and Australia), fingolimod (approved in the US and Russia), BG-12 (phase III), laquinimod (phase III) and teriflunomide (phase III)as well as interferon which are all long term useage gets no such recital. Any doctor knows most chronic disease causing organisms that can infect every cell,organ,and human tissue may not be completely eliminated by even a yr. of treatment. Esp. if they too rely on the tests we have been given-- that China tells us last week are only 10% accurate. And for this we have many historical medical citations for everything from Syphilis to TB. For which they tell us the Syphilis test currently in use is not accurate either...So while we have many organisms they can find -ignorance cites resistance to profit and leaves them sick because they refuse to look and refuse to treat. As evidenced in AFrican populations that have at least a 11% pos. rate for Borrelia, and treatment resistant Malaria TB and HIV. You ACSH should get your facts right or get out of the business of health. LLMD's have worked for years developing treatment strategies that do work while other treating physicians choose to read misinformation like you report. So in effect it is publishers like you who will be to blame for misleading the public while LLMD's will be the most sought after medical doctors in the world. China knows this, Poland knows this, in fact many countries who far exceed the US in Science as attested by the world test scores know this, and soon the whole world will know this. The only fears we should have is there is not enough of them to go around as soon as everyone understands what has happened in the past 30 yrs for profit- we had suppression of the facts. The world financial collapse should be testament to this fact as they also said they did not see it coming, but there were thousands who warned and it was not heeded...Some people call this political suicide-others call it murder. Which ever side you choose ACSH you must remember it will be wrought in history with faces and names for all posterity. You see that money sorely won may not be there tomorrow, but those gravestones of those who have lost their time given for ignorance will be forever remembered.
Downwith Fascism (December 13, 2010)
The Lyme Disease coverup represents an atrocity on the grandest scale, and by publishing this article, you get the blood of millions on your hands as well.
filedropper.com/lymeshow
Radio show on Lyme, GWI, and assassinated scientists.
elenacook.org
Lyme is a biowarfare issue. THAT is why the federal public health organizations and media are lying to us about it.
lymecryme.com
PROOF That federal Lyme "experts" like "discoverer" Allen C Steere know that Lyme is chronic and transmissible without a tick (check out Barbour's Biology of Borrelia species on p. 394--"rat saliva has been found to be infectious.")
Also included is the patent
ctlymedisease.org
Interesting one there. They have the ORIGINAL version of the MSD sheet for Borrelia Burgdorferi (of course it has now been downloaded many times by patients, and hard copies exist) showing that Lyme is transmissible, at least in the lab, by AEROSOL, and that it was KILLING government scientists years before its "discovery."
http://underourskin.com/blog/?p=191
Blog post from the maker of a Lyme documentary--Willy Burgdorfer, who we are told discovered the Lyme spirochete, was tailed to his interview with this filmamaker and intimidated into remaining silent about what he knows by government employees with order "all the way from the top." ("WHO IS
NUMBER 1?")
undertheeightball.com
New documentary on Lyme and biowarfare. Now out on DVD--get 'em while they're hot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPn_T9qy4C0
Don't get that new Lyme vaccine that's coming out in January. Because Borrelia can vary its surface antigens, there can never be a vaccine for it, and they know this. What the vaccine does do is make western blots unreadable so they can say that nobody at all has Lyme.
Tsouderos, Barret (this site is run by the quackwatch folks), Steere, Klempner, Shapiro, Dattwyler, Zerhouni, Gates, Rumsleld, Cheney:
WE WILL NOT DIE FOR YOUR SINS.
Gen76 (December 16, 2010)
From Columbia University Medical Center:
"Why is Chronic Lyme Disease Chronic?"
http://www.columbia-lyme.org/patients/ld_chronic.html
Please note the title assumes chronic Lyme exists.
From Highlights of the October 2-3, 2010
Lyme Disease Association/Columbia University Scientific Conference
Philadelphia, PA
"Dr. Armin Alaedini of Cornell Weill Medical College, reported that approximately 50% of patients with chronic Lyme disease have evidence of elevated anti-neuronal antibodies..."
"Dr. Ben Luft, Professor of Medicine at SUNY Stonybrook, discussed the conundrum of chronic Lyme disease and the problems with serologic tests that are based on only one strain of Bb."
Just two examples of the many professionals who recognize that chronic Lyme is real.
Check out who funds the ACSH and then decide where the quacks are:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Council_on_Science_and_Health
|
