Newsgroups: alt.med.cfs
Date:         Sat, 19 Dec 1992 13:43:25 PST
              <CFS-L@NIHLIST.BITNET>
From:         John Setel O'Donnell <jod@EQUATOR.COM>
Subject:      Lyme complacency; there they go again.

Yesterday's New York Times carries a report of an article published in
today's New England Journal of Medicine by a group led by Eugene Shapiro
of Yale.  The article headline is "Study of Lyme Disease Sees Low
Risk in Ticks".  The reported conclusion of the paper is that
prophylactic treatment with antibiotics upon a deer tick bite is not
warranted.

This result conflicts with a paper published in NEJM this past summer
by Magid et al. which comes to the opposite conclusion.

Other research results have established the fact that:
- Test technology is extremely poor (CDC, First National Conference on
  Lyme Disease Testing, 11/90)
- The Lyme spirochete disseminates very early in the course of infection
  into the CNS (Luft, Steinman, et. al JAMA 267, 10), where it is
  resistant to treatment;
- The spirochete invades human endothelial cells (Ma, Sturrock, Weiss, Infec
  Immun 59) and fibroblasts (Georgilis et al., Fift Int'l Conference
  on Lyme Borreliosis, abst. 165), which protect it from antibiotics
  including ceftriaxone.
- Patients see an average of three doctors before they are accurately
  diagnosed with Lyme.  Many are told they have lupus, multiple
  sclerosis, scleroderma, and/or psychiatric disorders (Fallon, Neilds,
  Fifth Int'l Conf LB, abst. 143).  40% are referred to psychiatrists,
  about a third are put on psychoactive drugs.
- Letting Lyme go untreated for more than a few weeks makes it very
  difficult and extremely expensive to eradicate.  The CDC's New Jersey
  study of children with Lyme found that direct medical costs
  averaged $96,000 per child.  Children lost at least half of a
  school year.

Yale's publication of yet another flawed, nearly corrupt paper, aided
by their press flacks who got the Times to lead with "...Low Risk", is
a detriment public health, fueled by their irrational obsession with
insisting that Lyme is relatively harmless and easily cured, despite
the now voluminous evidence to the contrary.

The facts are in, and the Yalies are lying.  Thousands more will
suffer because of their lies.

Lyme is a devastating, incurable disease in its later stages.  It is
very difficult to unequivocally detect in its early stages.  Despite
at least tens of thousands of new cases annually (CDC, David Dennis)
the 1991 Federal research budget toward a cure was less than $200,000.
The distortions and emotionally rather than factually based positions
that researchers at Yale and elsewhere have put forth are largely
responsible for this national scandal.

I urge you to write to NIH and NEJM about this issue.  Ignoring the
disease, its consequences, and its persistence will not make it go
away.  Only better research will.  We desperately need public awareness
and public monies to bring this about.
--
- - -
John Setel O'Donnell                      jod@equator.com
Equator Technologies, Inc.                206-328-6544 voice/fax
Seattle, WA                               Read everything by Alice Miller.
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