Hi Paulo, in the interview KDM seems to be saying that the LPS can come from either the Borrelia, or from the translocation of gut bacteria caused by the inflammatory process. So he hasn´t so much abandoned his previous idea as developed it. I actually think the fact that he found raised LPS levels in his patients was probably a crucial step in his understanding of the illness, since it would have got him thinking about bacterial infections rather than viruses and retroviruses.
Re: the presentation at the Belgian senate, I got my former co-worker to translate it for me. He´s a Belgian English teacher in Vietnam (perhaps the only one!) and apparently he wasn´t very impressed by KDM´s gramar...
DM's intro: hundreds of his patients have told him:
"the first couple of weeks after i'd taken antibiotics given me by my doctor, i felt better.",
so - DM argues - some kind of micro-organism must play a role in this.
immediately after that, at 10.40-11.10 DM says literally:
"if you take the criteria for CFS, both the ICC and the Fukuda criteria -
if you take that group [of people] and have them take 3 or 4 different Lyme tests, also the LTT test,
then you'll see that over 95 per cent of those people test Borellia-positive."
(3 per cent have too few lymphosites to be able to take a regular LTT test, but if they're tested again with an extra dose of lymphosites, they test Borellia-positive, too, so the overall percentage is, in fact, well over 95%)
so: DM's conclusion (11.30):
"what well over 95% of people diagnosed with MCE/CFS have,
might very well be not a diagnosis of MCE
but a description of [the symptoms of] a chronic Borellia infection."
*
2nd excerpt:
25.15-40
"the profile is pretty much the same for patients the world over:[DM's next sentence is a syntactic disgrace, incoherent and very confusing,
so it's no use translating literally, but looking at the table, i'm pretty sure he must mean the following]
"of the people meeting the ICC/Fukuda criteria for MCE/CFS
many are Borellia-positive (with PCR)
but if those patients take an LTT test, we re very nearly at 100%"25.40:
"Bartonella is easy to test for, and 35 to 50% of the patients test positive for it.
It's a common co-infection of Lyme, difficult to treat, partly also because of the place the bacteria tends to choose,
and which shares many of the characteristics of Borellia."
*
on a happier note:
if you should happen to be in Brussels between July 18th and August 17th, be sure not to miss the Great Brussels Fair !
(dutch: zuidfoor, french: Foire du Midi, their website is also in English, i've seen)
it must be one of the biggest in Europe,
and even if it's not (coz who but Americans cares about size, really?), it must definitely be the most atmospheric
i'll be trying hard to get home by then myself, too!
) or any other context, would be shockingly sub-standard. The reality, I suppose, of one person trying to treat so many people with such little help, but one has to wonder why he has not attempted to move towards a more collaborative effort that would allow a closer doctor/patient relationship, or at least have someone that can help with answering the myriad of questions that inevitably arise during the course of treatment.