Professor of Microbiology: Lyme is most misunderstood [maligned] disease since AIDS [and far more prevalent]

Holly Ahern  12:08 a.m. EST November 9, 2014

With the possible exception of HIV/AIDS, no infectious disease in recent history has been as misunderstood, maligned or politicized as Lyme disease.

After more than two decades of controversy and government neglect, Lyme disease has become too large an issue to ignore any longer. A year ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that only 1 in 10 cases of Lyme disease were properly reported to public health agencies and increased the likely incidence to more than 300,000 new cases of Lyme disease in the U.S. per year….

… “The IDSA insists their guidelines are evidence-based, yet reviews of the guidelines by outside groups, including the Institute of Medicine (the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences), reveals the evidence is primarily medical opinion based on a limited number of studies authored by members of the group impaneled to write the guidelines. The ethics of this approach have been criticized in multiple forums, including a report from the Institute of Medicine in 2011 titled “Clinical Practice Guidelines We Can Trust.”

Most unfortunate for patients with persisting Lyme symptoms is the ongoing, orchestrated and targeted assault on the licenses of New York physicians who continue treatment of patients with Lyme disease whose symptoms don’t readily resolve once the short-term treatment fails. This assault is done under the pretext of protecting the public’s health. However, this tactic is an abuse of the system of physician reporting to the Office of Professional Medical Conduct of the New York state Department of Health.”

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