Hello, I know exactly how you feel because I live in the UK where the official attitude is "we don't do Lyme here".
People have been fighting an uphill battle for years. Last autumn we had a rally outside the Prime Minister's house and delivered a huge collection of evidence, case histories etc. proving that Lyme is most definitely present, and that the current (Steere camp) methods of diagnosis are flawed. The response of our Government was basically to tell us to go to hell.
IMO you should not have any faith, at this stage, in your public health authorities. Far better to get the word out using whatever means you can - leaflets, talk to local radio stations , letters to local newspapers, notices on local internet boards etc. Point people to good sources of information like lymenet and ILADS etc. Make sure to include telephone numbers of organisations that can point them to their nearest LLMD. I know this will mean a long journey which may be impossible , physically and financially, for many, but if some manage to see a LLMD and are diagnosed with Lyme, then it strengthens your cause even more.
It might be good to reach out to Lyme support groups in other states where the CDC etc are in deep denial, as well as connecting with the national groups like LDA and LDF.
Another possibility would be to link up with acarologists (tick experts) or other scientists and see if any would be willing to do studies of the tick infection rate in Tennessee. Including of ticks that the Steere camp does not associate with Lyme.
You will probably find that the local health authority are using this "pre-test probability" crap to permanently exclude your state from the Lyme statistics. This is what the Steere camp have tried to impose everywhere (even outside the US), using the CDC and NIH. If you haven't come across it before, basically it means that - according to them - if a person tests positive in a place like TN, the positive is most likely a false positive because very few people have been diagnosed with Lyme there. (And then you find out that the reason so few have been diagnosed, is because a) doctors don't know about Lyme and b) those that "know" , only "know" what the CDC tells them, ie that it doesnt exist, so they will not seriously consider it in their differential diagnosis, and finally c) if someone slips through the net and a doctor thinks they have Lyme, their blood is usually sent to a lab using Steere camp testing criteria (which is fraudulent) and they are then judged negative and told they don't have Lyme (also fraudulent, as lyme is supposed to be a clinical diagnosis, not test-based.)
So in short, it's completely circular reasoning. "You can't have Lyme because even though your test is positive , the positive must be ignored because no one has Lyme in your state." So you can see how this would create a self-perpetuating "Lyme-free" area based on pure lies. (But an epidemic of "fibromyalgia", "csf", "hypochondria" etc etc.)
IMO we will not truly break through this tide of stupidity until we manage to expose the fact that the Steere camp are **deliberately** defrauding science. IMO they are doing this for two reasons: commercial (conflicts of interest with insurance industry, vaccine and test-kit companies, real estate etc) and military (Lyme is a militarily sensitive disease and a very disproportionate number of the Steere camp are biowarfare scientists).
Till we expose all this, there will be "no Lyme in Tennessee", "no Lyme in the UK", etc.. And even the folks on the east coast are having to fight all the time.
I wish you the very best of luck.
Lisa
quote:
Originally posted by suttles:
Is there anyone out there that will help us spread the word down here in these hills?We have Lyme and last summer I did talk with a lady from Nashville support group and they had regular meetings.
I don't know how do get in touch with anyone in that group or if they are still active.
Nashville is over a 100 miles from me but it would be so great to have some local support.
Can anyone of our Lyme brothers/sisters help.
Suttles