Ticks. Here in the Northeast U.S. ticks are a fact of life. If you’re from the area and ever had a dog who spent abundant time outdoors share your life, you know what I mean. Chances are too, it wasn’t just the dog that was bitten by a tick.
The risk…? Lyme Disease and Babesiosis. Both are bad enough, but there is another thing related to these that needs your attention.
Dr. Russell Saunders reports on The Daily Beast with “Predator Doctors Take Advantage of Patients With ‘Chronic Lyme’ Scam” in this partial quote that
“With the possible time-limited exceptions of occasional outbreaks of various infectious diseases, nothing inspires quite so much anxiety as Lyme disease.
Caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi, the illness is transmitted by the bite of an infected tick. Practicing as a pediatrician in a part of the country where the disease is endemic, I’ve treated a fair share of patients for it. Most have been straightforward cases where the child came in with the characteristic rash. A few have been more complicated and have presented in later stages, including arthritis and meningitis, which required more extensive testing and longer treatment. But in all cases, the appropriate course of antibiotics has been curative.
Yet there’s something about Lyme that makes some parents fear even the possibility of their child being infected…”
And then in step the “Lyme disease activists”, the “medical conspiracy theories”, and the so called “Lyme-literate doctors” who take advantage of the “perfect story for hysteria”.
Dr. Saunders goes on to explain about antibiotic resistance, testing, lingering symptoms, and ‘Post-treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome’ (PTLDS). One thing is for certain, with Lyme disease activists being such a passionate bunch, and with the medical conspiracy theorists mention of cover up on the existence of an insidious illness, this article has no lack interest for most…
Still, understanding the story of how Lyme disease first came to be understood offers clues to why the controversy persists. It continues with input from two other doctors, so really… read Dr. Saunder’s article to get the complete story. There’s no sense walking away with partial information on this one!
shared from: The Daily Beast “Predator Doctors Take Advantage of Patients With ‘Chronic Lyme’ Scam” as reported by Dr. Russell Saunders
image license: cc by-sa 2.0 from a photo by Waldo Jaquith on Flickr
*a Truther is a person who does not believe the generally accepted explanation of a particular event and who believes that they know the true facts about what happened.
