Some good info and links.It's a bad disease and health care experts are working hard at ignoring it. This should hit home for most of us.



Lyme - a personal experience

lol , he's an appaloosa colored dog-cool just needs a little saddle and a Monkey with a lil cowboy hat

Health care experts are not trying to ignore anything to do with lyme disease. It is just that most doctors do not find it ethical (outside of a clinical trial anyways) to treat people without proof of benefit. Sadly internet anecdotes are not proof of benefit. Read this.

MMS: Error NEJM 2007 A Critical Appraisal of “Chronic Lyme Disease”

Admittedly the problem is more complex than the article addresses. Supposedly these lyme studies show that roughly 40% of people get better with treatment, and 40% get better with placebo (fake treatment). That means the drug used has no measurable effect. It does not tell us, however, how many people would get better if their doctor told them just to go home and live with it. Maybe 40%, but quite possibly way less. The fact that someone cares about your problem and takes time to help you with it, and the fact that you gain hope and belief that the treatment will work may be more important for getting better than the actual drug itself. Very definitely there are instances were the treatment itself rather than the drug is what helps. Here is where the ethics of medicine get sketchy.

Is it ethical to give some one a drug (with its associated risks) you know doesn't work when doing so might help them get better via placebo effect? Is it ethical to pretend the drug may work even when you know it doesn't so the patient can benefit from the placebo effect? Is it ethical to get paid well while doing so? Apparently some doctors and many patients decide yes. For those who respond all is well. For those who don't, who is to say until they are in that situation themselves?

Please see an opposing viewpoint IDSA Lyme Disease Review Hearing Presentations - Steve Phillips

It needs to be stated that more than a few of the authors of your posted article have ties with Biomed companies/Universities doing research for Lyme Vacines (Namely Eugene D. Shapiro, M.D., Allen C. Steere, M.D., Gary P. Wormser, M.D). Those same Drs. do NOT believe in chronic Lyme. If Chronic Lyme exists, the Lyme Vacines would not get approval when they are eventually brought to market.

Long term ABX therapy lasts much longer than the 2-3 months studied in the article you cited.

i read a blog about a guy who was an airline pilot flying everyone and everything back and forth from south to north america talking about how many times people are paid to look the other way within the WHOLE pharmaceutical industry...

and how cures that work perfectly are purposely left alone because they are water soluble and there's no profit margin in it... so it's kept secret.

Never mind

Your post is too angry and personal.
I think I understand what is going on, and sense that responding further will only make it worse.
I am sorry for what you and your wife have had to go thru and I hope it ends well.

I apologize for getting personal. It was uncalled for.

My error, too. Sorry.

Cappa,

Just shave those legs for the tick season to stop looking like a dog........