IDSA LYME DISEASE DECISION: WHERE'S THE BEEF?

 The Infectious Disease Society of America is considered by its members and much of the public...to be an honorable organization, which hopefully takes the health of the public seriously.Many doctors follow the guidelines of this institution and trust its judgement. The IDSA is under a heavy responsibility to give proper advice which "does no harm". Does the IDSA take this responsibility seriously? You be the judge.

When medical societies make decisions, which have the potential to affect millions, they should be able to back up their claims with at least some sort of evidence, proof or substance.However, the IDSA doesn't seem to realize this point. The IDSA claims that Lyme disease is totally cured with 2 to 4 weeks of antibiotics. What criteria is used to determine when lyme disease is "cured"? Is there a perfect test which can tell us a patient's spirochetes are totally eliminated from his body? Is there a test which can identify the over 300 different strains of borrelia burgdorferi?

A single tick can carry many different strains of a microbe and or different types of coinfections, such as babesia, bartonella, mycoplasma, erlichia....and more.The lyme microbe is also pleomorphic. This means the germ can change shape or form.  Different forms of the disease seem to be susceptible to different antibiotics and available testing does not identify the different forms.Because of this growing complexity, often different antibiotics must be tried on a patient, if one type doesn't appear to be working. A patient often harbors more than one pathogen. Sometimes antimalarials, antifungals and antivirals also need to be implemented. Does the Infectious Disease Society of America take any of this into consideration? Their approach seems to be a one size fits all solution. Here is an important link to studies which show that Lyme disease can persist despite what the IDSA claims is "adequate" treatment. http://www.lymeinfo.net/lymefiles.html

Doctors who treat their Lyme patients using clinical judgement and using lyme testing as only an adjunct, follow their patients progress on antibiotics or other appropriate medicines. They observe the patient's reactions to antibiotics. If there is an expected herxheimer reaction ( a temporary worsening of symtpoms), this indicates that the antibiotics are hitting the mark. If a patient has been misdiagnosed for years, they often need extended or open ended antibiotic treatment. Thousands of patients have had succesful outcomes with long term antibiotic treatment and many owe their lives to it. How can the IDSA discount all this clinical evidence when they have NO evidence to back up their position. The IDSA also ignores scientific papers which show that Lyme infection can persisit beyond 2 to 3 weeks of treatment.

The CT Attorney General has investigated the IDSA and found conflicts of interest. How deep do these conflicts run? The case for using long term antibiotics with chronically ill patients is so strong that it is absurd that the IDSA can make their claims with a straight face. If Big Pharma educates and finances our doctors, medical symposiums...etc how can we expect to have proper access to treatments which cure or keep patients from further deterioration? Witholding or terminating antibiotics...especially when a patient is improving but not yet well, is allowing a disease process to continue, which in turn creates a market for many many symptomatic drugs. I'm sure that this is just one of the nefarious and selfish goals behind this ludicrous controversey.

How intertwined are the government health agencies with the drug companies and such societies as the IDSA? Is there a revolving door between the CDC , the NIH, the IDSA, the drug companies..etc? Why is Lyme activism getting us nowhere? We need to dig deeper....to the roots.

More on Lyme Corruption Here.. http://lymesentinel.blogspot.com/search/label/LYME%20UNDERDIAGNOSED