Kingston Whig, ON: Lyme disease controversy

[CanLyme note: Dr. Gerald Evans’ comments in the article linked below are a great example of why patients Canada-wide are so disgusted with Infectious Disease doctors. Lyme disease patients are doctors, lawyers, microbiologists, engineers, labourers, truckers, plumbers, house wives and husbands, and children. He paints us as being naive, incapable of making sound health care judgments based upon our own interpretation of the global data bank of published peer-reviewed evidence based research on Lyme disease. He claims he has all the answers and can cure Lyme disease, an absolute non-provable statement.  The following is indicative of his disdain for patients, “The evidence to support the view of people who believe in things like chronic Lyme disease, and the fact that it needs to be treated forever and that it causes a whole host of disorders which we really don’t have a connection to, don’t have any evidence to back up their assertions.”  Belief in chronic Lyme disease only comes from a review of hundreds of published papers that provide solid evidence of the ability of the bacteria to sometimes persist beyond short rounds of antibiotics such as those Infectious Disease doctors claim will effectively kill the bacteria in the person.  Antibiotics forever? More inflammatory exaggeration. Chronic Lyme Disease is killing Canadians in untold numbers yet he fear mongers over one death attributed to nursing error, not Lyme disease treatment. Then Dr. Evans righteously implies we patients are fringe elements, “He likened many people’s belief in ongoing Lyme disease infection to the distrust many people have in effectiveness and safety of vaccines.”  This is a strategy used to marginalize Lyme patients and has been used by Infectious Disease doctors North America wide.

We ask that Dr. Evans’ university, Queen’s University, convene a conference with scientists and physicians, 50% chosen by the Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation, and 50% chosen by Dr. Evans and his peers at Queen’s, to present and discuss the evidence, the weight of the evidence, and to publish a mutual statement after the conference on the evidence presented. That would be collaborative, transparent health care in action, something that is clearly lacking in the current system of institutional bullying that has these medical institutions feeding freely on our tax dollars while answering to no one.  That endless feeding must stop so long as patients are not equally represented with an absolute right to oversight and participation in all policy matters that directly affect them and their quality of life.]

KINGSTON — Diane Quigley remembers the day her life changed.

She had inadvertently knocked the body off the tick that bit her during a trip to New Jersey.

The insect’s head remained under her skin for eight hours before she got it out.

Since then, Quigley said her life has been a struggle.

“It is important that doctors grab hold of the fact that if you do not treat properly, it can become a hideous disease that is tricky to treat,” Quigley, the Kingston representative for the Ontario Lyme Alliance, said

A public service announcement earlier this week has reignited what many are calling a medical controversy.

On Monday, Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington Public Health issued its annual warning about ticks and Lyme disease.

But that caution didn’t mention what some people say are the long-lasting effects of the bacterial infection, a condition that most Canadian medical officials say doesn’t exist.

Read full article