New York Times’ Story On Lyme Misses The Bull’s Eye
[CanLyme note: Very important in the article is recognition by the Infectious Disease physician author is that there is no good definition for Lyme disease, no good tests, and no biomarkers for B. burgdorferi or for PTLDS (post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome) which is a made-up term not based in science. No one knows when you have been effectively treated and there is no test to show when the Lyme bacteria has been eradicated. It is highly variable. If we simply continue continue down the dark path lead by the CDC and IDSA we will continue to ignore annually tens to hundreds of thousands of people within all countries who follow the dreadful CDC/IDSA diagnostic protocol for diagnosis and treatment. Canada endorses the failed CDC/IDSA guidelines through their support of a private organization, the Association of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases of Canada (AMMI) who refuse to debate publicly their position statements with real scientists on not just Lyme disease. AMMI owns Lyme disease in Canada to the detriment of every Canadian. They set the opinion based (non-science based) medical curriculum in medical colleges for our young doctors in a cult-like fashion to insure young upcoming doctors are indoctrinated to their pseudo-science that only helps the for-profit medical industry. AMMI is supported by government employed salaried ‘researchers’ and ‘data miners’ whose sole function within the bureaucracy is to counter good science and evidence. Coinfections are also a confounder of diagnosis and treatment as is the wide diversity of genotypes within the genus Borrelia itself.]
July 4th, 2019
An article appeared in this week’s New York Times, “My Son Got Lyme Disease. He’s Totally Fine. Horror stories about lingering Lyme disease proliferate, but the illness is easily treated.” While I am delighted that author Apoorva Mandavilli’s son had a good outcome, I feel a need to respond to aspects of the story that I, a Board Certified Infectious Diseases physician who lives in a Lyme endemic area and has had Lyme, found misleading and disturbing.
It is wonderful to have an infectious disease doctor weigh in on this issue with a balanced article. Most physicians are so intimidated that they don’t know if they should talk to each other about Lyme disease.