BREAKING NEWS: The CDC, Lyme disease, and the Almighty Dollar

My fellow sickos….it has begun.

Monday, August 19, 2013 may go down as a historical day for Lyme disease as the CDC made an important announcement that was decades in the making.   Although the CDC has “suspected” that the Lyme disease transmission rates were 10x higher than being reported, it took them several years (DECADES, actually) for them to make an “official” admission that their previous annual reports touting a mere ­­20,000-30,000 incidences of Lyme disease per year have been WRONG.  The CDC finally admits that approximately 300,000 US citizens are contracting Lyme disease EACH YEAR.  (And please note that number does not reflect the number of citizens that continue to suffer with the disease each year thereafter…)

While this news is a breath of fresh air for some, since the truth generally smells much better than a steaming pile of bullshit – there are some of us – call us cynics, realists, or just paranoid nuts - who realize there must be some REASON for this self-important governmental bureaucracy to finally make this admission NOW.

Of course, for the cynics, realists, & paranoid nuts, the answer to this mystery lies more with the Almighty Dollar than with the CDC’s quest for truth.

Wanting a greater understanding behind this sudden urge to fess up, I donned my reading glasses so I might read the small print of the   CDC’s Press Release when I discovered this new estimate was presented the night before at the 2013 International Conference on Lyme Borreliosis & Other Tick-Borne Disesases held in Boston.  

 

Naturally, curiosity got the better of me so I stopped reading said Press Release and proceeded to the conference website to see what nuggets of information I might unearth. And voila!  It was so easy.  Right there in the conference’s agenda was the evidence that reinforced my initial cynical idea that the CDC’s new data was provided as the precursor to the eventual announcement of another attempt at a Lyme vaccine.  Yep!  You heard it here.  According to the Session 5 agenda, a presenter from Vienna, Austria was scheduled to present information about the Phase I & II Clinical Trials of  “ a Novel Multivalent OspA Vaccine against Lyme Borreliosis in Healthy Adults” blah blah blah.  Wow.   I can practically smell money at this point.

Then, to confirm my additional suspicions, I scurried on over to the faculty section of the conference’s website where I noticed some familiar names.  Names such as Durland Fish, Linda Bockenstedt, Allen Steere, Raymond Dattwyler, Stephen Dumler, John Halperin, & Gary Wormser made my arm pits all slimy for such a list is practically THE Who’s Who of IDSA assholes who authored the infamous, illiterate, & insipient IDSA guidelines of 2007.  Certainly, there were many other faculty and participants at this conference, most likely Yale & IDSA cronies, but it was those long familiar names – those whose misguided information that have caused so many patients to be misdiagnosed, mistreated, under-treated, or all - who left such a foul taste in my mouth that I was almost certain my tongue had begun to grow a fine, putrid mold.  

In all fairness, there was one recognizable ILADS physician (ILADS = "the good guys")  on the conference faculty list, Dr. Brian Fallon.  Granted, additional ILADS physicians might have been a part of the conference faculty, or even have been part of the presenters; but I’m a blogger, not a journalist, so I wasn’t about to research and cross-reference every name on the list because damnit, I’m sick and and tired and busy, and besides,  I'm not getting paid to write this drivel!   Yet noticing Dr. Fallon’s name amidst the aforementioned names caused me to realize what a brave soul Dr. Fallon must be to be surrounded by such pure evil, and in a confined location no less!  

After realizing I had gleaned as much useful information I could possibly stomach from the conference site, I returned to the CDC’s website where I found a previous Health Advisory issued back on June 12, 2013 which announced a nationwide shortage on doxycycline, THE ‘go-to’ drug recommended by the good ol’ CDC as the prophylaxis for Lyme disease – with no alternative drug being offered as "effective".  Wow…again.  Those in the literary community might refer to such information as foreshadowing.

For the innocent and naïve, let me summarize: 

• In June 2013, the CDC announces:  “OMG.  There’s a shortage on doxycycline! And there’s really nothing else that will be as effective.  Gee whiz.  What will happen?  I wonder if there will be panic in the streets?”

• On August 19, 2013, the CDC announces:  “Well we goofed!  We suddenly realize that our previous estimates of Lyme disease diagnoses were wrong, mostly because we've only been legitimizing statistics based on our own very faulty & problematic surveillance criteria.  But now, we're ready to admit - it’s actually at least 10x MORE!  That’s a helluva bigass number, and although we don’t want to come out and actually SAY it, we think the general public should be scared shitless.   Also, did you hear there’s a shortage of doxy, the #1 Lyme treatment?”

• On August 20, 2013, a speaker at the 2013 International Conference on Lyme Borreliosis and Other Tick-Borne Diseases presents information about a potential upcoming vaccine: “Greetings fellow greedy bastards – we are about to be rolling in the Almighty Dollar because of all the knowledge we’ve stifled -- all at the monetary & health expense of thousands upon thousands of patients; and because of  all the research we’ve secretly collaborated on.  Of course, this is based upon the assumption that the vaccine doesn’t make healthy people morbidly ill or dead…you know, like the 1^st vaccine did!”   (said with an Austrian accent, of course)

Admittedly, these are not direct quotes from any individual in any official capacity because these remarks are much too clear and concise. 

And yes, I DO hear some of you thinking that dear ol’ DR. Wiseass must certainly be swimming in cynicism and paranoia.  Maybe so.  But I’m still a damn realist.  And I’d bet my bottom dollar (if I had one) that all the brouhaha and controversy surrounding the topic of chronic Lyme disease is, and always has been, about the Almighty Dollar!    Do I hear an “Amen”?!!

Stayed tuned for more…

Hugs & Kisses,

DR. Wiseass

~NOT a real doc; just a real wise ASS!