Canadian Tick Expert – Climate Change is NOT Behind Lyme Disease

August 14, 2017

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/scotts-ticks-heros-journey-lori-dennis-ma-rp  by Lori Dennis  July 30, 2017

I was just about to publish Lyme Madness last fall, and Dr. Kenneth Liegner, LLMD, suggested that if I was going to include a chapter on Lyme in Canada, then I should definitely speak with John Scott. “John, after all, is the foremost Canadian expert on ticks. He’s among the most learned on this subject,” Dr. Liegner insisted. I was wrapping up the final edits of my manuscript, so including an interview with John at this juncture was simply not an option.

Last week, however, I had the distinct pleasure of chatting with John and his wife, Kit, by phone. They were informative, interesting, expert, driven. Just like the rest of us, they are clearly in the thick of the madness that is chronic Lyme – and they have been at it, side-by-side, for more than thirty years.

The Scotts, married in 1973, have two grown children and three grandchildren all of whom live nearby. Both John and Kit have personally been battling Lyme and co-infections since 1986. Their family remains healthy––a great blessing for them.

In 1990, four years after falling ill, four years after being bounced from doctor to doctor, from misdiagnosis to misdiagnosis, as John’s health was becoming increasingly compromised by severe arthritic, neurological and encephalitic symptoms, he was at last properly diagnosed with Lyme and co-infections by the late Dr. Philip T. Williams in Ajax, Ontario. Kit’s diagnosis followed soon after.

Just like the rest of us in Lymeland, the Scotts were plunged into the Lyme rabbit hole. Just like the rest of us, they experienced plenty of denial from family, friends, doctors, and the world at large. The denial was even more entrenched back then, John recalls. “Back then, we were told that the only way we could have contracted Lyme disease was if we had gone to Long Point which was just not the case.”

It was their four-year search for medical answers, the constant push back, misinformation and disinformation they received from doctors and the feds, along with John’s professional background as a science researcher that drove them both to get to work. In 1991, John dusted off his dissecting microscope and began studying ticks across Canada, starting with the blacklegged tick, Ixodes scapularis. Flash forward to today, and John is one of the world’s foremost experts in tick research. He has been responsible for identifying 37 tick species and publishing 35 peer reviewed scientific articles on the subject.

Recently, John was awarded a Sovereign’s Medal for Volunteers in recognition of 27 years of research and advocacy on Lyme disease and tick populations in Canada. In fact, he has recently conducted a cross-Canada study of ticks on avian and mammalian hosts which he plans to publish in the next six months.

For decades now, John has volunteered 30,000+ hours of his time as a ‘citizen scientist’, as co-founder with Kit and President of the Lyme-Borreliosis Support Group of Ontario (which later became Lyme Disease Association of Ontario, now known as Lyme Ontario ––www.lymeontario.com), writing and publishing a quarterly newsletter called Lyme Alert, organizing and chairing meetings, creating educational material and chairing several large symposiums.

Not only that! Together, the Scotts have educated and supported thousands of patients and their families, and have made Lyme disease a household word in this country. Most notably, John’s evidence-based, peer-reviewed tick-host research proves that anyone can contract Lyme disease anywhere in Canada.

Doctors, politicians, media — take note.

John continues to write letters to journalists and editors setting them straight on the real facts about Lyme disease. After posting one of his well-crafted letters on Facebook this week (see Attachment 1 below), I sent John a few comments from some of his fervent fans:

“He NAILED it!! Can we clone him? “

“BAM! Now, that’s how you pen a response!”

“That was brilliant to read!

“John Scott: One of my heroes.”

John replied, “I will try not to go into a spasm of self-aggrandizement. For me, the pen is mightier than the sword. I don’t know who said it, but it is true. Now, I have our peer-reviewed scientific research to lean on. I expect that our new paper will be published in 10 days.”

While Kit recently resigned from the board of Lyme Ontario after decades of service in order to make room for other things in her life, John will not stop, she tells me. He continues on his mission, thirty-one years later –- a mission to prove to the world that his nemeses, including Lyme deniers, most mainstream doctors, federal politicians, and institutional researchers are wrong about so many things. Already, he has disproven ten myths generated by tick researchers.

“I’m an independent researcher,” he tells me. “I can go in any direction I want and, therefore, I haven’t got flawed science. I can move in any direction and not be blocked. That’s the way it should be. If I were tied in with an institution, my work would be influenced and manipulated.“

For many years now, John has been especially focused on how wrong he believes the authorities are about ticks and climate change. ‘It’s not that John does not believe in climate change,” Kit is quick to point out. “It’s just that he knows that climate change is not the reason for the proliferation of ticks and Lyme disease.”

John explains, “The climate change range expansion model is what the authorities have been using to rationalize how they have done nothing for more than thirty years. It’s a huge cover-up scheme that goes back to the 1980’s. The grandiose scheme was a nefarious plot to let doctors off the hook from having to deal with this debilitating disease. I caught onto it very quickly. Most people have been victims of it ever since.”

“This climate change ‘theory’ is all part of a well-planned scheme. Even the ticks are smarter than the people who’ve concocted this thing,” he says.

“Climate change has nothing to do with tick movement. Blacklegged ticks are ecoadaptive, and tolerate wide temperature fluctuations. On hot summer days, these ticks descend into the cool, moist leaf litter and rehydrate. In winter, they descend into the leaf litter, and are comfortable under an insulating blanket of snow. Ticks have antifreeze-like compounds in their bodies, and can tolerate a wide range of temperatures. For instance, at Kenora, Ontario, the air temperature peaks at 36°C and dips to –44°C, and blacklegged ticks survive successfully.

“Ticks are marvellous eco-adaptors. They will be the last species on the planet. Do you see how silly this theory of climate change is as a way to rationalize what’s happening. It’s all a red herring to divert your attention,” he explains.

Divert our attention from what? I ask.

“From what is not happening medically. In simple terms, the feds have diverted our attention by saying ‘let’s worry about ticks and climate change, put all our funding there and we will solve the problem of Lyme disease’.”

Those of us in Lymeland are painfully aware that the problem will not be solved by putting all of the focus on climate change and tick surveillance. The federal government’s single-mindedness is evidenced by the recent announcement of the first-ever Federal Framework and its tick research funding.

“The authorities have been using tick expansion and climate change to get research dollars. Climate change is a popular topic right now, and that is a great source of funding for related research. However, any research on ticks and climate change is inconclusive––in essence, there is no validity. The long-range, futuristic projections and statistical models are bogus science because blacklegged ticks have already been found in northern Canada. In fact, we documented blacklegged ticks on migratory songbirds in northern Alberta dating back to 1998. Any allocation of government funding for ticks and climate change research is a complete waste of taxpayers’ money. It will not help Lyme disease patients one iota.”

“One thing is certain,” John says. “The medical profession is woefully ignorant about Lyme disease. When it’s mentioned, they withdraw, they are mute and they quickly move on to another topic.”

“Back in 1992, when I spoke with Dr. Harvey Artsob, Head, National Microbiology Laboratory, he said, ‘I don’t know what we are going to do if the ticks [Ixodes scapularis] cross the border.’ I replied, ‘Harvey, the ticks are already here.’ He paled,” John says.

“Obviously, at the time, Dr. Artsob was told by the medical profession to get rid of this problem, so they didn’t have to deal with it. The fear of having blacklegged ticks and Lyme disease in Canada and, having to deal with it, was enormous. The goal was to have the federal and provincial governments squash the problem––to hell with the patients. They concocted all kinds of schemes to dismiss and discount the problem, and these defamatory tactics have cascaded forward from then to now,” John tells me.

And what about this ‘fast track’ Lyme vaccine that’s coming down the pike? I ask him.

“Vaccines don’t work because this stealth organism will go through the immune system. You can’t stop it. It goes into the T-cells, the B-cells, scar tissue, eyes, brain, bone, tendons, ligaments, and nerve cells. You can put all the vaccine into a person you want but you can’t stop it.”

“It’s the doctors and their investments against the rest of the world,” he says.

“OHIP-funded doctors are useless when it comes to ticks and tick-borne diseases. Ticks are exploding; the medical system is imploding. OHIP doctors get paid regardless of what they say or do. There is no therapeutic alliance between doctors and patients. No trust.”

He took the words right out of my mouth. This, my friends, is the madness that we cannot ignore.

Kit and John continue to suffer from this disease. Apart from other protocols, for the past five years they have been using rife and they have found it to be very effective on certain tick-transmitted pathogens.

“It is far from the “magic bullet”, says Kit, “but we did antibiotics for 20 years, on and off, and just could not tolerate them anymore. We also found that the antibiotics became less and less effective the more we used them. We had to do something, so we investigated rife treatment. We have reduced our pain dramatically and other symptoms too, but the herxes can be quite severe so we don’t treat for very long at any one time, and only every 14 days. We do IV Vitamin C treatments once a month to get rid of the neurotoxins. I have attached our Information Sheet on our 3D Coil rife machine. If you know anyone who is interested, we’d be happy to be in touch via e-mail.”

Kit ends the call by saying, “Thanks again for Lyme Madness. You’ve done the Lyme community a great service.”

John says, “I believe you saved Matt’s life. We can certainly appreciate what you’ve gone through. Please keep up the great work! We need you!”

For these kindnesses, I am grateful. And with all that I now know about John and Kit Scott and their invaluable contribution to this Lyme community, it is clear that we have two of the greatest Canadian Lyme heroes in our midst.

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Lori Dennis, MA, RP is a Registered Psychotherapist and the author of LYME MADNESS, named #1 NEW RELEASE in Immune System Health on Amazon. LYME MADNESS is available on Amazon. For more information on Lyme Madness, go to loridennisonline.com.

For more on the “Climate Change” narrative:  

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Activism, Lyme, Lyme Vaccine, Ticks

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