Got bit by the Globe today:
"Drawing the lines in the Lyme disease battle; Angry patients question treatment — or lack of it — yet with tests often inconclusive, some doctors think the condition is overdiagnosed. And the split is widening" by Beth Daley | Globe Staff, June 02, 2013
Nearly 40 years after Dr. Allen Steere, a slender Massachusetts General Hospital rheumatologist, discovered Lyme disease, Timothy Grey’s outburst highlights the rising anger and activism of patient groups that are hugely dissatisfied and mistrustful of the medical establishment’s response.
It's hard not to be anymore.
As the disease continues to spread across the Northeast, the most basic questions remain mired in polarizing controversy: Who has the disease? Why do some people remain sick after treatment? And how should they be cared for?
It’s a debate with significance far beyond Lyme, reflecting gaping differences in how segments of the medical world and the public cope with scientific uncertainty. The battle lines have been drawn for years, but as the number of altered lives rises, the Lyme divide is widening.
Steere, as the nation’s most prominent Lyme researcher and advocate for a cautious, science-based approach to diagnosing and treating Lyme patients, has become an iconic villain for many patients....
Massachusetts is an epicenter for the illness....
Lyme and ticks, however, appear to be a low priority for public health authorities. More than $10 million is spent each year in Massachusetts to control mosquitos that spread occasionally fatal West Nile virus and Eastern equine encephalitis.
Tick-borne diseases receive only about $60,000 annually in state funding and a fraction of the attention, though Lyme makes many more people miserable for weeks on end with flu-like symptoms and fatigue. Patients who go untreated have reported facial paralysis, arthritis, heart blockage, extreme fatigue, mental decline, irritability, depression, and other problems, although very rarely death.
See: Number of ailments from deer ticks on rise
Grey’s pursuit of Steere represents a boiling over of patient frustration after a generation of controversy about the disease....
It's the same with the mercury-tainted vaccinations causing autism.
--more--"
Over the last few weeks and months the Sunday Globe has been running many of these personal dispute type articles. I guess I've lost my itch for them.
