Doctor harassment

[Guest guest]

Hi,

I just want to keep up awareness of the urgency that people throughout

the country continue writing letters to our New York State Legislators

calling for a public hearing into the bias of the OPMC. For information

on who to write and what to write , go to the FAIM homepage at

http://www.faim.org. Press the news and politics button and then press

NY button on next page.

For those of you who are new to this or unclear on what we are doing, I

thought I would post a summary.

1) Several of our LLMD's across the country were reported last year for

professional medical misconduct in what we believe to be a politically

motivated witchhunt aimed at limiting the amount of treatment we can

get.

2) In New York State one LLMD has had his license revoked and two of the

most well known LLMDs, Dr. Burrascano and Dr Horowitz, are awaiting

administrative hearings, which will likely lead to disciplinary action

affecting their right to treat us or to practice at all. If we lose

these two highly visible LLMD's it is most unlikely that other MD's will

be willing to risk their license to offer us adequate treatment.

3) Last December the New York State support groups organized into a

group called LymePac to demand a legislative hearing in NewYork State

about the harassment of our LLMD's.

4) In late December, with the receipt of the Marks letter of 12/21/99,

we focussed our campaign on demanding a public legislative hearing into

the bias of the Office of Professional Medical Conduct (OPMC), the

agency in charge of judging the conduct of our LLMD's. . (The " Marks

letter " is a letter from the executive secretary of the Board of

Professional Medical Conduct of NY State, stating that the guidelines

that the OPMC chose to use in judging our LLMDs 'rarely if ever

indicated that more than 2-3 weeks of antibiotics is necessary to cure

Lyme disease.' )

5) Dr. Burrascano joined the Foundation for the Advancement of

Innovative Medicine (FAIM), which many of us have also joined. This has

enabled us to use the political and lobbying expertise of an

organization experienced in protecting physicians from undue

harassment.

6) Lymepac has been in close contact with , a very

experienced professional lobbyist for FAIM who is working hard in Albany

to get us the legislative hearing of the OPMC.

7) We need a real groundswell, a grassroots letter writing campaign from

people around the country to the NY State officials to call for a

legislative hearing into the bias of the OPMC which seems to be

determined to take away our right to more than 3 weeks of treatment.

8) We also need people to alert the media to the doc harassment issue.

However, although letters to the legislators can and should mention Dr.

Horowitz, his lawyer has advised him not to put his name out to the

press. THerefore, only use Dr. Burrascano's name in letters to the

press.

PLEASE WRITE AND ASK EVERYONE ELSE YOU KNOW TO WRITE.

Thanks,

Ellen