Madison Area Lyme Support Group

HHS Secretary of Health RFK Jr. convened an HHS roundtable on Lyme disease this past week. The focus was improved diagnostics, treatment and insurance coverage, letting chronic Lyme sufferers know that the issue was more than just a public health crisis. It was also a personal issue for him and his family.  (See link for article)

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Highlights:

• Dr. Horowitz was one of the seven members of the HHS Tick-borne Disease Working Group (TBDWG) for six years, worked as co-chair of the HHS of Other Tick-borne infections and coinfections subcommittee where he convinced them to add Bartonella to the list of coinfections, whether transmitted by ticks or not, and then served on the HHS Babesia and Tick-borne Pathogens subcommittee several years later. He lists all the reports within the link.

Did 6 years of HHS subcommittees and all the hard work I and others put into these reports make any difference in the medical-political landscape? Absolutely not. ~ Dr. Richard Horowitz

So, you heard it straight from the horse’s mouth, folks.

Dr. Horowitz goes on to state:

• Healthcare providers are still scared to diagnose and treat Lyme because state medical board are still attacking their licenses.
• Globally, doctors are still uneducated and are confused about how to properly diagnose and treat chronic Lyme.
• The CDC still denies that Lyme is a chronic infection, ignores published science, and still puts inaccurate information on their website.
• Despite 10 Dapsone articles effectively treating chronic Lyme and associated coinfections, the CDC refuses to change.
• The CDC refuses to post a validated HMQ Lyme questionnaire on their website which would help doctors clinically diagnose patients better and would include neuropsychiatric aspects which would help those with mental health issues and physical symptoms be better diagnosed.
• It’s clear that the one germ, one disease, one drug paradigm does not work for Lyme/MSIDS and until that faulty assumption is dealt with, patients will continued to be kicked to the curb.
• Horowitz states we are in an epidemic of Lyme and chronic illness and that real action must follow or it will be yet another HHS subcommittee and administration with ‘talk and no action.’

There’s a long and prolific history of ‘public health,’ infectious disease, and mainstream medicine gaslighting Lyme/MSIDS patients.  The entire paradigm requires an entire overhaul.

For more:

• https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2025/12/24/after-decades-of-dismissal-chronic-lyme-disease-is-now-recognized/  Two things, right off the bat:
  1. It’s going to take a whole lot more than an accurate test to fix this beast.
  2. A simple pronouncement from Kennedy is not going to stop the deeply entrenched gas-lighting of patients.
  3. I do blame doctors, public health, and institutions that ignore the Hippocratic Oath – a vow to ‘do no harm,’ and would rather turn patients away entirely or diagnose them with anything but Lyme/MSIDS, furthering their misery.
• https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2025/11/24/ptsd-like-symptoms-after-medical-gaslighting-in-lyme-disease/
• https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2024/01/04/medical-gaslighting-and-lyme-disease-the-patient-experience/
• https://danielcameronmd.com/chronic-lyme-disease-patients-dismissed-by-medical-community/
• https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2021/09/02/let-the-gaslighting-stigmatization-stop-here/
• https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/11/29/its-all-in-your-head-medicines-silent-epidemic/