last week's negative Lyme article in the Chicago Tribune

[Guest guest]

Here is a link to last week's article in case you didn't see it.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/ct-met-chronic-lyme-disease-20101207,0,5671\

843.story

I was very excited when the Trib contacted me in advance of publishing my letter

to the editor, which appeared in print and online yesterday. There are three

other letters as well if you click on the link below.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-vp-1215voicelettersbriefs-20101215\

,0,5213086.story

I've pasted my comments here (which were slightly edited by the editors):

Flaws in our medical system

This is in response to " A dubious diagnosis; There's little good evidence that

chronic Lyme disease exists; Yet doctors are treating it with drugs that put

patients and the public at risk " (Page 1, Dec. 8). The article demands the

opportunity for a response. The reference to the misdiagnosis of Lyme disease in

a North Carolina man actually suffering from non-Hodgkin lymphoma deserves our

sympathy but certainly only proves flaws in our medical system, hardly exclusive

to practitioners treating Lyme disease.

The epidemic numbers of chronically ill patients for whom our health care system

has no answers is evidence of a health care system that seeks to place people in

a box; if a doctor cannot find a diagnosis, then it is " all in the patient's

head. " No wonder patients turn to alternative treatments.

Indeed this exposes desperate people to scam artists and snake-oil salesmen.

However, there are very good doctors seeking to treat Lyme patients, but their

hands are tied due to the bureaucracy and politics of the American Medical

Association, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the

federal Food and Drug Administration. Until this situation changes, more people

will be swept out of the system and no real progress will be made to understand

and treat this illness and the resultant cascade of biochemical failures in the

body as a result of long-term, untreated infection.

deb

[Guest guest]

>

> The reference to the misdiagnosis of Lyme disease in a North Carolina man

actually suffering from non-Hodgkin lymphoma deserves our sympathy but certainly

only proves flaws in our medical system, hardly exclusive to practitioners

treating Lyme disease.

and even that 'misdiagnosis' is questionable. There are a number of research

articles that link non-Hodgkin lymphoma with Borrelia infection. Can't judge the

specific case, but I'm pretty sure some of these patients really have a Borrelia

infection that caused the lymphoma (I have at least one such case in my family

....).