4 ms·
The problem is you've got patients who have run out of options. Maybe they've got some complicated autoimmune disorder that medicine hasn't even begun to unders
by wl 11y ago
The problem is you've got patients who have run out of options. Maybe they've got some complicated autoimmune disorder that medicine hasn't even begun to understand. Maybe the patient is just getting older. But the mainstream physicians don't have acceptable solutions or sometimes even good answers. "Lyme literate" medicine practitioners then offer an explanation and a possible treatment, regardless of whether or not the patient actually has Lyme disease. There's even a lab that will do a four month long blood culture + PCR for borrelia to give that official positive diagnosis when the immunoblot comes back inconclusive, despite the incredible false positive rate with the culture.
For those who aren't looking to use the Lyme hammer to explain and treat everything that can't be explained by conventional diagnosis, Lyme disease is well understood. The standard antibiotic therapy is very effective at stopping the infection. If treatment is delayed too long, there are lingering symptoms that are difficult to treat. There is no evidence that IV antibiotic therapy for years at a time provides any benefit and much evidence that it harms patients. People haven't lost their medical licenses for prescribing such therapy because of some great conspiracy. People have lost their licenses for administering treatments that clearly harm their patients without any benefit while charging large amounts of money for it. It's quackery.
- pasbesoin 11y agoThanks for that further qualification. I think that, via my friend's commentary and links and whatnot, I've encountered a fair amount of: If treatment is delayed too long, there are lingering symptoms that are difficult to treat. Nonetheless, the experiences do seem to present a nightmare that includes fighting incorrect diagnosis and lack of support, including from insurance. I didn't read the full OP article, but I heard a fair fraction of the same subject's interview on "The People's Pharmacy", this past weekend. He is a doctor, and still he went through years of misdiagnosis and chronic, horrible symptoms. I'm also mindful that while people including the medical community are now becoming more cognizant of Lyme disease and its details, for years this was not the case. Finally, I guess we should note that, between this article, the interview I mention, the book he's written... this also represents a PR push surrounding the book. P.S. I guess I can add that I have a family member who acquired a parasitic infection (not Lyme disease) abroad that was not properly diagnosed and treated for 3+ years. (Despite extensive attempt to find an effective diagnosis and treatment including some very prominent clinics.) The correct treatment, once administered, immediately knocked out the parasite. However, so much damage had been done by it in the meantime that recovery proved to be very long and ultimately incomplete. This anecdote doesn't make me any righter about Lyme disease, and certainly IANAD. But I have, second hand, experienced something similar with regard to such... "runaround".