For those of you who are wondering why I would write to the notorious and universally-hated former NIH Lyme Programme Officer Edward McSweegan via LymeNet, the answer is because he regularly trolls this list using a variety of false names, generally hoping to influence Lyme patients in a negative direction, or to spread confusion and misinformation.
LymeNet moderators have almost a full-time job on their hands dealing with the efforts of this seriously messed-up microbiologist to add further harm to the enormous legacy of harm he has already done over the years, harm that has impacted children and adults suffering from Lyme the world over.
So, here is my letter to you Dr McSweegan, as you spend so much time here:
"Dear" Dr McSweegan,
Recently I noticed you had updated a libellous document you placed on the internet some years ago, in which you libelled not only me, but several other female members of the Lyme movement, including Karen Forschner, Lucy Barnes and Janice Beers. (You seem to have an obsession with stalking and harassing females in particular.)
Virtually everything you have written about your chosen targets, with very few exceptions is either false or defamatory, or both.
In my own case you have got several ordinary biographical details wrong - and no, I am not going to assist you with your stalking campaign by telling you which of your "facts" are wrong. But it intrigued me to see that you now claim some of your "knowledge" about me personally comes from your "British colleagues".
I challenge you to name these "British colleagues" you claim furnished you with information about my personal life. I have nothing to do with any of your "colleagues" - British or otherwise - other than to expose their shameful activities which have hurt so many chronic Lyme patients.
I know too much about Lyme disease to consult any British doctor who shares your mendacious take on the disease. So I am interested to know why and how you would explain that any "British colleague" of yours would have any legally-procured information about me?
You also state that I produce "fact-free conspiracy theories" regarding the Lyme-biowarfare issue and "stalking". The information I have published on these issues is on my website at www.elenacook.org
I challenge you to prove that anything I have written there is "fact-free".
You state that I called you a bioweapons specialist because you "wrote a novel about terrorism" and visited Russia. This is false - I called you a bioweapons specialist because I have a great deal of evidence that you are one - much of it furnished by you yourself, via info you have put on the web.
I don't read your novels as I try to devote my spare time to productive activities only, so I was unaware you have written a book about terrorism.
As for your visits to Russia - you neglected to say **where** in Russia you visit, both now, and during the Cold War when the country was part of the Soviet Union. I do not think that "Vector", the notorious Siberian bioweapons lab, would be part of the itinerary of a normal tourist. Do you?
Your activities related to Vector are only a small part of the factual basis for my calling you a biowarfare expert.
I challenge you to name the "colleague" of yours whom you say I have wrongly labelled as an anthrax expert. I have never accused anyone of being an Anthrax expert because there were "a stack of anthrax research applications in a filing cabinet outside his office".
Obviously a government official cannot necessarily be responsible for the contents of a filing cabinet outside his office. The contents of a filing cabinet **inside** his office, I suggest, would be a different matter, especially if that office or that filing cabinet was his and his only.
You then joke that "many of those grants and applications" (ie for anthrax research)were in your own filing cabinet at the NIH.
I would suggest that the power to decide which scientists were eligible to receive US federal grant money for anthrax research would logically fall only to an officer who was either a bioweapons scientist himself, or was working in close collaboration with the military.
I have never accused anyone of being a bioweapons expert because they work as a "janitor", "secretary" etc in a BSL-4 lab. I challenge you to show where I have.
What I have done, by contrast, is drawn attention, over the years, to the many leaks and revelations of the fact that Lyme is studied in BSL-4 (maximum biosecurity)labs, whilst simultaneously US public health officials past and present, such as yourself(and those influenced by them in other countries), inform the public that Lyme is a hard-to-catch, easily cured disease.
Elena Cook
[ 06-02-2013, 09:53 AM: Message edited by: Eight Legs Bad ]
Posted by Andromeda13 (Member # 8314) on :
Makes me wonder about all those redacted pages, the ones included in the FOI requests and published in the Poughkeepsie Journal, after 5 years of waiting. The stuff that wasn't redacted was pretty shocking - so what must the really secret correspondence have revealed? Maybe if we had been able to see the full complement of those e mails, the public would lose all confidence in those "officers" paid to protect public health! Not that they command much respect as it is.
Posted by lax mom (Member # 38743) on :
That's so weird. You wouldn't see this with any other disease. Can you imagine how creepy and sick it would be for researchers and Drs to troll, say, an HIV support board and tell those patients false information?
Posted by Eight Legs Bad (Member # 13680) on :
McSweegan has joined this list umpteen times under false names - quite recently as "nnecker". Using that pseudonym he posed as a Lyme patient who was out to "warn" us of the dangers of long-term antibiotics.
When IDSA guidelines author Linda Bockenstedt published her most recent fraudulent article, attempting to convince the world that persisting Borrelia in antibiotic-treated mice is nothing more than "debris" of long-dead bacteria, he jumped to defend "Linda", as he called her.
Finally he gave up all pretence to be a chronic Lyme sufferer and "came out" as a Denialist. However LymeNet moderators were already onto him and gave him the boot.
He hasn't completely killed the "nnecker" identity though - he still uses it on "LymeNetEurope", the front he set up with a few of his similarly perverted friends in order to sow confusion in the Lyme movement.
This is not to offend the members, which include some very good and honest Lyme fighters. But the ownership of LNE, and those in control of it, are McSweegan and his friends. They hide behind a home page with links to articles by Dr Burrascano etc.., and use their control of the group to publicly insult our good doctors.
No doubt he's back here under some other pseudonym. But too much of a coward to reply to my challenge. As usual.
Elena
Posted by RC1 (Member # 31923) on :
I went on LymeNet Europe before and I saw a bunch of posts by nnecker, I couldn't believe what I was reading.