Chronicle Herald: COUNTERPOINT: Hitting the wall of denial with chronic Lyme
[CanLyme Note: Robert Strang has been purveyor of misinformation relative to Lyme disease; it’s prevalence, the chronic nature of the disease, and the ability of the bacteria to survive short term antibiotics, for so long and with such an anti-science, pro-opinion bias see that he is disqualified to represent public health, yet the Nova Scotia government has done nothing to protect it’s electorate from him. Instead of him being alarmed at the latest research showing how poor a job his favoured diagnostic protocol do in diagnosing the disease, he slams the messengers believing he has the ability/qualifications to determine what should be published or not.]
Feb 16th, 2019 Jane Bailey
“First, do no harm. This is a maxim of medicine.
Over the past few weeks, I have watched, listened to and read some of the most unprofessional, non-evidence-based, vitriolic, untrue and demeaning garbage about Lyme disease and patients who suffer from it. My friend, fellow patient advocate and author of The Cancer Olympics, Robin McGee, remarked to me on this sorry affair: “How discouraging for all patient advocates, when those in power cheer on the silencers.”
First there was a retweet by our chief medical officer, Dr. Robert Strang, of a post from the questionable LymeScience.org website. Then there were musings by law student Andrea MacGregor, in a Feb. 2 Counterpoint, “ ‘Chronic Lyme’ movement hazardous to health.”
In my opinion, these had one purpose, and one purpose only — and that was to stir up anti-Lyme-patient sentiment among the public and health-care professionals. It’s a defence mechanism — because they are wrong, and they have realized that the scientific evidence against their arguments is irrefutable.
Dr. Strang has since released a prepared statement that indicated he cared about misinformation, that he did not realize that his retweet would cause such an outcry, and that he’d be more careful with his future social media posts. But he didn’t care enough to tweet any apology, nor state that if he could, he’d remove his retweet.”