ALLEN STEERE INSINUATES CHRONIC LYME PATIENTS ARE NEEDY, VULNERABLE AND NAIVE

                             The Lyme Microbe Is A Pleomorphic Organism. It changes form and escapes immune surveillance, testing and antibiotics. This can account for the difficulty with treatment

Below are selected bullet points from a powerpoint presentation by Allen Steere. This presentation is typical of the side of the Lyme controversey which adamantly states there is no such condition as chronic lyme disease. Allen Steere was an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer who entered into the lyme scene when a Lyme, Ct housewife, Polly Murray, made an appointment at Yale to report the strange symptoms that she, her family and neighbors were experiencing. Here is an excerpt from The History of Lyme disease As a Bioweapon by Elena Cook. She talks a bit about Allen Steere who...again ...presented the powerpoint below.http://spitfirelist.com/news/history-of-lyme-disease-as-a-bioweapon/ 
"When Polly Mur­ray made her now-famous call to the Con­necti­cut health depart­ment to report the strange epi­demic among chil­dren and adults in her town, her ini­tial recep­tion was luke­warm. How­ever, some weeks later, she got an unex­pected call from a Dr David Sny­d­man, of the Epi­demic Intel­li­gence Ser­vice (EIS), who was very inter­ested. He arranged for fel­low EIS offi­cer Dr Allen Steere to get involved. By the time Mrs. Mur­ray turned up for her appoint­ment at Yale, the doc­tor she had expected to see had been rel­e­gated to the role of an onlooker. Allen Steere had taken charge – and his views were to shape the course of Lyme med­i­cine for the next thirty years, up till today. [x]

To under­stand the sig­nif­i­cance of all this, we need a closer look at the Epi­demic Intel­li­gence Ser­vice, the EIS.

The EIS is an elite, quasi-military unit of Infec­tious Dis­ease experts set up in the 1950’s to develop an offen­sive biowar­fare capa­bil­ity. Despite the ban­ning of offen­sive biowar in the 1970’s, the crack troops of the EIS con­tinue to exist, osten­si­bly for non-offensive research into “emerg­ing dis­ease” threats, a blan­ket phrase cov­er­ing both bioweapon attacks and nat­ural epi­demics at the same time. Grad­u­ates of the EIS train­ing pro­gram are sent in to occupy strate­gic posi­tions in the US health infra­struc­ture, tak­ing lead­er­ship at fed­eral and state health agen­cies, in acad­e­mia, indus­try and the media. The organ­i­sa­tion also extends its influ­ence abroad, train­ing offi­cers for pub­lic health agen­cies in Britain, France, the Nether­lands etc.

In fact a high pro­por­tion of Steere camp Lyme experts are involved with the EIS. Given that the EIS is a small, elite force, (in 2001 the CDC revealed there were less than 2500 EIS offi­cers in exis­tence since the unit was first cre­ated in 1951 [xiii]), it seems incred­i­ble that so many of America’s top Infec­tious Dis­ease experts would devote their careers to what they them­selves claim is a “hard-to-catch, easily-cured” disease."

About a year ago I met a woman who had once been a patient of Dr. Steere. She didn't appear to be aware of how he fit into the Lyme controversy. She told me that Steere warned her never, for the rest of her life....to donate blood again. If Lyme is easily cured and totally erradicated from the body with 2 to 4 weeks of antibiotics, as he claims....then why the admonition NOT to donate blood. What did Steere know that he is not making public? Because the testing for Lyme disease is so inaccurate......what kind of proof do they have that patients are cured with this cookbook type of treatment? There are many reasons why you can have Lyme disease but yet test negative http://tinyurl.com/2g7za2b  There is also an excellent website with studies that show lyme disease can be a persistent and or relapsing infection . I recommend you mark this site in your Favorites http://www.lymeinfo.net/lymefiles.html   Why are these studies ignored by those who claim that there is no chronic lyme? One more important link that will explain some of the politics involving financial interests...etc which seem to fuel this debate. http://tinyurl.com/2e64xeq

Below Allen Steere is basically insinuating that anyone who remains sick with the same symptoms or are only partially better after the two to four weeks of antibiotics, must have a personality disorder (needy, vulnerable and naive) and are just very open to the suggestibility of the doctor who Steere claims must be intentionally or unintentionally misleading the patient and making the patient believe he is sick. This is absurd and insulting to the thousands of people out there who are sick and dying with misdiagnosed conditions (largely coined as autoimmune). Many patients can be helped with specific high dose ORAL antibiotics and do not need the expensive IV treaments. For most people this treatment is safe and effective.....certainly less harmful than letting an infectious neurodegenerative disease run rampant under the surface while only providing the patient with symptomatic treatments. Of course symptomatic treatments are much more profitable than ones which cure. Steere's power point slides are below in red.

LYME DISEASE: Study Highlights and Controversial Issues
http://www.acponline.org/about_acp/chapters/ri/steere.pdf
Allen C. Steere, MD
Rhode Island Chapter
American College of Physicians
2010 Annual Scientific Meeting
May 13, 2010

COUNTERCULTURE IDEOLOGY
Subjective pain, neurocognitive and fatigue symptoms may be causedby active infection of the brain with Borrelia burgdorferi


•Standard serologic tests for Lyme disease are often negative.

•Chronic coinfections may be factors in this disease course.

•These symptoms are difficult to treat and their suppression may require months or years of antibiotic therapy, only to have them recur later, requiring more antibiotic therapy.

•These patients often report that antibiotics are the only therapy that has them, and the medical establishment tries to keep them from receiving the therapy that they need.
 
Mind-Body Medicine

The Power of Suggestion*

•“In its classic form, this narrative begins with a vulnerable, naïve, or needy person (often a patient, quite often a woman) and an authority figure (typically a doctor, healer, hypnotist, or priest, but invariably a man) who is believed to possess personal charisma, special skills, powerful medicines, or expert knowledge that brooks no skepticism.”

•“The patient believes whatever is said, does whatever is said, and –strangest of all –physically experiences whatever is said.”

•“Usually, recovery is only temporary. The narratives conclusion is clear: suggestion’s cures are at best palliative.”

*Ann Harrington, The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine
 
POLITICS INTRUDE ON LYME DISEASE TREATMENT GUIDELINES
In 2006, the IDSA received a subpoena from the AttorneyGeneral of Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal. The AG wasconducting an antitrust investigation of the IDSA relating tothe clinical practice guidelines for the treatment of Lyme disease.


•Practice guidelines developed by the IDSA are prepared to assist practitioners in making decisions about appropriatediagnosis and management of specific clinical conditions.

•In his investigation, the AG said that he found undisclosedfinancial conflicts of interest among members of the panel thatwrote the guidelines, and the panel improperly ignored orminimized alternative medical opinion regarding chronicLyme disease.

Politics Intrude on Lyme Disease Treatment Guidelines*

* Klein JO, Clin Infect Dis2008;47
 
A CRITICAL APPRAISAL OF CHRONIC LYME DISEASE
There is no convincing evidence for the existence of symptomatic, chronic Borrelia burgdorferi infection among patients after receipt of recommended treatment regimens for Lyme disease.”


•Chronic Lyme disease is the latest is a series of syndromes that attribute medically unexplained symptoms to particular infections. Other examples that have now lost credibility include “chronic candida syndrome” and chronic Epstein-Barr virus infection”.

•Chronic Lyme disease, which is equated with chronic B. burgdorferi infection, is a misnomer, and the use of prolonged, dangerous, and expensive antibiotic treatment for it is not warranted.

* Feder et al. N Engl J Med2007;357:1422
 
FOR BOOKS ON LYME DISEASE  http://astore.amazon.com/thelymdissenb-20?_encoding=UTF8&node=2