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Dr. Joseph Burrascano's 2008 Lyme Disease Treatment Guidelines
Dear Editor:
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guidelines
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Book review:
Cure Unknown - Inside the Lyme Disease Epidemic
by Marjorie Tietjen
Title: Cure Unknown - Inside the Lyme Disease Epidemic
Author: Pamela Weintraub
ISBN: 13:978-0- 312-37812-7
Lyme disease, and the growing number of co-infections associated with it, is sweeping across the globe like a black plague. It is fairly evident that not enough is being done to staunch the spread of this emerging pandemic. The controversy surrounding the diagnosis and treatment of this disease complex is as enormous and mystifying as the disease itself.
In the book Cure Unknown: Inside the Lyme Epidemic, the author Pamela Weintraub does a good job in explaining her take on the "whys" and "wherefores" of this unprecedented debate. Patients and Lyme-knowledgeable doctors are baffled as to why there should be a controversy of such magnitude. After all, the Lyme disease spirochete, Borrelia
burgdorferi (Bb ), is a very close relative to the syphilis spirochete and behaves in the body in much the same manner.
In fact, it is frightening to contemplate their similarities. In other words, the mainstream medical community already has a model to go by when trying to determine the pathogenic and infectious qualities of Bb. Under certain circumstances, both diseases can be chronic relapsing infections that affect many systems of the body. Syphilis can be transmitted sexually through the placenta, breast milk and also through the blood supply. It is a known fact that syphilis is often treated with antibiotics in an open- ended fashion. Many patients and their Lyme doctors report vast improvement and sometimes apparent cures when using long-term or open-ended antibiotic treatment. There are also reams of studies which prove that Bb can persist in the body after the mainstream recommended treatment of 2 to 4 weeks.
So, why all the controversy then? Weintraub feels much of it has to do with the insurance companies and their refusal to pay for long-term treatment. Another reason she gives for the controversy is that these doctors and academicians who are in the forefront of this argument, those who are denying that Lyme disease can be a chronic relapsing infection, really believe what they are saying and are basically ignorant. The author also feels that folks like Alan Steere maintain their puzzling positions on Lyme disease treatment due to their training in rheumatology. This part confused me a bit because many of the 'players' I just mentioned at one time authored journal articles which showed that Lyme can be a chronic relapsing brain infection. Why the change of heart? It just doesn't seem to me that ignorance or rheumatology training explains all of it.
Pam Weintraub's book chronicles the Lyme experiences of several families, including her own, and also the experiences of doctors. She shares with us the many struggles they encountered while seeking proper diagnosis and treatment. There is much helpful research in her book and I learned quite a bit of new scientific information. If doctors will read this book with an open mind, they will better understand how bio-films, pleomorphism and other factors can promote a chronic Lyme infection. So many people have been misdiagnosed with autoimmune conditions or other disease labels. Most often these labels only represent the symptoms and not the cause. There never seems to be a cure....only symptomatic treatments.
In chapter 48, Pam Weintraub talks about how it is not just the insurance companies that are creating our Lyme crisis but that the pharmaceutical companies are also involved. I would like to quote a paragraph from page 309.
"The seed was planted in 1980, when Congress passed the Bayh - Doyle Act giving universities and their faculty members permission to stake patent claims on discoveries they made through research funded by federal agencies such as The National Institutes of Health. Instead of leaving ownership of intellectual property with government, the scientists now had a chance to be stakeholders and entrepreneurs themselves. The new law accelerated the rate of academic breakthroughs like gene splicing, gave rise to three-way partnerships between government, universities, and start - up firms, and spawned the modern biotech industry almost overnight. By the early 1990s, university scientists were scrambling to patent genes, proteins, and organisms, hoping to launch products and profit from the discoveries they made."
Most of us realize that these connections between government, universities and the biotech industry are very dangerous to the health of the people. Saying that these government agencies are connected.... is basically revealing that government is meshed with the corporations. We know that corporations don't have the public's best interests at heart....so then shouldn't we also be questioning what we call the government? Why should we go to these government agencies for grants to study Lyme disease when they may be trying to perpetuate chronic illness for financial reasons? Selling many symptomatic treatments is much more profitable than finding a
cure. The author makes light of conspiracies and can find no proof of them yet the very money trails she speaks of breathes deeply of conspiracy. The word conspiracy simply means a "plot".....people joining together for a single goal...which could be making money....legally or illegally. There is also the possibility that these corporations...together with the government, create their own market for drugs and vaccines. One way to do this is to create disease or encourage disease to spread. Why is no research being conducted concerning sexual transmission, transmission through the placenta and breast milk? Why is it being denied that Lyme can cause stillbirths and miscarriages? Why isn't the message loud and clear that if you have Lyme or have had Lyme that you should not donate blood?
I don't feel that the government agencies need enlightenment or education, I feel their connections need to be exposed. Perhaps instead of begging for government research grants (where the government often controls the outcome of studies), we need to spend more dollars on funding private researchers whom we know are doing studies that are pertinent to our needs.
Overall, "Cure Unknown" contained much helpful information concerning the different issues relating to Lyme disease. Among the topics covered were: the LYMErix vaccine, the difficulty Lyme patients have in getting diagnosed and treated, doctor persecution, and the pathogenicity and tenacity of the Lyme disease microbe. I would like to add one more important quote that the author included in her book. The quote is from Stephen Barthold who, for years, studied the pathogenesis of the Lyme microbe at Yale.
"You have a bacterium with a relatively small and simple genome that can do incredibly complex things. It is a fascinating organism with a lot of evolutionary intelligence, consistently capable of creating persistent infection and evading host immunity. Once infection becomes chronic, not even the strongest immune system, in combination with antibiotics, could be guaranteed of eliminating every last vestige of the infection."
I would like to add a couple of comments in regards to this quote. Weintraub briefly mentioned the biotech industry, patents, and gene manipulation, but I feel we need to be aware of a few of the specifics. While the author did a great job presenting pertinent scientific information, I feel that including the realities and possibilities of genetic engineering would have made her book even more complete.
For example, it is a fact that insect vectors can be genetically engineered to become even more efficient vectors for disease. They can be manipulated to endure harsh weather extremes. I feel this is one reason vector-borne diseases are spreading and that it is not due to global warming. The microbes themselves, through genetic engineering, can be made resistant to our current antibiotics. This is being accomplished in labs around the country . (http://lib.bioinfo.pl/meid:6658).
Hopefully the antibiotic- resistant germs these labs are creating, are being used for good purposes only, but we all know that technology needs public oversight to prevent it's misuse. How are we to have oversight if we are not informed?
On the one hand, we are constantly hearing about antibiotic resistance and how it is being created by taking too many antibiotics. Yet, on the other hand, we are told to finish all our antibiotics (to be sure to kill all of the germs) or antibiotic resistance will be created by the stronger surviving germs. In addition, as I have just mentioned, in the labs they are creating antibiotic-resistant Borrelia burgdorferi. Why is it then that the mainstream medical industrial complex denies chronic Lyme disease? If they know that one of the problems with Bb persisting in the body, could be
antibiotic- resistance, then why is it not their practice to switch to another antibiotic if the person is not getting well? The protocol suggested or mandated by the Infectious Disease Society of America is a single antibiotic for a month...and that is it. Among most mainstream doctors there seems to be no alternate plan, such as trying a different antibiotic, if a patient isn't improving. There are over 300 strains of Bb and different strains are more susceptible to certain antibiotics than others.
Pam Weintraub did an extensive amount of research in preparation for this book. It certainly stimulated my desire to discuss and expand on the important areas she focused on. Most likely this book will also stimulate others and hopefully it will help all of us to dig to the nitty-gritty root of this needless controversy.
I think that Cure Unknown: Inside The Lyme Disease Epidemic will be a valuable contribution to the better understanding of the Lyme disease controversy and that it will nicely complement other similar books on the subject.
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