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title: Chronic disease or bad medicine?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/ct-met-chronic-lyme-disease-20101207,0,5671843.story
Bonnie Lou
RA 02/07,AP 10/07
Minocycline 200mg MWF; Plaquenil 100mg 3 days/week
Fish Oil, Ubiquinol, Turmeric, Vit C (2 grams) , MultiVit, Magnesium, Astaxanthin, D3 (5000), probiotics and a daily dose of yoga!Bonnie,
You beat me to the punch! I was just about to post this. Well, I’m not so sure how positive this story is, or how it’s going to help the Lyme community…unfortunately.
Maria
I think it’s a terrible story Maria. And it got such prominent play. It makes us all sound desperate and crazy. I was upset when I read it early this morning. I think we need to craft a thoughtful response to be both posted, and sent in to the editors.
Bonnie Lou
RA 02/07,AP 10/07
Minocycline 200mg MWF; Plaquenil 100mg 3 days/week
Fish Oil, Ubiquinol, Turmeric, Vit C (2 grams) , MultiVit, Magnesium, Astaxanthin, D3 (5000), probiotics and a daily dose of yoga!Bonnie, thanks for posting…it was a well-researched article that covered the facts of the controversy, as they stand, well, but agree that it makes chronic Lymies look like real sickos. Hey, we are, but not in the sense they’re talking about – i.e. MUS – medically unexplained symptoms. Trouble is, the article lost me when it quoted Dr. A. S. as a leading expert and “discoverer” of Lyme….the guy thought Lyme was a virus until Willy Burgdorfer identified the spirochete. He also ran a study, similar to the horrendous Tuskagee Experiments, where he observed very sick children with documented Lyme for years and never gave them treatment. His “prestigious” study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Unfortunately, these Lyme “experts” are the same “peers” who decide what studies on Lyme will be published in these medical journals…they like publishing their own stuff, but deny anything that contradicts their own work. If they’re talking “Lyme Crimes,” then this, very sadly, beats all. This doctor should have been stripped of his licence years ago.
http://www.lymecryme.com/1.pdf
My response to this news article would be to simply post the link to Pam Weintraub’s book, Cure Unknown, which documents the history of Lyme, how the politics of this controversial disease arose, why the testing is so cruddy, and some pretty fascinating insights from some of the leading independent researchers of Lyme in the world today….and telling readers of the article to read the book and then make a decision about what to think about this controversy.
Just as an aside, I was speaking with a friend yesterday who volunteers at a local hospital. She was speaking with the head of the volunteer dept (a head nurse) who shared that she was diagnosed with MS some years ago after suffering a multitude of confounding symptoms. They wanted to put her on all sorts of heavy immune-suppressive drugs for the remainder of her life to stop progression. She then, independently on a hunch, got tested for Lyme disease, was lucky and tested CDC positive, decided on antibiotic therapy and is now well and functioning perfectly well. So, what of the doctors who are consistently making incorrect diagnoses, prescribing powerful, toxic drugs and leaving patients on a drug-train and horribly unwell for life? Why are these doctors not being stripped of their licenses? Well, because the IDSA is saying that Lyme is easy to diagnose and treat with a couple weeks of antibiotics and that if you don’t test positive or have had a couple weeks of doxy, you can’t have Lyme and it must be another disease.
Interestingly, too, the subject in the picture with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma who was “mis-diagnosed” with Lyme? Well, at the recent IOM meetings in Washington, a Yale babesiosis expert stood up and shared a retrospective study of severely immune-compromised babesiosis patients (babesiosis is a coinfection of Lyme) who had all developed Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. These patients were were either a-splenic (lost their spleens) or had been given Rituxan, a rheumatologic biologic drug. So, this begs the question…was the patient in the article mis-diagnosed with Lyme or did babesiosis, a coinfection of his Lyme disease, cause his lymphoma? I guess we’ll never know, but there is emerging evidence that many cancers have ties to infectious causes. I think we could well be looking back at our current mode of treatment for cancer (killing immune function to kill cancer cells) and seeing it as highly primitive in a decade or so.
As for the dissemination of fear-tactics over antibiotic resistance…check out the upcoming eBulletin. There is some amazing research going on, as we speak, that will, in a few years, make antibiotic resistance to life-threatening infections, such as MRSA, a thing of the past. Researchers are modifying currently-used antibiotics to counter the ways in which resistance is formed, including ways to bust bio-films, and they’re using some pretty amazing techniques to do this.
All of you made good very points. As for Dr. A.S., his LD clinic is in Boston and dismisses patients – they don’t have LD and are diagnosed with fibromyalgia and to return to see him in six months. Suspicious at best. Oddly, my son’s blood was sent to Immugen, and came back positive amongst every other lab known to man. This has been over a period of ten years. Maz, yes, theTuskagee project was horrific and cruel. I’d like to challenge these “experts” to explain their way out of my +breast milk culture for Bb which was revealed in living color, cysts and spirochetes amongst others, which I cannot remember. It’s been ten yrs. The eye doesn’t lie. If I can get my hands on it, I’ll try to scan it here so you can see it for yourselves.
Unfortunately, science and medicine don’t always connect with one another. And not to mention the politics.
The upshot, we’re all taking it one step and a time and getting better.
Eileen
O La La;
This really burns me up.Maybe we should send them the info from Dr Nicholson.Now that would really upset them.I re read it today and if I interpret what he says correctly maybe other micos mimic Lyme.Do any of you know about this? I would post the article but it is very long and I do not have the http://www.I am sure you all know of the article I am talking about.If not,send me your e-mail add and I will paste it inMy first response was they’re still sticking their heads in the sand. That’s what they do. Like you Lynne and everyone else my daughter was very upset when she read it. The Trib posted an article not too long ago that was the complete opposite of this one. I posted the link here, but it’s dead now. What a trash piece this truely is.
Be sure to read the comments. Pamela Weintraub commented herself.
Cheryl
CALDA posted a response to the Chicago Tribune article:
LYMEPOLICYWONK: Chicago Tribune article. Is it journalism? Call it what you will–
The President of ILADS (International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society) has issued a press release in response to the Chicago Tribune article:
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