Approx. 9.5 min

Lyme Disease and Long-Term Antibiotics: Help or Harm?

Panelists Samuel Shor, MD, FACP; Leonard Sigal, MD; Peter L. Salgo, MD; Patricia V. Smith; and Robert C. Bransfield, MD, DLFAPA, debate the existence of chronic Lyme disease and the use of longer-term antibiotics, and explore the impact a lack of consensus has on patients, providers, and the health care system.

For more on how science is stacked against Lyme/MSIDS patients and the medical practitioners who treat them:

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/08/29/research-challenges-in-lyme-disease-contagion-live/
What is hilarious, if not maddening, is Sigal’s incredulous disbelief in a “conspiracy.” This is the same man that is an active player and appears in journalist, Pam Weintraub’s book, Cure Unknown Inside the Lyme Epidemic. (Excellent book)

• On page 12, “Skeptical of chronic Lyme disease as an explanation of ongoing symptoms, Sigal often diagnosed such patients as having fibromyalgia, a pain syndrome, instead.”
• Page 271, “The New York Times quote of the day was from Leonard Sigal” ‘Lyme disease, although a problem, is not nearly as big a problem as most people think. The bigger epidemic is Lyme anxiety.‘”
• Page 306, “Leonard Sigal, for instance, consulted for Prudential, Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Anthem, and Metropolitan Life, passing diagnostic and treatment decrees. His fee was $560 an hour in 1996, though he worked for a day rate as well. Sigal was not alone: Other top academics consulted too. The consultancy fees would ‘pay for a lot of college tuition, actually, ‘ Sigal had quipped under oath, when testifying against a patient’s diagnosis of Lyme.”
• Page 316, “It didn’t take long for two competing pharmaceutical giants – SmithKline Beecham and Pasteur Merieux Connaught – to launch two potential products. The Connaught effort, (creation of the Osp A vaccine) with the clinical trial headed by Leonard Sigal, was killed by the company in the wake of lawsuits over side effects.” https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/07/01/pbs-lyme-vaccine/ “LYMERIX vaccine caused 640 emergency room visits, 34 life threatening reactions, 77 hospitalizations, 198 disabilities, and 6 deaths.”
• Page 366, “Of particular concern are the publications, more prominent in recent months, suggesting that uncured patients are not really sick with Lyme disease, but with a strange psychiatric malaise. ‘Psychiatric comorbidity and other psychological factors distinguishing (chronic Lyme Disease) patients from other patients commonly seen in Lyme disease referral centers, and were related to poor functional outcomes,’ Leonard Sigal wrote in the journal Arthritis and Rheumatism in 2008.”

In sum, Sigal is a doctor who is extremely skeptical of chronic Lyme who obtains hefty fees for consulting against patients, who was actively creating pharmaceutical products relating to Lyme at the same time, and who brazenly states many Lyme patients are not only anxious but psycho to boot.

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/01/13/lyme-science-owned-by-good-ol-boys/  Sin Lee, a pathologist and scientist who directs Milford Molecular Diagnostics, is speaking out about it as he has received numerous publication rejections when he attempted to rebut the oft repeated dogma that has ruled the medical world for decades regarding tick borne illness.

Christian Perronne, physician on the infectious diseases faculty at the University of Versailles-St Quentin, France, states, “If you try to publish a little bit different from the guidelines, it’s anti-science.” And, Lyme literate physician Raphael Stricker goes on record, “The primer propagates one of the biggest myths about Lyme disease diagnosis instead of acknowledging the dreadful state of 30-year-old Lyme serology and the need for better testing.”

Benjamin Luft, one of the physicians who wrote the original Lyme guidelines in 2000 admitted that he now agrees that Lyme disease can persist making it infinitely more difficult to treat as time progresses and that the cabal’s continual emphasis on “false positives” is a red herring – that early treatment has great benefit.
And lastly, Pffeifer spoke with Raymond Dattwyler, a 1994 CDC panelist that helped write the LD guidelines, who stated, “Twenty years ago I would’ve said they’re fine. Now I say, oh shit, we were wrong. It doesn’t look as good as we thought it was.”

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/01/28/sit-down-science/   Industry funded “science” has tainted our world and turned science-based evidence into science-biased propaganda. Universities are laundering money through foundations to intentionally hide relationships, while scientists secretly nurture their relationships with corporate executives.  Negative outcomes go unpublished, the peer review process is so weak only studies that challenge industry interests are heavily scrutinized (usually by scientists hired by corporate public relations firms). Media is paid handsomely to ensure the public that “the science is settled,” especially when corporate liability is a primary concern.

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/01/02/fake-science/  James Lyons Weiler presents how publication bias is impacting patient care in dramatic ways. 

So yes, Mr. Sigal, things are topsy turvy in Lyme Land and you are a part of the problem.