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Here in the UK we are finally going to get a Lyme specialist clinic on the National Health Service. This is NOT a good thing, in my view. This will most likely be a clinic specialised in diagnosing "not Lyme", and declaring seropositive people "cured" prematurely.
People have been speculating about the new consultant who will be in charge of the clinic. He is most known as a microbiologist who researches and campaigns intensely on issues of MRSA, other superbugs, and antibiotic overuse in the health service.
Antibiotic resistance is a real problem, but it is not **our** problem, in the sense that you do not deny long-term treatment where it is clinically indicated because of "antibiotic resistance". No one would dream of denying a TB sufferer the long-term cocktails of antibiotics which they must take.
There are many truly unnecessary examples of antibiotic overuse that should be addressed rather than denying very sick people treatment. What about the truly massive use of ampicillin resistance genes by the biotech industry?
I recognised the name of the "specialist" immediately - Matthew Dryden - and I've even quoted him in a letter I had published in the BMJ years ago, which is here.
As you can see, the reason I quoted him is because he, along with Dr O'Connell (who was our resident Lyme "expert" for years until her lab was moved to Porton Down biowarfare centre in 2012 on her retirement, wrote a completely hypocritical paper calling attention to the issue of Lyme myelitis.
Hypocritical, because this appalling condition is probably going unnoticed every day as a result of O'Connell's diagnostic policies (now continued by Tim Brooks at Porton), and people are probably being diagnosed with "myelitis of unknown origin" and ending up disabled for life when they could have been cured with antibiotics.
One of our leading activists here became totally paralysed from the waist down in her thirties due to Lyme myelitis. She had been told that the early signs she noticed in her legs were probably psychosomatic, as she could not possibly still have Lyme as she had had her regulation short course of antibiotics.
Elena
-------------------- Justice will be ours. Posts: 786 | From UK | Registered: Oct 2007
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