Archive for the ‘Lyme’ Category

Former ‘Bachelor’ Contestant Reveals Lyme Disease Diagnosis in Emotional Video

https://www.today.com/health/kelley-flanagan-reveals-lyme-disease-diagnosis-emotional-video-

Former ‘Bachelor’ contestant reveals Lyme disease diagnosis in emotional video

Kelley Flanagan, who competed for Peter Weber’s heart on season 24 of “The Bachelor,” told fans she knew something had felt “off.”
By Gina Vivinetto

Former “Bachelor” contestant Kelley Flanagan has revealed she’s been diagnosed with Lyme disease.

The attorney, who competed for Peter Weber’s heart on season 24 of the ABC reality dating series and later rekindled her romance with him, shared her health update in an emotional selfie Instagram video on Monday. (Warning: Flanagan’s video contains profanity)

(See link for article and video)

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**Comment**

The fact she mentions her two brothers are infected that that she’s been more sensitive to things since she was young should hopefully direct her and her doctor to consider congenital transmission as a possibility.

Category:

Activism, Lyme

Parents’ Bill of Rights Now Law in Florida – And Why it Needs to be Law in Every State

http://

Parents’ Bill of Rights Now Law in Florida

Aug. 28, 2021

On Saturday, August 28, Parental Rights Florida and the other champions of their recently passed Parents’ Bill of Rights celebrated the victory together. Part of their dinner included this eight-minute video of their accomplishment:
(In case the link doesn’t work, you can copy and paste this link into your browser: https://www.youtube.com/embed/PTGeyLQKQrU)
The Florida Parents’ Bill of Rights demonstrates what can happen when the right people grab hold of the right idea at the right time and work to make good things happen for families around them.
Please take just a few minutes to watch this exciting and moving video, then pass it along as an encouragement to your family and friends who maybe feel that victories like this just don’t happen. They do happen, this did happen, and we are excited to share this victory with you!
If you’d like to give to support future victories like this, you can do so at parentalrights.org/donate.

The Parental Rights Amendment is important for Lyme/MSIDS parents to understand, as they know their child best and understand what is best for them.

On November 20, 1989, the UN General Assembly approved the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and opened it for ratification. Within ten months, the requisite 20 nations had adopted the treaty, bringing it into force. Since then, every nation except the United States has ratified the CRC.
The United States signed the treaty under President Bill Clinton in 1995, signaling our intention to become a party to it. But it has never been ratified with the constitutionally required consent of two-thirds of the Senate as our Constitution requires, so we remain the lone holdout.
But there are three solid reasons we cannot, we must not, join the Convention.
  1. The government (a judge or bureaucrat) decides what is in the “best interest of the child.”
  2. It would override parental protection, particularly regarding medical decisions by putting the child’s “right to access information” first and above all else, leaving parents outside the loop.
  3. Since 1990, The Committee on the Rights of the Child has exercised unchecked authority by bullying nations into changing their laws based upon what a foreign Committee decides.
  4. According to Article VI of the Constitution, a ratified treaty becomes “the supreme law of the land,” and would have the effect of passing a massive new federal law on the family. Currently, nearly all family law is at the state level, making it bound by the Constitution and our courts to respect the role of parents as their child’s first and best line of defense. Under CRC, laws would become the responsibility of the U.S. Congress and respect for parents will disappear.  Under CRC, judges and bureaucrats get to decide what is best for a child as defined by Congress and the CRC or rather a foreign Committee on the Rights of the Child.

Lyme/MSIDS families are already fighting an uphill battle.  In many instances they are accused of child abuse:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/09/14/dutch-parents-accused-of-child-abuse-due-to-children-with-lyme-disease/

Parents and children alike are being told, “It’s all in their head.”  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/09/21/its-all-in-your-head-until-finally-a-lyme-diagnosis/, https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/06/30/child-with-lymemsidspans-told-by-doctors-she-made-it-all-up/, https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/02/16/lyme-is-all-in-your-head-a-wake-up-call-to-mental-health-professionals/

Can you imagine how much worse it would get if H.R. 854 were passed?

If you are unfamiliar with the Parental Rights Amendment, please read: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/04/20/why-we-need-the-parental-rights-amendment/

Also:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/02/21/parental-rights-in-medical-settings/  Excerpt:

Right here in the U.S., the family of Justina Pelletier found that out the hard way in 2014 when the state of Massachusetts took Justina from them and placed her in the custody of Boston Children’s Hospital. Doctors there were free to enroll her in clinical trials (without parental consent) for the somatoform disorder diagnosis they had given her, rather than continuing the treatment for Mitochondrial disease that her parents and doctors at Tufts Medical Center had been following.

After public outrage following her parents going public, Justina was finally returned to her parents 16 months later, in much worse condition than when she was taken away. Her story reemerged in 2016 as the family filed suit in federal court against the state and the hospital who so severely injured their daughter.

Isaiah Rider of Missouri was also taken by the state over a disagreement regarding his treatment. He was finally released by the state of Illinois who had been granted custody (though he was never a resident of the state until he went into foster care) when Lurie Children’s Hospital (Chicago) doctors decided they knew better than his mom. While in foster care, Rider suffered sexual assault. He was finally returned to the custody of his grandparents in his home state, but wasn’t fully released from Illinois care until June of 2016, months after his 18th birthday!

As sad as it sounds, though, the Riders and the Pelletiers are the lucky ones.

Just so you know the abuse of power is happening right here in Wisconsin: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2020/02/22/doctors-afraid-to-refer-injured-children-for-evaluations-fear-an-abuse-specialist-might-jump-to-the-wrong-conclusion/

Just a year ago, B-23-0171 became law making it possible for 11 year olds to be vaccinated behind their parents’ backs.  Children are in no position to make that kind of decision without parental involvement. Children who are infected with tick-borne illness are often affected cognitively, psychologically, as well as physically, often with numerous pathogens that can negatively impact their behavior and immune system. This bill now allows mentally compromised pubescents to make a major medical decision that will impact them for life. Vaccines have reactivated latent infections.

Child thrown in the mental ward for throwing a tantrum – without even notifying the parent first: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2020/02/22/child-put-in-mental-ward-for-throwing-tantrum-why-we-need-the-parental-rights-amendment/

This professor (and there’s plenty more just like him) feels that parental rights come from the State:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/10/12/parental-rights-come-from-the-state-says-law-professor-james-dwyer/

To learn more:  https://parentalrights.org/get_involved/

Category:

Activism, Lyme

New Book on Human Experimentation & Biological & Chemical Weapons

https://www.activistpost.com/2021/09/u-s-indifferent-to-human-experimentation-and-biological-and-chemical-weapons-new-book-points-to-a-monstrous-agenda

U.S. Indifferent to Human Experimentation and Biological and Chemical Weapons — New Book Points to a Monstrous Agenda

September 1, 2021

Excerpts from article:

At the Breaking Point of History: How Decades of U.S. Duplicity Enabled the Pandemic by Activist Post contributor Janet Phelan details the US government’s indifference to the welfare of individuals and to its legal obligations under national and international accords prohibiting human experimentation and biological and chemical weapons. (The book is available at TrineDay and elsewhere.)

Ms. Phelan recently said,

“We are embroiled in a pandemic which has collapsed economies, caused death by starvation, and has resulted in severe new restrictions on civil rights in the US and elsewhere. Yet many medical professionals and researchers are questioning the genesis of Covid-19. Was it bioengineered? Was it deliberately released? They’re also questioning the numbers alleged to have died from it, pointing to dictates from the CDC to list deaths not directly caused by the virus as virus-caused deaths.”

Janet Phelan is an investigative reporter. Her articles have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the San Bernardino County Sentinel, Orange Coast Magazine, New Eastern Outlook, and elsewhere. She currently writes for Activist Post and has previously published an intelligence expose, Exile, and two books of poetry.

TrineDay is a small publishing house that arose as a response to the consistent refusal of the corporate press to publish many interesting, well-researched and well-written books with but one key “defect”: a challenge to official history that would tend to rock the boat of America’s corporate “culture.” TrineDay believes in our Constitution and our common right of Free Speech.

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**Comment**

Hopefully Lyme/MSIDS patients are aware of the sordid backstory of tick-borne illness. This backstory that reads like a rap sheet is actually quite similar to the COVID debacle we find ourselves living through, with many of the same bioweaponization aspects, key players, and institutions that have severe conflicts of interest and have no business determining public health policy.

A year ago the House passed a measure to probe into our government’s tick experimentation, and bioweaponry.

It is known from previous interviews that researchers dumped infected ticks from airplanes.  Investigative journalist Kris Newby reported in her book, “Bitten,” that Willy Burgdorfer, the “discoverer” of Borrelia burgdorferi – the causative agent of Lyme disease, worked at the Rocky Mountain Lab in Montana, and for 13 years he was the military’s go-to expert for mass-producing disease agents inside ticks.  According to the book, A CIA/military project code named “Operation Mongoose” involved giving false identifies to agents in order to protect the U.S. government. They wore uniforms of a sham airline run by the CIA and dumped boxes of infected ticks out of the airplane. One agent’s son came down with a mysterious illness that caused brain inflammation that could have caused permanent brain damage if a resident with previous work in tropical medicine hadn’t recognized it and knew how to treat it.  When the agent asked the commander if there was a connection between his work and his son’s illness, the commander told him to burn all the clothing he took to Cuba.  “Burn everything.”

It is far more likely that the tick and disease proliferation we are seeing today is due to our own government’s work and the massive amount of infected ticks being dropped from airplanes, than the scapegoated reason of “climate change.”  These ticks were force-fed numerous pathogens – sometimes numerous ones simultaneously.  Burgdorfer also sent ticks to others for bioweaponry projects – one of which was to a researcher doing studies on radiation-induced mutations of various ticks and microbes.

We need look no further than our own government’s nefarious research to understand the mess we are in today.

Category:

Activism, Inflammation, Lyme, research, Ticks, vaccines, Viruses

Membership & Co-Chairs of Latest TBD Working Group Unveiled

https://www.lymedisease.org/tbdwg-aug26-meeting/

Membership and co-chairs of latest TBD Working Group unveiled

Aug. 26, 2021

The US Department of Health and Human Services today installed what is likely to be the last panel of the federal Tick-Borne Disease Working Group.

The co-chairs of the 2021-2022 panel are:

  • Holiday Goodreau, Executive Director of the LivLyme Foundation
  • Dr. Linden Hu, Professor of Microbiology and Medicine at Tufts University

The advisory body was created as part of the 21st Century Cures Act of 2016. The legislation called for three different panels charged with creating Reports to Congress in 2018, 2020, and 2022.

Each panel includes seven representatives from federal agencies and seven public members. In addition to Goodreau and Hu, the new panel’s public members include:

  • Jennifer Platt, PhD, of Tick-borne Conditions United
  • Elizabeth Maloney, MD, of the Partnership for Tick-borne Diseases Education
  • Monica Embers, PhD, of the Tulane National Primate Research Center
  • Kirby Stafford III, PhD, of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station
  • Sunil K. Sood, MD, a pediatric infectious disease specialist.

Government representatives include:

  • Ben Beard, PhD, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  • Captain Rebecca Bunnell,  MPAS, PA-C, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
  • Dennis Dixon, PhD, National Institutes of Health
  • Robert J. Miller, PhD, US Department of Agriculture
  • CDR Todd Myers PhD, US Food and Drug Administration
  • Leith Jason States, MD, MPH, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health
  • Gabriella Zollner (Romero), PhD, US Department of Defense

Today’s meeting was held online, due to concerns related to the coronavirus pandemic. Ten members of the public gave comments at the meeting by telephone. Click here for more information about the TBDWG.

Category:

Activism, Lyme

Let the Gaslighting & Stigmatization Stop Here

https://www.lymedisease.org/tbdwg-comment-lyme-leland/

TOUCHED BY LYME: Let the gaslighting and stigmatization stop here

The third panel of the federal Tick-Borne Disease Working Group held its first meeting today–online. I was one of 10 people selected to deliver verbal comments. There was a three-minute time limit. Here’s what I said:

A topic not addressed by the first two Working Group panels is the severe impact Lyme disease can have on mental health.

A study recently published in the American Journal of Psychiatry shows that people with Lyme disease have a 75% higher risk of dying by suicide than those without it.

Lyme patients also have a high rate of other psychiatric conditions, such as depression.

Lead author Dr. Brian Fallon, of Columbia University, points out that Lyme is not a simple illness. He states: “In addition to the risk of severe cardiac, rheumatologic, and neurologic problems, Lyme disease can cause severe mental health problems as well.”

MyLymeData bears this out

Furthermore, results from the MyLymeData patient registry tell us that

  • 29% of Lyme patients surveyed say they have had severe psychiatric symptoms
  • 30% report that they take antidepressants—compared to 13% of the general population
  • 32% say they are too disabled to work. This situation leads many to despair.

When patients seek help from their physicians for debilitating symptoms, far too often, their doctors dismiss their concerns out of hand.

Doctors essentially say, “I don’t believe you. Your symptoms aren’t real.”

Some call this gaslighting. It undermines the patient’s self-confidence, and makes them doubt their own experiences.

Without treatment options, suffering people are left adrift in a sea of hopelessness.

Stigma of Lyme disease

Patients say the stigma surrounding Lyme disease profoundly affects them.

74 percent say they have been treated disrespectfully by a healthcare provider.

67 percent say they have postponed or avoided medical treatment due to discrimination, disrespect or difficulty obtaining care.

US News and World Report recently asked Lorraine Johnson, the head of LymeDisease.org, to comment on Dr. Fallon’s study of Lyme disease and suicide.

She said in part:

“We know that there’s a psychiatric component to what is going on, but I think [a major driver of] the increased suicide rates among patients with Lyme disease is that they are disbelieved, they are stigmatized, and they are gaslighted by physicians, by insurers, often by society and, sometimes, unfortunately, by their families.”

I urge this panel to listen to patients. Let the gaslighting and stigmatization stop here. Together, let’s work to change the system that deprives people with Lyme disease of the medical care they need to get well. Thank you.

TOUCHED BY LYME is written by Dorothy Kupcha Leland, LymeDisease.org’s Vice-president and Director of Communications. She is co-author of When Your Child Has Lyme Disease: A Parent’s Survival Guide. Contact her at dleland@lymedisease.org.

Category:

Activism, Lyme, Psychological Aspects