Dear Editor,
Neuro-Lyme, (persistent, chronic, active Lyme disease) is a burgeoning
epidemic. My psychiatric practice has been filled with the unfortunate but
previously misdiagnosed victims of tick-borne diseases for at least the last 10
years.
There are literally hundreds of high quality, peer-reviewed, easily obtained,
scientific articles credibly attesting to the devastating persistence of this
living spirochete-caused neurologic disease and its crippling effects on whole
populations. However, instead of pursuing such research and presenting a
balanced picture of the science, your reporter has cited only the
Infectious
Diseases Society of America, whose framing of the disease represents the
most radically restrictive of all viewpoints in what is one of the more
hotly-contested controversies in all of medicine.
For decades, physicians holding to IDSA's view of Lyme disease have turned
away desperately ill patients by telling them they must be mentally unbalanced
to imagine that they or their children are physically ill. These patients show
up at my psychiatric practice crippled and in great pain, barely able to
function. Only after receiving appropriate long-term antibiotic and
immunity-enhancing treatments, usually far exceeding the IDSA guidelines, are
their lives restored.
Alleged, inappropriate financial gain associated with some Lyme-treating
physicians was alluded to in your reporter's poorly researched piece. IDSA
authors, on the other hand, have
documentable financial conflicts of
interest that were never mentioned in your article. These include patents for a
vaccine still under development in Europe and the US, financial interests in
Lyme disease products such as test kits, and, most importantly, employment
by
the insurance companies that stand to lose money if the epidemic is acknowledged
and paid for. The vested conflicts of interest of these authors are seldom
revealed when they publish in their authoritative journals.
While these few exploitative yet influential academicians violate everything
Hippocrates ever stood for, rank and file physicians stand by confused. In their
impotency, they unknowingly are allowing this epidemic of tick-borne infections
to grow exponentially.
Virginia T. Sherr, MD, DLFAPA
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