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Lyme Illiterate Quacks....No Lyme illiterate article writers

roxie60

Senior Member
Messages
1,791
Location
Central Illinois, USA
http://www.slate.com/articles/healt...ous_and_ineffective.html#lf_comment=247390891


For 5 hose with some energy we need to fight back against knuckleheads like this article writer. This guy includes sound bites we have heard for years from IDEA doctors, would not be surprised if he received payment from IDEA doctors for such an unscientific article. He gives his contact info. Let him hear from 'real' people who live with lyme and coinfections and benefit from antibiotics. Share this with all the lyme support groups and organizations. We need to fight back against these quack journalists that don't bother getting the 'real' experience from people who live daily with lyme and it's affects.
 

roxie60

Senior Member
Messages
1,791
Location
Central Illinois, USA
I put this on my Facebook and I tweeted him. I have refrained for now from just calling him an idiot. Although I did suggest he was a paid IDSA shill. This article makes me so angry. His point about median income he is suggesting we have financial resources to propagate falsehoods regarding successful abx treatment, I would like the reference for that little fact cause I do not believe it, most of us are financially destroyed trying to get treatment that works. Fight back people, send email, tweet, facebook, share with your support groups. We have to stand up against hatchet jobs like this article that goes against reality.
 

Martial

Senior Member
Messages
1,409
Location
Ventura, CA
This guy has no experience with lyme disease and its blatantly obvious with the little information he has provided. This is nothing more then political attacks in response to a recent bill pass. Its obviously about politics and has little to do about wellness. Ego headed behavior and antics can unfortunately trickle to all the parts of even our medical community. People need a real wake up call before talking out of their ass.
 
Messages
13,774
I am concerned about quackery around Chronic Lyme and LLMDs, and think that a lot of patients do end up being misled about the validity of alternative testing and treatments in a way which leads to them losing a lot of money on treatments that do nothing to help them.

Having said that, this is still a poor article that conflates 'accepted norms of practice' with medicine determined by a careful examination of the evidence, and ignores some of the real complexities and problems around Lyme disease and evidence that it can lead to ongoing symptoms. The stuff on income reads like a smear founded upon a joke [Indeed, some infectious disease specialists jokingly refer to chronic Lyme as a “disease of affluence.”] rather than any of the data provided. Would be interesting to know which doctors do joke about their patients in this way.

Also - it looks like the study he cited for income and Chronic Lyme is actually on those suffering from Post-treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome, which does now seem to be a problem recognised by the 'medical community': http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3548099/

I really didn't mean to spend time on this, so only briefly looked at that study (I was only planning to read the abstract but got drawn in), but it seems to undermine the reporters own article. Had he read it?

Articles like these only serve to make LLMDs look better.
 
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Dufresne

almost there...
Messages
1,039
Location
Laurentians, Quebec
The whole affluent thing should sound familiar. Reminiscent of the 'yuppie flu'. We're all hypochondriacs with too much cash.

It surprises me when those with ME/CFS express doubt about LLMD's and chronic Lyme. I would argue there's more of a science to the latter than there is of the former. However we're all in the same boat. Furthermore if we're going to denounce LLMD's we should throw Drs Cheney and De Meirleir under the bus as well. They both support and diagnose chronic Lyme. Perhaps they haven't carefully enough examined the evidence.
 

barbc56

Senior Member
Messages
3,657
. Furthermore if we're going to denounce LLMD's we should throw Drs Cheney and De Meirleir under the bus as well. They both support and diagnose chronic Lyme. Perhaps they haven't carefully enough examined the evidence

I think they've most likely examined the evidence but their conclusions, IMHO, like LLMDs, are misguided.

Persistent symptoms after reasonable trials of antibiotics may be a downstream effect of the original infection and require other types of treatments. Similat to me/cfs where the original trigger may be gone but something is still causing devestating symptoms.

All this becomes even more complicated when trying to figure out if someone has even had lyme in the first place.

Barb
 

duncan

Senior Member
Messages
2,240
This article spoke more to myths than it did to science. How's that for irony?

Saying there are quacks or charlatans out in the Lyme community is an oversimplification. There are such mercenaries in any contested medical quarter.

The problem is rooted in semantics, and the word play - not to mention the myths - is courtesy of the old Lyme Guard.

For instance, the myth that chronic Lyme sufferers never even had Lyme to begin with. Not true as a rule, but certainly true for some. Still the claim is misleading, just as Lyme is hard to get, easy to cure. Both myths come courtesy of the same twisted nexus of chums in academia and patent holders and partners in business enterprises, primarily diagnostics. Conflicts of interests in this group abound.

To decry a few outliers who cross the line and take advantage of sick people as being widespread and representative, would at best be an outrageous assumption.