I finally got around to writing Beth Daley, a reporter from the Boston Globe who I corresponded with in May. I am still disturbed by her sparing use of investigative skills for her content-free story on Lyme; hence my rant to her below. ___________________________ Beth, I am greatly saddened by your Boston Globe story from June 2nd. You were given doctors and researchers’ names who could have helped you report a more complete and accurate story on Lyme Disease – why didn’t you talk to them? Also, there is an unnecessary amount of irrelevant (even inaccurate) information on Steere. You are missing so much proven science that could be helpful, e.g.: - The many forms that Borrelia takes inside the host: spirochete, cyst, biofilm, granules, etc.; - Bugs don’t float around in the blood waiting to be zapped by the immune system or antibiotics; - Most tick bites in New England are accompanied with co-infections (84% in one study) which doctors rarely test for, or don’t know how; - Out of the 100 strains of Borrelia in the U.S., “standard of care” testing only covers ONE strain (specialty labs do more and many are CLIA certified). And even the commonly used tests are deeply flawed and are designed for surveillance – whatever-the-hell that means! While your writing is crisp and clear, you are toeing the party line. Do you not feel an obligation to inform readers? Or just rehash old news? Glorify the alleged discovers of Lyme Disease? If anyone is worthy of praise, it’s Polly Murray and Will Burgdorfer. Not to mention Dr. Alan MacDonald and Eva Sapi who have unraveled more secrets of Borrelia – like their biofilm formations and varied life forms which contribute to chronic disease states. I’ll leave you with an excerpt from a recent interview with Dr. Alan MacDonald on the obvious weaknesses in Lyme testing: “….He cloned the B31 strain to one spirochete in a test tube. And then allowed that to take off and grow and grow and grow and become a huge cell line, which now is the basis for all of our USA test kits. Now think about it. One spirochete and one lineage, one set of proteins, one DNA, is going to be the ruler for diagnosing any and all of the bacterial spirochetal and Borrelia infections in the United States. We now know there are at least 100 different genotypes of Borrelia burgdorferi for our USA type. And we are working with one test kit from one spirochete with one set of proteins, one set of DNA molecules, right? And that’s the ruler for all of the other 99 strains that we know about in the United States. And, that spirochete never saw a human body. That came from a tick…” So, we don’t even know whether that spirochete would have been able to make it into the human body and cause disease in a human in a real case. It came from a tick gut. So it has a lot of flaws in relying and betting the ranch on one spirochete and all its progeny and one test kit because we have many strains of Borrelia in the United States and other strains around the world and those do not react very well with our USA test kit. So, if you come from Europe and you have a European strain and you have Lyme disease of the European strain type and you get tested with a USA test kit, you will get a negative result. That’s scary. Please, investigate and report on all the facts. You can really help people get educated about this unnecessarily complicated disease. You can make a difference! (See the piece-o-crap story below.) bostonglobe/metro/2013/06/01/lyme-disease-rise-and-controversy-over-how-sick-makes-patients/OT4rCTy9qRYh25GsTocBhL/story.html
Posted on: Sun, 04 Aug 2013 00:39:26 +0000
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