From: geb@dsl.pitt.edu (gordon e. banks)
Newsgroups: sci.med
Subject: Re: CFIDS and Lyme
Date: 8 Sep 92 22:26:51 GMT
Organization: Decision Systems Laboratory, Univ. of Pittsburgh, PA.

In article <1992Sep2.053319.580@equator.com> jod@equator.com (John Setel O'Donnell) writes:
>
>So on what are you basing your differentiation of Lyme and CFIDS?
>
As I said, we know that Lyme disease is a disease caused by
the Borrelia spirochete.  We don't know what causes CFS or
that it is even a disease and not many conditions that just
share symptoms.  You actually make my point yourself.  Suppose
we had not discovered the spirochete.  Then Lyme patients would
be considered to have CFS.  

>>I've never seen any legitimate researcher speculate that much of MS
>>is undiagnosed Lyme.  Only quacks who do no research, but only
>>charge huge sums to patients with MS for giving them worthless
>>lyme treatments.  Do you have anyone in particular in mind, or
>>did you just toss this one out?
>
>You know, Gordon, I find offensive your willingness to call quack
>someone who you don't know, of whose work you're totally ignorant.  

I had someone specifically in mind, not someone I didn't know.
For obvious reasons, I'm not going to publically name this quack
and invite a lawsuit.  I just was asking for you to name the researcher
so I could check it out.  If you find that offensive, then I'm
sorry.

>intellectual honesty.  Spending research money to determine whether 10
>days of doxycycline is better than 14 days of amoxicillin, when both
>regimens have been shown to be useless, does not meet my criteria for
>good usage of severely limited public funds.  Yet it's happenning

Who exactly are you referring to here?  Can you substantiate such
charges?  If so, I think NIH should look into this.  Certainly this
would be a waste of money.  You can privately tell me if you fear
being sued for making public accusations.

>There are three papers on the topic of Lyme and MS; by Ferris,
>Marshall, and Katzel.  To summarize.  From 1909 until the mid-50's MS
>was considered to be spirochetal in origin.  The 1970 Merck Manual
>still advanced the spirochetal theory.  In the early 50's one paper by
>a US researcher pursuing this theory was retracted due to
>contamination of study materials.  This retraction somehow discredited
>the entire 40 years of research; there's been essentially no work on
>the topic since.  One of the papers cites some 43 references which I'm
>not going to key in here.  I respectfully suggest you get the book and
>pursue the references if you're interested.

Well, I've never heard of the authors and don't know their credentials.
Certainly I'll not dispute that in the early part of this century,
before we had any knowledge of immunology or MS, people were casting
about for possible causes and some had thought of spirochetes.
I have not heard any MS expert currently entertain the theory,
and think it is abandoned. Are these authors primarily lyme
treaters who have no expertise on MS or training in neurology
and neuropathology?  I'd worry about that.  But if you could
tell me their credentials (should be published with the article,
perhaps), I might be able to tell.  If they are at some university,
I might even call and ask them for a reprint.  
Since I haven't heard anything about the foundation you name
I don't have enough confidence to spend the money on the book.
-- 
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Gordon Banks  N3JXP      | "Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and
geb@cadre.dsl.pitt.edu   |  it is shameful to surrender it too soon." 
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