Activists and doctors divided over Lyme disease treatment

[Celebration]

http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/health/90581734.html?elr=KArks8c7PaP3E77K_3c::D3aDhUMEaPc:E7_ec7PaP3iUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aU7DYaGEP7vDEh7P:DiUs

Four years ago, after being bitten by a deer tick, Michelle Backes got treated immediately for Lyme disease. She thought she was safe until three months later, when her body started going numb. Then the onetime teacher from Lindstrom, Minn., turned to a highly controversial therapy: more than a year's worth of antibiotics.

It is, say medical experts, a reckless, unproven and potentially dangerous approach.

But today, Backes, 39, is fit enough to run marathons and is helping lead a grass-roots effort to change the way doctors treat patients like her. "We have to be little renegades," she said in an interview.

Lyme disease activists -- who call themselves "Lymies" -- are speaking out in courtrooms, state legislatures and even a new documentary, "Under Our Skin," to argue that the experts are wrong. They may have a growing audience: Some 1,000 Lyme disease cases were reported in Minnesota in 2008, a fourfold increase since 1998.

Last month, they scored a victory in Minnesota. With the help of some sympathetic legislators, activists from the Minnesota Lyme Action Support Group pressured the state Board of Medicine to forgo, for now, the ability to discipline doctors for using the unproven treatment.

[hlthe2b]

1. When they develop aplastic anemia or blow out their gallbladder

they may wish they'd not gone this route. I sympathize with their fears and frustrations that some LD is seemingly so difficult to treat, but this risky.

[kickysnana]

3. Lyme kills

It activates the immune system to mimic MS, Lupus, ALS, arthritis.

It can attack the heart by disrupting the electrical signal, infecting and enlarging the heart, attacking the valves, causing a weakening in the aorta or other arteries that leads to anurism, vascular disease.

It attacks the gall bladder, pancreas, liver, kidney, glands causing glandular and organ failure.

It causes unbelievable constant pain for years.

It causes debility equal to congestive heart failure.

It causes extreme disruptions in the digestive system.

It causes lung inflammation and scaring.

It causes dementia, lyme rage, or hallucinations by inflaming the brain.

It eventually attacks bones and teeth.

It disrupts the B immune cells that keep us cancer free.

If you can find a "route" that works besides antibiotics I know about 500,000 people who would like to hear it.

[hlthe2b]

4. You really would be embarrassed

if you realized who you were "trying to educate" with that... I encourage you to go to some more authoritative sources of information to put the risks into perspective, rather than the sensationalized materials you are relying on. You needn't respond to me, as I will be gone from computer access the next several days. I wish you well.

[xchrom]

2. Very risky. Nt

[Trillo]

5. Is this one of the alleged "weaponized" diseases? mycoplasma

I'm pretty sure I've read that somewhere, but it could have been one of those "the experts are wrong" sites. Okay, I looked it up, it says that on rense.com, but also here, in relation to a Lyme disease co-infection, mycoplasma, emphasis added:

Very little was known about this particular species of Mycoplasma at the time except that the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and the Army had been doing research on the organism. Once this likely causative agent of Gulf War Illness (GWI) had been identified in about one‐half of the GWI cases, Dr. Nicolson recommended that the Mycoplasma‐infected Gulf War veterans be treated with Doxycycline. He then found himself the target of viscous attacks for making the connection between the illness and M. fermentans. Dr. Nicolson shared that “even talking about this organism was highly discouraged.” In fact, until the Gulf War, the military’s own medical school had been teaching about the dangers of M. fermentans for years.
...
Dr. Nicolson started testing prison guards and their family members and found that very high numbers of these people were testing positive for Mycoplasma fermentans. Furthermore, this appeared to be a weaponized version of the organism called M. fermentans incognitus, a specific strain of Mycoplasma that had been altered to cause more severe symptoms, to be more virulent, and to be more survivable than the naturally occurring M. fermentans. Dr. Nicolson believed that biological weapons experiments had been carried out on inmates in the Texas prison system for years in which humans had been used as guinea pigs.

http://www.immed.org/infectious%20disease%20reports/InfectDiseaseReport06.11.09update/PHA_Nicolson_0709_v4.07.pdf

I always wonder about a for-profit health care system that makes money by charging sick people for continually treating (unsuccessfully) disease that may ultimately be caused by others and their elite colleagues in the various denial communities.

[Sanity Claws]

6. viscous attacks?

Did the author mean vicious attacks?

[Trillo]

7. Plum Island also came up in that search.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plum_Island_Animal_Disease_Center
"Lab 257, a book by Michael C. Carroll, Ph.D., has alleged a connection between Plum Island Animal Disease Center the outbreaks of three infectious diseases: West Nile virus in 1999, Lyme disease in 1975, and Dutch duck plague in 1967.<6>
...
"The number of building "257" is a moniker for the entire site in 2004 when Michael Carroll, an attorney, published Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government's Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory.<15> Many of the assertions and accusations made in the book are counter to the government's position and have been criticized and challenged.<10><16> The review in Army Chemical Review concluded "Lab 257 would be cautiously valuable to someone writing a history of Plum Island, but is otherwise an example of fringe literature with a portrayal of almost every form of novelist style. The author has unfortunately wasted an opportunity to write a credible history."<16> The book advances the idea that Lyme disease originated at Plum Island and conjectures several means by which animal diseases could have left the island. David Weld, the executive director of the American Lyme Disease Foundation, commented that "I personally just don't think that has any merit."<10>

And I haven't a clue whether your observation was of a typo or not, my guess is a typo.