A compromise for both sides of the debate:
*Borrelia must be present in some immune suppressed, as Lyme is now not uncommon in society.
*An individual could thus have ME and be Lyme positive and Lyme negative. Both sides of the argument are correct.
*Negative tests aren't certain as they are unreliable and severely affected cases can be tissue bound.
*However untreated Lyme unlikely causes ME, but this doesn't mean ME and CFS patients shouldn't be tested incase they have Lyme as an additional infection which can be treated if caught quickly.
And then you see the light:
The state denial of Chronic Lyme isn't about Chronic Lyme, it's about the immune suppressive agent out there that leads to Lyme becoming chronic.
Hence both sides of the debate are correct.
Lyme is a problem after the 1970's not before. Something happened back then. The natural cause of Lyme 'turned up' in 1975, when the pathogen was rather older than that. But it wasn't Borrelia Burgdoferi that turned up was it. It was the immune suppressive agent, in people with Lyme, which will be shown in most with neurological ME too in the next few years.
That is what the BS is about with the creation of CFS following a 'mystery flu that never goes away' (what Lyme patients report too - which sounds rather like an EBV that can evade the immune system). State failure in responsibility of who caused the now prolific levels of autoimmune diseases is in play using psychiatry and disease denial of Chronic patients as a closed door.
Millions of people have these impossible to conventionally treat autoimmune autonomic diseases we call 'Lyme' but antibiotics won't work as they can't penetrate the blood brain barrier (BBB) easily. It's far too late for that in people sick for 30 years.
Who's going to open up to the patients there's no effective treatment?
Who's going to own up and admit the immunosupressive agent isn't a hard to catch 'tick bite' but a virus or bacteria you can catch?
Who's going to explain to the patients their whole family (due to genetic factors) may be infected in those who have brothers and mothers housebound, unemployed, with a weird kind of mini AIDS?
No one in control (actually out of control) will do. Only the independent researchers.
The consequence of this is we have the pro Chronic Lyme doctors desperately trying to help patients whilst not getting their licenses suspended, and the CDC sticking to a 5 year plan of chronic fatigue management with CBT GET and PACING, copying the British failed model of 'CFS/ME'.
Two completely opposing ideas cannot both be right. We know that psychiatry failed as fact, for 30 years. Telling 'Chronic Lyme' patients they have CFS won't work now either (due to social media and private testing).
What will work, is transparency, honesty and apologising to the patients for what happened, then moving forward with a plan. This can and will happen, but only when independent researchers force this issue with big studies, multi centre studies in patients with active chemokine/cytokine inflammation and oxidative stress.
On a side note, Dr Lipkin/Dr Hornig's cohort don't have active inflammation. They are the wrong cohort and neuropsychoimmune patients - Dr Hornig's own paper proposes this leads to psychomotor problems (E.g. depression). Conversely Dr Montoya's cohort are infected and inflamed and on antivirals, but the study on his test to differentiate between mild and severe 'CFS' is not permitted to be published and we've been waiting since may 2014.
Waking from a denial coma is tricky for the state, but possible. Embarrassment usually does it. If XMRV was embarrassing (ironically,the world found out CFS patients aren't mental), then finding out multiple family members are infected will be rather more so.
Patients with a misdiagnosis of CFS are already going public testing Borrelia positive, they want others to know. Wait for it on Facebook, youtube as more get tested. (This is actually healthy psychologically to no longer live under the humiliating self censoring behaviour of the shameful 'CFS' patient). Testing positive for Lyme or its co-infection, liberates people mentally.
Chronic Lyme, whatever the cause, needs to be accepted and it's unjust that superior tests (E.g. Germany) are dismissed when the approved B31 single strain antibody test is clearly inferior and based on the fact white blood cells aren't infected! Once that happens, you don't make antibodies, so you test false negative for Borrelia.
Ignoring science buys time and more patients die out. With more time comes a chance a workable treatment will be developed, and then the level of embarrassment is lowered for the state. It's hard to 'research' what you know is the cause. So it's not researched. In time the people who caused this directly will die out from old age, there won't be anyone to blame. Some admission will take place publicly 'we could have done more' but the actual experiments will remain classified. (We saw this with the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment). Obama apologised 38 years (after illegal experiment was exposed and halted) but won't say what the human experiments in African Americans were for. By chance the Borrelia Spirochette is remarkably similar to the Syphilis Spirochette.
Who benefits from this? Not the patients. The state. Some say 'believing' in Chronic Lyme is for 'conspiracy theorists'. Tin foil hatters who think the government control people by absurd notions like the authorities in medical knowledge tell people who never recover from an infection (who were previously healthy) they need CBT to alter the beliefs in an infection and to exercise more and this reduces symptoms.
That would never happen in a sane world, except it did. Science research needs to fix the sickness of greed and profiteering from psychiatry. Lets hope that happens oneday.