Shocking Lyme Disease Statistics—and Why Money and Politics Stand in the Way of a Cure It’s an epidemic larger than AIDS, the West Nile virus, and the avian flu combined. So why is conventional medicine pretending it doesn’t exist? Lyme disease is a complex multi-system inflammatory disease that can affect every tissue and major organ system in the body. Clinically, it can appear as a chronic arthralgia (joint pain), fibromyalgia (fibrous connective tissue and muscle pain), chronic fatigue, brain fog, immune dysfunction, and neurological disease. It may even be fatal in severe cases. Transmission occurs primarily through the bite of ticks, though fewer than 50% of patients with Lyme disease recall a tick bite. The CDC estimates that there are nearly 325,000 new cases each year—double the number since 1991. But only a fraction of these cases are being helped. Why? Lyme disease can be expensive to treat, and there is no protocol that is completely effective for all patients, no sure-fire cure. Standard medical treatment usually involves antibiotics—sometimes for months at a time. It can develop into Chronic Lyme Disease (CLD), a systemic, debilitating condition that persists despite antibiotic therapy. It costs society about $2 billion per year, including diagnosis, treatment, and lost wages—and that’s a conservative estimate. But the politics of the disease are even more troubling. One Lyme disease organization, in its desire for power and control, is pitting doctors against doctors, prompting health insurance companies to deny medical claims at an alarming rate, and leaving suffering patients stuck in the middle. The Infectious Diseases Society of America (ISDA) claims—apparently ignoring the CDC’s data—that the disease is “hard to catch and easy to cure,” and that chronic infection is extremely rare or nonexistent. Unfortunately, only ISDA’s opinion and treatment protocols carry any weight with conventional medicine and the insurance companies, despite other reputable voices. The diagnostic tests for Lyme disease are woefully inadequate, with a high failure rate. Many insurance companies consider alternative tests “experimental and investigational,” and won’t pay for them—and with fewer diagnoses, insurance companies’ financial involvement is minimized. Doctors and insurance companies alike dismiss it as being a hypochondriacal illness, just as they’ve done for years to sufferers of fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. As a result, every year hundreds of thousands of Americans go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed. There are a great many alternative therapies being used to treat Lyme disease. In addition to long-term antibiotics, integrative physicians prescribe a program of vitamins, nutritional supplements, herbs, and antiviral and antibacterial neutraceuticals. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy offers significant alleviation of symptoms, and intravenous vitamin C is once again proving successful. Unfortunately, the only therapies allowed by insurance companies are the most conservative ones—and only for a limited time and under limited circumstances. In Vermont, doctors may have more options when treating Lyme disease. The legislature’s Health Committee sent a letter to the Vermont Department of Health noting concern about “the perceived persecution that many advocates have reported to the Committee regarding physicians who will not provide longterm antibiotic treatment out of fear of discipline.” The department’s Board of Medical Practice told the committee that disciplinary actions would not be brought against a physician solely for treating Lyme or other tick-borne disease with methodologies outside CDC or ISDA guidelines. Citizens in other states should petition their legislatures for bills to protect doctors, allow for more sensitive and accurate diagnostic tests, and broaden the scope of treatment modalities allowed. Lyme disease is a big enough battle on its own—we don’t need money and politics standing in the way of a cure
Posted on: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 20:23:32 +0000
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