Hello Hwlatin,It is interesting to see a former "extreme conservative", as you described yourself, recognising that the greed of big corporations for profits causes huge suffering. I know very, very few extreme conservatives who acknowledge that (except a few who say,"ok, but so what. Let the strongest survive!")
Although big Pharma companies have played an important role in the falsification of Lyme science, I see their role as more to do with wanting to make millions out of ineffective and useless vaccines, than to profit from the sale of a lifetime of symptomatic relief meds.
We know for a fact that two of the world's biggest Pharma corporations, Glaxo SmithKline and Pasteur Merieux Connaught (now Aventis), were developing OspA vaccines in spite of the evidence that vaccination based on this technology, (patented by Barbour), could be very unsafe. And of course the LymeRix vaccine did get withdrawn from the market (after $200 million had been invested in it), after it was exposed by Kathleen Dickson and others as dangerous.
I feel there would be significant risks involved, from the point of view of Big Pharma, in conspiring to deliberately keep huge numbers of people unnecessarily chronically ill just to sell them palliatives, as you are suggesting.
Huge numbers of people incapacitated may be profitable for drug companies, but is not very helpful to other industries that depend on all those people to run their factories, offices etc, and to buy their products and services.
A chronically ill Lymie not only can no longer work, but often becomes too destitute to buy anything beyond the most basic essentials (and sometimes can't even afford those). A massive hike in the number of disabled people is a disaster for so many industries - travel, motor, petrol, sports equipment, leisure, even restaurants, cinema and fashion, as people can no longer afford to go anywhere, and are too sick to go.
Without the rest of industry (and therefore government too) behind them, big Pharma would be playing a very risky game, and exposure of what they were doing could bring huge repercussions and the jailing of any government official, doctor or scientist who had helped them.
The blood products companies who conspired to obstruct vital changes to protect the US blood supply from HIV contamination,(and are probably directly responsible for thousands of death as a result), could not sustain their disgusting racket indefinitely. They were swept aside not just by pressure from medics, but by the fact that government and industry do not want the whole nation to drop dead, (though it may sometimes seem that way!), as they then have no one left to rule over/profit from.
I believe that a cover-up on the scale of the Lyme cover-up could not have come about by the manoeuvrings of Big Pharma alone, or even Big Pharma and the insurance industry combined, if it did not have the backing of the other heavyweight multinationals, and therefore government too.
I believe you are right when you say they have conspired to essentially hide the disease, and leave the incapacitated to fend for themselves. It won't be too great a drain on the tax budget when a large percent of chronic Lymies are being refused disability payments anyway, and being told they are hypochondriac, lazy or mentally ill.
I believe the added ingredient missing in your analysis is the role of the government and military themselves. It is a fact that a hugely disproportionate number of the Steere camp are biowarfare experts. I believe that there is a military interest in Lyme disease, and that is the overriding factor that has allowed all the powers-that-be to agree on the need to finesse the epidemic out of existence, to the supreme joy of the insurance industry, absentee landowners of tick-infested properties, and tourism, and manufacturers of bogus test-kits and vaccines etc..
A large number of Steere camp doctors have glaring conflicts of interest with dodgy vaccine and test-kit companies.
I agree with you that people will need to act at the grass roots level. Legislation can be helpful if we can put up a hard enough fight to force good laws to be a)passed and b)enforced; but the risks are great if we are not acknowledging and exposing the fact that our governments (of all political stripes) have been complicit in this fraud. I don't know the details of the recent bill that turned sour at the last minute, but it is logical to me that while the complicity of government is not exposed, there will be last-minute, underhand moves to overturn any good legislation, or, as in the case of the bill requiring the CDC to stop the misuse of its crappy surveillance criteria for diagnosis, simply a tacit agreement to ignore the law once passed and never enforce it.
You mentioned "population control". I don't believe that the western governments released Lyme to control their own populations. This does not rule out however, the idea that governments are covering up the Lyme epidemic and causing huge numbers to suffer needlesslly, because lyme science is a militarily sensitive issue for them. But "militarily sensitive" does not equate with "population control" of their own population, which I find farfetched.
It is true that there was a powerful eugenicist movement in the first half of the twentieth century, and the descendants of that movement are still around. However, eugenicists tend to pick on populations of other countries, ethnic minorities within their own, or lifestyle sub-groups which they declare inferior and of which their own "master race" needs to be "cleansed". They do not tend to practise poopulation control on their own. Borrelia infection is is pretty indiscriminate - it hits everyone, with no prejudices as to colour, religion, sex or nationality.
Lisa
However
quote:
Originally posted by hwlatin:
I have spent alot of time the past several months looking into the political aspects of Lyme disease. Conspriracies aside, the reality is that there really are few answers as to how to sucessfully deal with Lyme and other closely related infections.Costs associated with treating Lyme and the complications it causes are pretty high. Like everything else this all comes down to money. Drug companies make a mint on the drugs they sell to effectivly aid in the treatment of the symptoms that might or might not be associated with Lyme. The loss of revenue to these companies could essentially bankrupt them.
The government has to know how bad the situation is and I am sure that they have weighed the costs associated with treatment, life expectancy and worker productivity. It would bankrupt this country to have to treat all those infected with Lyme, they know this.
The insurance companies know the liability they have and have lobbied the government hard to limit their liability by supporting limited treatment. Any change would bankrupt the insurance industry, or make insurance so expensive that nobody could afford it.
So what they have done is hide the disease. Essentially allowing those that have the worst cases to fend for themselves and most likely fade away. Until such a time that a true cure comes about, the government will do very little to mandate anything else.
I am sure the same thing went on with Aids, the big difference is that in this country the infection rate is such that the worry over treatment costs is relativly small. I would bet that the infection rate of Lyme is so high and transmission so much easier than anything they have seen before, that the though of treatment costs scares everyone. I am sure they figure that the strong will survive until a cure is found. Almost sounds like another country we knew in the 30 and 40's.
Of course if you believe in conspiracies, then population control would make alot of sense. I have a hard time buying this, but either way expect very little help from the government, matter of fact I think we are wasting our time in even trying.
The only wild card is if we focus all our efforts to get the word out. Our money should go for advertising not lobbying. The public has to be made aware of what is going on. The problem with this is that those who do this probably will be subjected to heavy government scrutiny, I think we have already seen that.
It really bothers me saying this, because for most of my years I have had alot of respect for our government, but lately I am not so sure, and this is coming from an extreme conservative. I actually dont think this is a Left or Right issue, I think it is bigger than that. Somewhere the government by the people for the people has gone away. However this happened, there is only one way it can change and that is at a grass roots level.
This can only be done by educating and getting the people to stand up and make a change. This will have to be done on a large scale to be sucessful, anything less and it will mean the status quo. It is very risky at this point in dealing with politicians, we have seen legislation turn on a dime, and in some cases if inacted will do more harm than good.
The reason being as soon as we get them to move a little bigger forces come in and get them to turn around. This is just my opinion, but do the research it is not hard to see what has been going on.
UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
Printer-friendly view of this topic