Archive for the ‘Lyme’ Category

Doctors Misusing Lyme Disease Surveillance Case Definition

https://danielcameronmd.com/misusing-lyme-disease-surveillance-case-definition/

PERSPECTIVE: DOCTORS MISUSING LYME DISEASE SURVEILLANCE CASE DEFINITION

A recent article “Evaluating the Potential Misuse of the Lyme Disease Surveillance Case Definition,” by Perea and colleagues [1] highlights a concern that I have raised in previous blog posts. That is, are doctors incorrectly relying on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) surveillance definition when evaluating and diagnosing patients?

Many physicians will mistakenly defer to the CDC case definition of Lyme disease in making a diagnosis. These clinicians require that patients meet this strict and narrow criteria in order to be diagnosed with the disease.” [2]

“However, this definition was designed as a surveillance monitoring tool to track the number of Lyme disease cases throughout the country. It was not meant to be used in making a clinical diagnosis.”

Recently, Perea and colleagues surveyed 1,503 family practice physicians, internists, pediatricians, and nurse practitioners on their use of the Lyme disease case definition. Participants were asked the following questions:

“Which one of the following best describes how you diagnose and treat Lyme disease?”

  • Over 60% of those clinicians surveyed reported treating Lyme disease patients.
  • Out of the 927 clinicians treating Lyme disease patients, 20% reported relying on the CDC’s surveillance case definition to guide their decisions.
  • However, out of the 20% of clinicians who said they rely on the case definition, “knowledge of the case definition was limited.”

“Does the case definition include information on diagnosis and management?”

The clinicians who did rely on the CDC’s case definition were asked if the case definition included information on diagnosis and management.

  • “Only 31 (16.4%) answered correctly that it did not.” Hence, the majority believed the CDC’s definition included diagnostic and treatment guidance.

The authors’ findings support the conclusion that there are still doctors who misuse the Lyme disease surveillance case definition. However, they point out that,

“Interpretation of this finding is complicated by evidence that most respondents who reported using the case definition were unfamiliar with its content.”

References:
  1. Perea AE, Hinckley AF, Mead PS. Evaluating the Potential Misuse of the Lyme Disease Surveillance Case Definition. Public Health Rep. 2020 Jan;135(1):16-17.
  2. https://danielcameronmd.com/lyme-differential-diagnosis/ last accessed 3/6/2020.

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For more:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/category/lyme-disease-treatment/

Drive-Thru Pharmacy For Lyme Disease

https://danielcameronmd.com/lyme-disease-treatment-doxycycline/

DRIVE-THRU PHARMACY FOR LYME DISEASE TREATMENT WITH DOXYCYCLINE?

lyme disease treatment doxycyline 

The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) guidelines advise that patients receive a single 200 mg dose of doxycycline after a tick bite to prevent Lyme disease. The International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS) opposes that recommendation. Nevertheless, a pharmacist-run clinic within the Veterans Health Administration implemented IDSA’s single-dose Lyme disease treatment with doxycycline as a post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) following a tick bite.

The clinic’s program and its effectiveness are described in a recent article by Portman, “Implementing a pharmacist-run Lyme disease postexposure prophylaxis clinic augmented by academic detailing within the Veterans Health Administration.”¹

In April 2018, VA Butler Healthcare in Pennsylvania opened a pharmacist-run Lyme disease PEP clinic, known as PharmLD clinic. At the center, clinical pharmacy specialists were allowed to prescribe doxycycline for PEP purposes.

According to the retrospective review, 40 patients were referred to the PharmLD clinic. Their visit was augmented by academic detailing. The academic detailing took about 27 minutes per patient.

  • 18 individuals (45%) were prescribed a single 200 mg dose as a postexposure prophylaxis for a tick bite;
  • 12 individuals (30%) received only education;
  • 10 patients (25%) were referred to their primary care physician for further evaluation.
The pharmacist-run clinic was able to cut down the number of doctor visits, but it was not able to determine treatment outcomes for their patients.

ILADS position on single 200 mg dose of doxycycline for a tick bite.

The ILADS guidelines concluded that a single 200 mg dose might prevent an erythema migrans rash. The ILADS guidelines could not find evidence that a single 200 mg dose of doxycycline could prevent other manifestations of Lyme disease including Lyme carditis, Lyme arthritis, and neurologic Lyme disease. In addition, the ILADS guidelines raised a concern that a single 200 mg dose of doxycycline might prevent the development of a positive blood test.

A single dose of doxycycline for a tick bite might not prevent Lyme disease. CLICK TO TWEET

 

The ILADS guideline authors recommended shared medical decision-making when treating patients with a tick bite. “The preferred regimen is 100 – 200 mg of doxycycline, twice daily for 20 days,” wrote the authors. They added,

“Some patients will value avoiding unnecessary antibiotics and prefer to not treat a tick bite prophylactically. Hence, treatment risks, benefits, and options should be discussed with the patient in the context of shared medical decision-making.”²

Editor’s note: I am one of the authors of the ILADS guidelines and an advocate for shared medical decision-making.

References:
  1. Portman DB. Implementing a pharmacist-run Lyme disease postexposure prophylaxis clinic augmented by academic detailing within the Veterans Health Administration. J Am Pharm Assoc (2003). 2020 Feb 12. pii: S1544-3191(20)30006-6.
  2. Cameron, DJ, Johnson LB, Maloney EL. Evidence assessments and guideline recommendations in Lyme disease: the clinical management of known tick bites, erythema migrans rashes and persistent disease. Expert Rev Anti Infect Ther. 2014 Sep; 12(9): 1103–1135.

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**Comment**

I couldn’t agree with Dr. Cameron more. Getting bitten by a tick is just the beginning of a complex journey. This is not as simple as the CDC/IDSA makes it out to be. Tick-borne illness (TBI) deserves time and attention to detail – and follow-up. It is obvious that the way it’s been handled isn’t working – more and more people are getting infected per year and more are struggling with persistent symptoms.

They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, yet that is precisely what the CDC/IDSA does regarding TBI.

Also concerning: a single 200 mg dose of doxycycline might prevent the development of a positive blood test.

 

 

CDC Playbook: Learning From Lyme

April 25, 2020

By Alicia Cashman MS, Lyme patient and advocate

While most of the world is staggering with newly imposed social distancing measures, worrying about viruses and how to bolster the immune system, chronic Lyme patients simply carry on doing these things daily. They’ve been isolated for some time – either to avoid illness due to being immunocompromised or because they were forced into exile by authorities who tell them the illness they are struggling with simply doesn’t exist. In time, family and friends become more and more distant because they tend to believe the authorities. Authorities, after all, are honest and are looking after public health – aren’t they?

They say history repeats itself, which appears to be the case regarding COVID-19 when you study the sordid history of how Lyme disease has been and continues to be handled.
The CDC Insists Upon Using Its Own Tests

Due to decisions made at a conference in Michiganserology testing criteria for Lyme Disease were purposely manipulated for vaccine development. To this day the CDC insists upon its own two-tiered testing which research has proven is abysmal and misses a vast majority of cases. It can’t distinguish between active, past, or reinfection.  It has now been removed, but the CDC website used to call specialized CLIA certified labs testing for tick-borne illness, “home-brewed.” I personally heard a pediatrician use those exact words at the Wisconsin State Capital in his effort of delegitimatizing patients who are forced to go to specially trained doctors using these labs to get diagnosed and proper treatment. This history is disturbing in and of itself but should particularly concern us in light of current events.

The CDC also insisted upon their own COVID-19 tests.  It was just discovered that CDC COVID-19 tests were initially contaminated with COVID-19 – making ALL numbers based upon those tests absolutely worthless. COVID-19 laced tests were also found in the UK.  Due to contamination, which they state on their website is a “problem with a reagent,” the entire United States is in lockdown. Had accurate testing been accepted by the CDC from the WHO from the start, authorities would have had accurate data to base decisions upon. This article states there are only 12 labs outside the CDC with the capability to test for the virus; however, as of the beginning of March, they hadn’t received FDA authorization to do their own testing. The CDC website states the following:

“This message is to remind clinical laboratories that this is currently the only EUA assay for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes COVID-19. Any laboratory that is not designated by CDC as a qualified laboratory and is implementing a COVID-19 diagnostic test other than the CDC EUA assay must contact the FDA to obtain an EUA before any COVID-19 diagnostic testing may be performed in their facilities.”

Compare that statement with the following:

“The conference proceedings recommended a two-test methodology using a sensitive enzyme immunoassay (EIA) or immunofluorescence assay as a first test, followed by a western immunoblot assay for specimens yielding positive or equivocal results (1,2).

On July 29, 2019, FDA cleared several Lyme disease serologic assays with new indications for use based on a modified two-test methodology (4). The modified methodology uses a second EIA in place of a western immunoblot assay. Clearance by FDA of the new Lyme disease assays indicates that test performance has been evaluated and is ‘substantially equivalent to or better than’ a legally marketed predicate test.

In other words, you better use our tests. If you think that FDA cleared tests are effective, think again. The CDC has monopolized Lyme testing since the beginning of time, dooming patients to a life-time of suffering.

This article states that only two government agencies are required by law to be “patient-centered,” the FDA and the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), yet Lyme patients continue to experience false negative results on CDC 2-tiered testing. Negative results means no diagnosis and no treatment. Patients and advocates have complained profusely with no change in testing.

The reason for insisting upon their own tests become clear when you go down rabbit-holes to discover they own patents on nearly everything surrounding the diseases they have tests for.  Please also see ConflictReport.  Dr. Fauci, director of NIAID, and a leader in the Corona Task Force has numerous patents, and a long list of conflicts of interest.

  • Journalist Mary Beth Pfeiffer summarizes CDC testing incompetence.
  • James Lyons Weiler, Phd also reveals the CDC’s testing fiasco. He knows that of which he speaks as he attempted to have the CDC test his own test for Ebola. Let’s just say he was promptly rebuffed.
  • Currently, a pathologist is suing the CDC for their willful suppression of direct detecting methods.
  • Professor Lane hit the same brick wall regarding testing.
  • Regarding COVID testing, the president of Tanzania (PhD Chemistry) punked the WHO by sending in goat, fruit, and motor-oil samples to be tested for COVID-19.  Half came back positive! 
  • The creator of the PCR states it was never created to diagnose patients but for research and manufacturing purposes.
  • Dr. David Rasnick, bio-chemist, protease developer, and former founder of an EM lab called Viral Forensics states,“I’m skeptical that a PRC test is ever true.” When asked his advice for people wanting to be tested for COVID-19, he said:
“DON’T DO IT…NO HEALTHY PERSON SHOULD BE TESTED. IT MEANS NOTHING BUT IT CAN DESTROY YOUR LIFE, MAKE YOU ABSOLUTELY MISERABLE.”
  • According to David Crowe, Canadian researcher with degrees in biology and mathematics, host of The Infectious Myth podcast, and President of the think-tank Rethinking AIDS:

“The first thing to know is that the test is not binary,” he said. “In fact, I don’t think there are any tests for infectious disease that are positive or negative. What they do is they take some kind of a continuum and they arbitrarily say this point is the difference between positive and negative.”

Further, and more importantly, COVID testing does not detect SARS-COV-2 due to the fact the virus has not been isolated/purified from all else. You can’t test for something specific if you don’t have that information.  COVID testing is not specific to a particular virus people have tested positive, then negative, then positive within hours or days.  The test simply picks up viral fragmentssome of which are completely dead and benign – not causing illness at all, and some are from other strains of coronaviruses such as the common cold, but it’s all being falsely labeled COVID-19 – further inflating case numbers and fear.

Lastly, there’s the very important issue of PCR cycle threshold, which was set at 40 (although this varied from lab to lab.  Experts have weighed in stating a PCR cycle of 40 is far too sensitive and that it should be set much lower – around 30.  Cases plummeted when the cycle threshold was lowered proving this fact.  What is frightening about this is health ‘authorities’ can manipulate this cycle threshold for their own nefarious reasons.

This exact same fact is true with Lyme/MSIDS testing as well and is why research shows a majority do not test positive.

The CDC wants their own tests & patents so they can create their own vaccines and drugs they will profit from.

A vaccine called Lymerix caused Lyme-like symptoms in many. In fact, it can be directly linked to 222 deaths and hundreds of adverse reactions, and these are only the ones that were recorded.

The CDC to-date hasn’t even attempted to address the immune issues caused by Lymerix. They just deny it ever happened. In fact, another Lyme vaccine is in the works which still uses the same OspA component which is attributed with problems in the first human vaccine.

Fool me once, shame on you – fool me twice, shame on me.

COVID-19 vaccines have been fast-tracked thereby bypassing important safety studies. Dr. Hotez, a vaccine researcher, is on record stating previous respiratory vaccines caused “paradoxical immune enhancement:

James Lyons Weiler, PhD also gives the following chilling prediction:

When Phase I trials become Phase II trials people will start getting infected w/SARS-CoV-2 following vaccination and start dying at even higher rates due to disease enhancement caused by Pathogenic Priming from SARS-CoV-2 vaccination – something the vaccine developers SHOULD have tested for in animal studies, but skipped.

Even the FDA is worried about potential risks of the PER C6 Ad5 technology (aborted fetal cells) within many COVID-19 vaccineswhich not only has moral implications but oncogenicity and infectivity concerns. The vaccine also uses electricity to drive DNA into your cells.  

A group of doctors recently wrote a paper about the emergency use authorized, fast-tracked COVID “vaccines” and state they are needless, ineffective and dangerous. 

  • needless because there are effective treatments  (Scroll to comment section)
  • ineffective because they don’t stop transmission or keep you from becoming ill
  • dangerous due to causing: viral immune escape, an inevitable steep incline in future severe COVID cases, antibody-immune enhancement, a condition where the “vaccinated” suffer with more severe illness when exposed to the wild virus, but also any infection.  There are also  unsafe epitopes within the injections, and mounting reports of adverse reactions and deaths after these injections, which aren’t “vaccines.”

Faulty testing issues and the subsequent push for vaccines are uncannily similar between Lyme and COVID-19 and should strongly remind us that the CDC is a vaccine manufacturing company first and foremost – to the detriment of severely ill and desperate patients.

Why Should We Trust the CDC?

The question begging to be asked is why should anyone trust the CDC? Their track record speaks for itselfEven CDC scientists have formed a group exposing the corruption from within. They’ve also lied about flu figures for decades. The ACIP, a group within the CDC, votes “Yes” for new vaccines despite having no safety data. And let us never forget the CDC whistleblower who exposed that scientists were ordered to purposely destroy data showing that African-American males who got the MMR vaccine before 36 months had a 250% increase in autism diagnoses.

Recently, microbiologist Judy Mikovitz spoke out on the unethical behavior of Dr. Fauci, Director of the NIAID since 1984 and one of the lead members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force (NIAID and CDC are both under the HHS umbrella). Excerpt:

Dr Fauci ordered Mikovits to keep her mouth shut. When she refused, he illegally confiscated her work books and hard drives, drove her from government work + blackballed her from receiving NIH grants ending her science career.

For those of you who are unaware, Mikovits discovered that a mouse virus (XMRV) has contaminated vaccines all the way back to the 30’s. She believes the virus can be linked to diseases like chronic fatigue (CFS/ME), autism, Alzheimer’s, cancer, autoimmune, neuroimmune, central nervous system diseases, and even chronic Lyme disease. While retroviruses do not directly cause diseases by themselves they help to create acquired immune system deficiency (non-HIV AIDS) which in turn causes unrelenting inflammatory processes.  Call it a trigger, in a perfect storm of events within the body allowing disease to occur.

You may ask why you’ve never heard of XMRV before. That’s because the CDC, NIH, FDA, and other government agencies covered it up. They didn’t want to worry you, and they certainly don’t want you to question their lucrative vaccines.

XMRV remains in American vaccines.

There is much evidence showing both COVID-19 and Lyme/MSIDS have been manipulated in a lab.

Ian Lipkin, aka The Virus Hunter, has been involved with both issues due to the urging of Dr. Fauci. He denies XMRV involvement in human disease, despite Mikovitz’s group being able to transmit it from patients’ T-cells to uninfected T-cells in the laboratory. He also denies COVID-19 is a lab-made, manipulated virus.

Despite his denial, the origin of COVID-19, after boomeranging around the globe, has returned to show strong evidence that it is most likely a manipulated virus for biowarfare purposes after all.

Excerpt:

After creating the synthetic virus, which they call SHC014, Zhengli and her coauthors write that they “next synthesized a full-length SHC014-CoV infectious clone based on the approach used for SARS-CoV.”24 Other papers Zhengli co-wrote focus on the transmission of coronaviruses from one species to another, according to the documentary.

Zhengli and her fellow researchers admit they used a “reverse genetics system” to generate “a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus,” raising legitimate fears that COVID-19 is also reverse-engineered, according to “Tracking Down the Origin of the Wuhan Virus.”

And the real clincher:

According to Mikovits, the S proteins seen on COVID-19 that make it so transmittable to humans come from “cutting and pasting of two different viruses” and the apparent insertion of four new genes could not have been generated from a natural “zoonotic transmission.”

They had to come from a medical, bioweapons or lab setting, says Mikovits. Other scientists in the film agree that COVID-19 is a re-engineered, laboratory-driven virus.

But we were warned about this months ago, and then again recently with even more damning details.

Lyme patients are also familiar with bioweaponization. Recently, Congressman Smith announced a DOD investigation on the bioweaponization of ticks. Tick researchers have gone on record admitting to experimenting on ticks and dropping them out of airplanes.  And Kris Newby in her book “Bitten”, describes how a CIA operative dumped boxes full of crawling ticks over Cuba, returned home, and unwittingly infected his own newborn baby.  Dr. William Burgdorfer, the discoverer of the causative agent of Lyme disease worked as a bioweapons researcher for the US military and worked in programs tasked with breeding ticks and infecting them with pathogens that cause human diseases.

Besides faulty testing, a thrust to create a vaccine at all costs, a tightly controlled narrative, and bioweaponization, there is also a similar smear campaign on successful clinical treatments in both Lyme disease and COVID-19.

The CDC Slanders Competing Treatments

Authorities have purposely thwarted IV therapy for Lyme patients in a recent MMWR paper. The short recap is that the CDC cherry-picked 5 cases that had poor outcomes using IV therapy and then wrote a paper scaring the bejesus out of doctors. 

What’s interesting about the MMWR paper is that one of the authors, a CDC epidemiologist, allegedly solicited IDSA doctors for evidence of harm from IV antibiotic treatments, essentially bribing them by offering co-authorship of the report if anecdotes were used. No such solicitation was made for IV treatment success stories.  The dangling carrot has been blatantly observed with COVID treatment. There has been hot debate on Lyme treatments for decades. The MMWR paper is only one example of bias which is embedded within the CDC. There are many success stories using IV therapy by a Wisconsin Doctor and IDSA founder who disagreed with his colleagues on how to treat Lyme disease.

Meanwhile, doctors are reporting in on the success of treatments for COVID-19, but the CDC, true to formbad-mouths any treatment or tests, other than ones they orchestrate. Based upon the CDC’s casting a dark shadow upon treatments that even patients attribute to saving their lives, numerous states (MI, NV, NY) as well as France have banned their usage for COVID-19.  It’s gotten so bad that judges are ordering hospitals to administer life-saving COVID treatment to dying patients because medical doctors kowtow to corrupt health ‘authorities’.

This tactic of politicizing clinically successful treatments is what the CDC/IDSA/NIH does. This article clearly shows the bantering common in mainstream media regarding COVID-19 treatment. The bi-partisan squabbling is tangible, and similar hit-pieces have been written about Lyme treatment for years. Lyme patients have had to straddle this polarized fence for over 40 years and this polarization continues unabated.

I was told by a front-line European doctor treating severely ill COVID-19 patients that hydroxychloroquine, commonly known as plaquenil, was used for over 70 years over the counter and was frequently given to travelers. Then, all of a sudden it became a prescription drug overnight, and now it’s being banned for use for COVID-19. This means doctors using it for COVID-19 will have their licenses revoked.

Scaring doctors and revoking their licenses is a common refrain for doctors treating Lyme disease.  My own doctor had to pay over $50,000 in legal fees fighting this battle and it’s happening not only in the U.S. but around the world due to the Iron Curtain of the CDC.

There is no question that IV therapies as well as extended antibiotics for Lyme and hydroxychlorquine for COVID-19 have side effects. No one is denying this. What’s unconscionable is that ‘authorities’ zoom in on particular treatments and microscopically nit-pick due to ulterior motives. It becomes crystal clear that the motivation is to control the narrative, and protect special interests – not to safe-guard patients.

Everyone wants double blind, placebo, randomized controlled trials (RCT); however, in the case of Lyme disease, those studies are controlled by a cabal who continue to study only the acute phase of the disease with faulty parameters for entrance into their studies. Again, testing is rigged for a predetermined outcome and they exclude a large subset of patients who don’t meet their stringent criteria.  Due to the complexity of Lyme/MSIDS, RTCs will never be done.

In the case of COVID-19, severe patients can quickly die, making those studies of little use in the present. Treatments are needed now, not in six months. Doctors and pharmacists go to school to learn about drugs and their interactions. How about authorities just let doctors do their jobs? I don’t see these authorities condemning cancer treatments which kill as many good cells as bad cells and cause horrific side-effects.  Why the focus on HCQ, ivermectin, and benign treatments like vitamin D, C, zinc, and quercetin?   This recent article explains why.  In essence, the CDC is in bed with Gilead Science as nine of the experts on the NIH COVID-19 Panel recommending treatment options have disclosed financial support from GileadMore dangling carrots.

Gilead Science created the anti-viral remdesivir which was unsuccessful for Ebola.  They are now digging it out of the drug graveyard and pushing it for COVID-19 to make up for lost profits. They did this exact same thing with AZT, a chemotherapy drug which failed for leukemia, and repurposed it for HIV patients who didn’t even have symptoms! HCQ, even though it’s clinically showing great success, stands in the way of their chosen profitable, albeit dangerous treatment. Remdesivir is not without side-effects and only showed modest benefits against COVID-19 but this is the CDC’s “golden” treatment, therefore, everything said about it is positive while they bad-mouth HCQ a direct competitor.

It’s also important to understand that the NIH owns half of the Moderna COVID vaccine. Many other conflicts of interest exist regarding this unique injection technology.

Where the handling of the two diseases drastically departs; however, is in how seriously the CDC is handling COVID-19 by enacting what most declare to be draconian measures, while continuing to downplay Lyme disease.  The learning curve for COVID-19 has been lightening fast in comparison to Lyme disease in that the conflicts of interest, the reliance upon faulty testing, and the polarization in the medical community on pretty much every aspect of the disease hasn’t budged in over 40 years.

What’s happening in the world today regarding COVID-19 is probably easier for Lyme patients to understand than the average person, but that doesn’t give them solace for the future. They will continue to wash their hands, do an entire laundry list of things to strengthen their immune systems, and will continue to be isolated. While the rest of the world returns to “normal” at some point, Lyme patients will continue living in a paradigm where the majority of doctors don’t even believe, test, or treat them, because the CDC has filled their heads with 40 year old unscientific, fraudulent dogma.

New IGeneX Test Finds Multiple Species of Borrelia in California & Mexico

https://www.lymedisease.org/line-immunoblot-ca-mexico/

New IGeneX test finds multiple species of Borrelia in California and Mexico

April 20, 2020

TBDWG Public Comment: Lyme Advocate Carl Tuttle

https://www.change.org/p/the-us-senate-calling-for-a-congressional-investigation-of-the-cdc-idsa-and-aldf/u/

TBDWG April 27, 2020 – Written Public Comment

APR 24, 2020 — 

The following comment was posted to the Tick-Borne Disease Working Group for the upcoming April 27th meeting.

If you want Dr. Ben Beard to answer the question below, cut and paste the comment into an email and respectfully demand an answer. Dr. Ben Beard’s public email address is: cbb0@cdc.gov

If Dr. Beard cannot answer that question as a representative of the CDC, what is he doing as a member of this Tick-Borne Disease Working Group?

TBDWG April 27, 2020 – Written Public Comment

https://www.hhs.gov/ash/advisory-committees/tickbornedisease/meetings/2020-4-27/written-public-comment/index.html

Carl Tuttle

Providing comments in support of the Change.org petition calling for a congressional investigation into the mishandling of Lyme disease.

Through recent events with Coronavirus we are witnessing what the Lyme community has endured for the past three decades:  Faulty/misleading antibody tests, inadequate treatment, no medical training and absolutely no disease control whatsoever; a public health disaster.

Our public health officials got away with mishandling Lyme disease because Lyme does not cause dead bodies piling up in the morgue in New York City but at the same time, no one is counting the number of lives ruined by Lyme disease.

So how will our public health officials find a way to maintain the status quo of a dysfunctional system in Lyme diagnosis after this massive tragedy is over?

What is the status of Direct Diagnostic Tests for Lyme Disease, Dr. Ben Beard of the CDC?

Persistent infection after extensive antibiotic treatment has been identified through the use of direct detection methods in academic centers [1] and autopsy findings yet the average patient cannot obtain these tests to justify how sick they are with their chronic active infection.

There has been a deliberate avoidance of direct detection methods in order to hide the truth that Lyme disease is a life-altering/life threatening infection capable of destroying lives, ending careers while leaving its victim in financial ruin.

So once again I ask the question Dr Ben Beard of the CDC; What is the status of Direct Diagnostic Tests for Lyme Disease?

Carl Tuttle
Lyme Endemic Hudson, NH

Reference

1. Seronegative Chronic Relapsing Neuroborreliosis. 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7796837