Kate - Fallon - lyme wars

[Guest guest]

Do you know if Fallon has been imaging peoples brains as they are

treated to demonstrate changes? Do you know when the study is supposed

to come out?

I recently read the " lyme wars " documents by Steere, Stricker, Pavia,

etc, and the NEJM study fallout, so I am interested in these medical

politics now.

Steere conveys effortless patrician assurance, like you could drive up

to harvard and have him politely and concisely correct any

uncertainties you might have about the finer points of Hegel,

astrophysics, or whatevers on your mind. I think he will likely be

convincing to MDs not informed in great detail; to be " thorough " yet

neither labored nor clamorous is the height of persuasive style. He

makes some incorrect assertions and gets away with them, alas!

I think the dormant-cyst-based theory of the diseases refractoriness

is being very over-asserted by Stricker; it does not seem correct to

me. It would be an excellent model if the disease were totally

responsive to heavy therapy but relapsed afterward, but that is not

the case.

I'm actually very grateful for Steeres research, and I think hes made

some very interesting investigations, tho I suspect he has probably

rendered a large disservice thru this much-too-uncritical, extremely

overreaching editorializing, and perhaps other things. Its unfortunate

that his now-discarded idea of LFA-1 as a candidate cross-reactive

autoantigen received IMO an unwarranted level of acclaim, tho it was a

very interesting and extremely worthwhile investigation.

I think a major point the ILADS side should be making is that

the " post-infectious fibromyalgia " idea sheds no light on anything; it

is *not* an etio-pathological counter-proposal, because it entails no

testable predictions, nor indeed asserts or tallies with anything

whatsoever. Its vacuous. That attribute doesnt make it false, but the

fact that it is wholly a postulate rather than an argument should be

emphasized.

Also, they should emphasize studies that cultured and/or visualized in

situ the organism, persisting after the sort of abx therapy insisted

to be sufficient by their interlocutors (ie, practically anything).

Bah to serology and PCR.

> I'm leery of Rocephin also (as is my gallbladder!), however, agent

Scha

> is battling neuroLyme and I know that Dr. Fallon at Columbia is

coming

> up with some good data using Rocephin. I don't know what he combines

> with it and when. Presumable something to kill off the CWD forms

> generated.

>

> - Kate D.