Today’s letter to the Tick Borne Disease Working Group…..

———- Original Message ———-

From: CARL TUTTLE <runagain@comcast.net>
To: tickbornedisease@hhs.gov, brett.giroir@hhs.gov
Cc: (65 Undisclosed recipients)
Date: January 21, 2019 at 7:55 AM
Subject: BITTEN: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons By Kris Newby

To the TBD Working Group,

Please see below the summary of Kris Newby’s new book as the highlighted text offers an explanation for the epic efforts of CDC/IDSA to manipulate and censor Lyme science.

Kris Newby is an award-winning science writer at Stanford University and the senior producer of the Lyme disease documentary, Under Our Skin, (Please watch this trailer) which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was a 2010 Oscar semifinalist. The Under Our Skin documentary is a true accounting of a disease that is destroying lives, ending careers while leaving its victim in financial ruin.

UOS trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxWgS0XLVqw&feature=channel_page

Bitten

The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons

by Kris Newby   ISBN 10: 006289627X

https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062896278/bitten/

On Sale: 05/14/2019

$26.99

A riveting thriller reminiscent of The Hot Zone, this true story dives into the mystery surrounding one of the most controversial and misdiagnosed conditions of our time—Lyme disease—and of Willy Burgdorfer, the man who discovered the microbe behind it, revealing his secret role in developing bug-borne biological weapons, and raising terrifying questions about the genesis of the epidemic of tick-borne diseases affecting millions of Americans today.

While on vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, Kris Newby was bitten by an unseen tick. That one bite changed her life forever, pulling her into the abyss of a devastating illness that took ten doctors to diagnose and years to recover: Newby had become one of the 300,000 Americans who are afflicted with Lyme disease each year.

As a science writer, she was driven to understand why this disease is so misunderstood, and its patients so mistreated. This quest led her to Willy Burgdorfer, the Lyme microbe’s discoverer, who revealed that he had developed bug-borne bioweapons during the Cold War, and believed that the Lyme epidemic was started by a military experiment gone wrong.

In a superb, meticulous work of narrative journalism, Bitten takes readers on a journey to investigate these claims, from biological weapons facilities to interviews with biosecurity experts and microbiologists doing cutting-edge research, all the while uncovering darker truths about Willy. It also leads her to uncomfortable questions about why Lyme can be so difficult to both diagnose and treat, and why the government is so reluctant to classify chronic Lyme as a disease.

A gripping, infectious page-turner, Bitten will shed a terrifying new light on an epidemic that is exacting an incalculable toll on us, upending much of what we believe we know about it.

Carl Tuttle

Lyme Endemic Hudson, NH

Cc: Assistant Secretary for Health, ADM Brett P. Giroir, M.D.

Please see the letter below addressed to the Tick Borne Disease Working Group and Assistant Secretary for Health, ADM Brett P. Giroir, M.D.

The letter is a follow-up to my original inquiry to Dr. Wormser on Jan 4, 2019 found here:

https://www.change.org/p/the-us-senate-calling-for-a-congressional-investigation-of-the-cdc-idsa-and-aldf/u/23836704

———- Original Message ———-
From: CARL TUTTLE <runagain@comcast.net>
To: tickbornedisease@hhs.gov, brett.giroir@hhs.gov
Cc: (65 Undisclosed recipients)
Date: January 18, 2019 at 10:38 AM
Subject: Re: JAMA: Shapiro ED, Wormser GP. Lyme disease in 2018: what is new (and what is not)
To: The Tick Borne Disease Working Group and Assistant Secretary for Health, ADM Brett P. Giroir, M.D.

For the record, I have not heard from Dr. Gary Wormser of New York Medical College regarding my inquiry referencing Lyme disease in his JAMA publication of Dec 18, 2018.

I had two questions for Dr. Wormser highlighted below:

1. “It is well known that untreated streptococcal pharyngitis can progress to rheumatic fever, causing irreversible heart damage. Untreated syphilis leads to progressive disability and dementia, and untreated HIV infection progresses to AIDS with significant disability and death. What happens to the patient with Lyme disease who goes months, years or decades before diagnosis because of a false negative serological test?”
2. “What is the motivation for downplaying the severity of Lyme disease while ignoring patient outcry for thirty years?”

In Dr. Wormser’s absence I will answer these questions as a victim of late stage Lyme untreated for twelve years.

FIRST QUESTION

Lyme disease patients who go months, years or decades before diagnosis are often misdiagnosed and treated for the chronic diseases of our time; diseases with no known etiology.

Multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Alszimer’s disease, Lupus etc. etc. etc.

Case in point:

Current lawsuit for Lyme misdiagnosed as Multiple Sclerosis after four negative antibody tests for Lyme disease:

(1) [J-13-2018] IN THE SUPREME COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA MIDDLE DISTRICT http://www.pacourts.us/assets/opinions/Supreme/out/Majority%20Opinion%20%20ReversedVacatedRemanded%20%2010373940443079867.pdf?cb=1

(2) Kris Kristofferson Diagnosed with Lyme Disease After Alzheimer’s Misdiagnosis
JULY 7, 2016 – 5:16 PM
http://www.soundslikenashville.com/news/kris-kristofferson-diagnosed-with-lyme-disease-after-alzheimers-misdiagnosis/

Spend time at any of the hundreds of Lyme support group meetings across the United States (19 in Pennsylvania alone) and you will hear story after story of misdiagnosis with the majority reporting negative antibody tests (or refusal to test) for Lyme disease. If Lyme patients don’t obtain the correct diagnosis then their “misdiagnosis” is treated maintaining the status quo. How many Lyme patients are currently in the healthcare system being treated for everything else but their infection?

Clinicians who are treating Lyme exclusively are seeing far greater rates of cancer in the late stage Lyme patient. (Including me)

SECOND QUESTION

“What is the motivation for downplaying the severity of Lyme disease while ignoring patient outcry for thirty years?”

Patient testimony is reporting a disease that is destroying lives, ending careers while leaving the patient in financial ruin and this has been taking place for three decades so it is unclear why anyone would want to downplay the severity of Lyme after taking an oath to “First do no harm”

Book I, of the Hippocratic school: “Practice two things in your dealings with disease: either help or do not harm the patient”.

Quote from Senator Richard Blumenthal:

“Today for me culminates more than a decade of work and probably a decade more, because I’ve seen firsthand the devastating, absolutely unacceptable damage done by Lyme disease to individual human beings, Connecticut children and residents whose lives have been changed forever as a result of Lyme disease”

Source: http://ctmirror.org/2011/07/18/blumenthal-takes-lyme-disease-fight-senate/

Blumenthal takes Lyme disease fight to the Senate July 18, 2011

Ignoring patient outcry and downplaying the severity of Lyme disease as described in the attached 2012 letter addressed to past Health Secretary Kathleen G. Sebelius has paralyzed the response to this runaway plague. https://www.dropbox.com/s/9e3uckwzkpkfbhe/Nine%20Step%20Program.doc?dl=0

We have a health crisis causing unimaginable pain and suffering and those who have controlled the narrative for the past three decades (with the support of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control) are %100 percent responsible.

Respectfully submitted,

Carl Tuttle

Lyme Endemic Hudson, NH

Cc: Alan Kadish, M.D., President, New York Medical College