Andie333
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In my pre-Lymey life, I was a journalist. In the 1980s and early 1990s, I wrote a number of articles about AIDS for national publications.
The first was a cover story in a popular magazine on AIDS in America, tracking a number of people and their struggles over the course of a 24-hour period. If I recall, it was the first magazine piece to cover the disease. It was written in 1987.
Today in my files, I found a copy of the story (which I honestly can't read -- then or now -- without getting choked up).
The interesting thing to me about the story, though, is that at the time it was written, the magazine reported that 16,000 people were infected with AIDS and 21,950 people had already died.
They called it a "crisis" rather than an epidemic at that point.
I know from the CDC stats that last year almost 20,000 people were infected with Lyme, and that was only last year. The numbers, as all of us know, have been increasing steadily and rapidly. And those numbers don't account for the people who have the disease without being formally diagnosed...or those who are misdiagnosed.
So I'm thinking it's about time for this disease to hit a tipping point and somehow make a breakthrough in the national media. At the time that AIDS article was published, the magazine was deluged with letters. One read, in part: "Damn, you!...I cried through the entire article. Anyone unmoved by these stories is inhumane. Thank you for shattering our complacency."
I wish I could get everyone to read the posts on this site; my guess is they would feel exactly that same way.
[ 22. November 2005, 11:51 AM: Message edited by: Andie333 ]
Posts: 2549 | From never never land | Registered: May 2005
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What I will never understand is why the government has taken the denial route with this disease. Some say that AIDS was ignored for so long and nothing useful done because of the route of transmission.
But there is nothing socially repressed about tick bites. So, why?
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Andie333
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Lou, I'm with you and can't figure it out, either. The stories we Lymies tell are equally compelling, our bouts with the ducks frustrating and fascinating. This hits all ages, races, ethnicities (at least I think it does).
And, as you said, it doesn't have the social stigma AIDS carried for so long. The last article I wrote about AIDS was on seniors. By then, it was spreading into that population and was a lot less marginalized.
If this is such a good story (Lyme, I mean) then why has it been so ignored by the mainstream press? I honestly can't figure it out. I know part of the answer lies with the CDC guidelines and all the ducks (esp. the so-called ID ducks we quote so often on these boards) who insist this is just a trendy little sickness easily treated with a month of antibiotics.
The mainstream national media (at least newspapers and mags from my experience) tends toward a sort of competitive complicity -- nobody doing much of anything til it gets on an editor's radar screen. Then everyone scrambling at once to get the story.
Again, that's tough, when you've got otherwise respected doctors saying there's nothing too much going on with Lyme. And when all the LLMDs are hunkering down to focus on their practices and try to stay off the hit lists for medical boards. Add to that the CDC diagnostic guidelines, and it all gets pretty hard to penetrate.
There's one he--uva story here, from at least a half dozen diffferent angles. And my sense is that when it does catch fire, it will really explode. Much like AIDS coverage finally did.
Several people have talked about celebrity involvement. In this star-driven society, maybe it will take that -- a number of high profile people stepping forward and really talking about their Lyme experiences.
As far as the CDC, I have no explanation for that. But I can't get the whole Plum Island thing out of my head.
Andie
Posts: 2549 | From never never land | Registered: May 2005
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Well a famous investigative reporter has been saying in his recent lectures that the mainstream press is "pathetic." Think he means that there's not a whole lot of investigation going on in journalism. No wonder newspapers are losing readers. Not much there to read. They blame it on the net, etc, and ignore the idea that maybe the damage is self-inflicted, or at least partly.
As far as Plum Island is concerned, I think they might have been connected to the outbreak in Lyme, CT but not sure it is the whole explanation for what has happened subsequently in how the gov't is behaving. Think ego and incompetence and other ordinary human failings are also involved.
Posts: 8430 | From Not available | Registered: Oct 2000
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quote:Originally posted by lou: Well a famous investigative reporter has been saying in his recent lectures that the mainstream press is "pathetic." Think he means that there's not a whole lot of investigation going on in journalism.
I think that's part of the problem, but as regards hitting that "tipping point" I don't hold out alot of hope that will happen anytime soon.
Been here 5 yrs and haven't seen much progress when it comes to the public. There have been many celebrities with Lyme and it hasn't done us a bit of good thus far.
Pessimist??? Only a little. There's hope ... but how long will it take?
-------------------- --Lymetutu-- Opinions, not medical advice! Posts: 96223 | From Texas | Registered: Feb 2001
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Andie333
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I agree with the reporter Lou quoted; it's one of the reasons I decided to leave journalism. It was getting too frustrating...I watched the entire field start to shift around the time of the OJ Simpson trial
That also coincided with the proliferation of 24-hour cable networks.
I was heartened during the Katrina coverage; it seemed as if journalists were starting to wake up again.
As far as Lyme, Lou, I don't discount what you're saying at all -- ego and incompentence can go a long way, especially in certain professions. Maybe it's just an unfortunate confluence of these factors and others we may not have even thought about.
Either way, it's awful to have so much misinformation out there and to continuously watch a disease as debilitating and complicated as this almost routinely dismissed.
Lymetoo, I really hope you're wrong. The thing about it is this: once things catch fire in this media-driven world, they really can blaze. I just don't know what it's going to take.
Andie
Posts: 2549 | From never never land | Registered: May 2005
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Andie, Our thoughts are going in the same direction. With the news of lyme disease being included on the list of bioterrorism research conducted by NIH, I can't get Lab 257 out of my mind. What is in the gap between the medical community's philosophy - "hard to get, easy to treat" and bioterrorism? That's a mighty big gap! Things just aren't adding up!
Posts: 422 | From Herndon, Virginia | Registered: Oct 2005
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for an answer to why the government plays denial, please see kathleen dickson's site:
http://www.actionlyme.org and scroll down the page to get at the lyme fraud, rico complaint, and kathleen's official fda testimony as an expert witness.
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cantgiveupyet
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this is a very good post. i can only speak from my experience before i became so sick. When someone would say oh so and so has lyme disease...i just shrugged it off, no biggie. They just ache and feel like they have the flu...and take some abx and get better. Of course now i know better then that.
I remember Lyme was in the news more about 10 years ago, atleast in this area of PA...and we were always told as long as there wasnt a bulls eye rash you were OK....watch out for flu like symptoms......non of the other horrible symptoms were even mentioned.
It's tough to regain the public's attention and sway what was already drilled into their minds regarding lyme disease. i think the same goes for the ducks.
I'm waiting for my delivery of lab 257, should arrive anyday now.
-------------------- "Say it straight simple and with a smile."
"Thus the task is, not so much to see what no one has seen yet, But to think what nobody has thought yet, About what everybody sees."
-Schopenhauer
pos babs, bart, igenex WB igm/igg Posts: 3156 | From Lyme limbo | Registered: Oct 2005
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Our govt is composed of people who have conflicts of ( www.lymediseaseassociation.org ) interest up the kazoo. They figured out how to, gradually, make themselves billionaires (no joke). They figured out how to qualify a vaccine on the basis of worthless tests. The CoI doc is 182 pages long. That's probably why no one reads it. It shows why CT's Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal first mentioned RICO in '99.
To summaraize: The reason our govt is ignoring us is because the people who make the decisions are making money, ego, reputation etc etc off our suffering.
ALL - PLEASE READ AND UNDERSTAND THE CONFLICTS OF INTEREST DOC
Worthless tests & labs, a dangerous vaccine, insurance companies refuse to pay, undertreatment the norm, all about money. MO. Posts: 281 | From CT | Registered: Oct 2005
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Greatcod
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If you want to grasp why the biowar cover-up angle is so plausable to some of us, you need to understand the original charge of the Epidemic Intelligence Service of the CDC, and to connect the Lyme dots (the players) to the EIS, Ft. Detrick and newly funded biowar labs. All that information is in the public domain, so it is not like a "crazy" conspiracy theory.
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Andie333
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Cod, I'm unfamiliar with that division of the CDC; what was it formed to do?
Posts: 2549 | From never never land | Registered: May 2005
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I am not prepared to condemn the whole EIS for its entire history. Their original purpose is still a valid one. I grew up just down the street from the home of the man most instrumental in setting this up long ago. Went to school with his daughter. This doesn't prove anything in particular, but keeping surveillance (watching, collecting info) on infectious diseases is a useful thing to do.
The fact is that some people whose names we know have perverted this group's purpose and are not doing the job they were trained to do.
Plus, some of those same people are now involved in bioterrorism defense labs. This gives the whole thing an unpleasant smell, although it is not unexpected that the people who know about infectious diseases would get involved in these labs. The thing that boggles my mind is that the anthrax incident, which produced all this bioterrorism money, is thought to have been caused by germs removed from a gov't lab.
So, now we have a proliferation of such labs. Does this make us safer? Does it make sense that lax security at a germ lab would be rewarded by creating more such labs, more job opportunities for these researchers; it almost looks like rewarding crime. But I have never seen any public questioning of this, apart from the safety in particular places for residents near the lab. And on top of that, we have these germ palaces being built in hazardous places like Galveston. Nuts, just nuts.
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5dana8
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My personal feeling why lyme doesn't get the public light thus not much funding is because people usually don't die from lyme.
As in aids the body count was and is stagering. How can the public and government stand by and just ignore that many deaths.Without a public out cry.
(not everyone)But alot of chronic lyme patient who are too tired and crushed with neuro problems seem to quietly fade away at home.Too demented from the disease to become any kind of acctivists.And spending most of their time and resourses to fight the disease.
Our caregivers are also overwhelmmed in trying to care for us.
I am not saying I wish for a higher body count, not at all! But I think this has alot to do with no public spot light on lyme disease == no funding.
I hope for better days ahead and more funding for all of us. Take Care
-------------------- 5dana8 Posts: 4432 | From some where over the rainbow | Registered: Sep 2005
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lymeloco
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Don't know if this has been posted, and it's possibly I did myself, but I don't remember.
Montana community soon will be home to a biodefense lab By Adam Tanner, Reuters | September 18, 2005
HAMILTON, Mont. -- Montana's Bitterroot Valley has long offered a respite from the modern world, an area of small-town values with a thriving log cabin business and rivers beloved by fishermen.
| Breaking News Alerts The bucolic setting between two mountain ranges in western Montana will soon host one of the nation's few biowarfare defense labs, a controversial $66.5 million building where scientists will research dangerous pathogens in an effort to stem deadly attacks.
''It's an unfortunate mission, but unfortunately it's a necessity, especially after 9/11," said Joe Petrusaitis, the mayor of this city of about 4,400 residents. ''The community mostly supported it, but we did have detractors."
Scientists came to the Bitterroot Valley early in the 20th century to study the outbreak of an often fatal disease that was named Rocky Mountain spotted fever.
In 1928, some residents sued to prevent the building of what became Rocky Mountain Laboratories. To calm fears, the lab agreed to build a long-since demolished and never-used moat around its buildings to keep disease-carrying ticks in check.
In later years, it worked on numerous infectious diseases, including Lyme disease and prion diseases, a type of disease that includes mad cow disease. It is now part of the network of US infectious disease labs with 250 workers.
With white-coated scientists behind closed doors, the Rocky Mountain Lab created a mysterious aura, perhaps heightened by a suspicion of government strong in much of the West.
''Until around 2000, the lab did not do as good a job at promoting its research program as it does now," said Marshall Bloom, who became lab director in 2002. ''In the local community, there was a lot of concern."
That concern intensified with the announcement of biodefense plans that would involve staff wearing space-age contamination suits in airtight labs. The new facility should be ready next year, with biodefense work scheduled for 2007.
''It is a logical extension of what had gone on here virtually 100 years," Bloom said.
The United States unilaterally renounced biological weapons in 1969, a commitment fixed by treaty in 1972.
The Clinton administration boosted germ warfare defenses in the late 1990s. Since 2001, Washington has spent billions on fighting germs such as anthrax and plague, and has announced plans to add to the nation's four existing Biosafety Level 4 biodefense facilities. In Boston, plans for a high-security lab at Boston University Medical Center have met similar opposition.
The Rocky Mountain Labs would become the only such facility in the West, an expansion that prompted a lawsuit seeking to block its construction.
''Folks were concerned about the lab being some sort of target of bioterrorism," said Alexandra Gorman, science director at Women's Voices for the Earth. ''People were concerned about agents of bioterrorism that they were working on in the lab getting out into the community."
Mary Wulff of the Coalition for a Safe Lab said the lab once failed to account for a bag of radioactive waste and had dumped chemicals into a nearby landfill in the 1980s. ''The BL-4 [Biosafety Level 4] building boom was a knee-jerk reaction by our government after 9/11," she said.
Bloom declined to say whether he thought Washington was overreacting to bioterrorism, but said anthrax and viruses that occur in nature should be studied.
''If you look at the list of all the causes of emerging and re-emerging disease . . . the intentional introduction of infectious disease is pretty low down on the list," he said.
Some specialists also caution that biodefense is similar to banned offensive bioweapons research. ''We have to understand what the virus's tricks are . . . to treat or defend against it," Bloom said.
posted
I think the men in black, wearing sunglasses are parked across the street. They're on to us!
Tularemia On The Mall According to an article, which appeared in the October 2, 2005 edition of the Washington Post, the presence of tularemia in Washington, D.C., probably has a natural explanation:
Health Officials Vigilant for Illness After Sensors Detect Bacteria on Mall Agent Found as Protests Drew Thousands of Visitors
"A week after six bioterrorism sensors detected the presence of a dangerous bacterium on the Mall, health officials said there are no reports that any of the thousands of people in the nation's capital Sept. 24 have tularemia, the illness that results from exposure to the bacteria.
"Federal health officials are still testing the samples from air sensors on the Mall and in downtown Washington that collected a small amount of the tularemia agent, which can cause flulike symptoms and is usually treated with antibiotics.
'The bacteria probably was not the result of nefarious activity, according to federal investigators. 'There is no known nexus to terror or criminal behavior. We believe this to be environmental,' said Russ Knocke, spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.
"The mission for health officials now is to figure out how the bacteria got there, why they were detected that day and whether they are from a strain that doesn't affect humans....
"Health officials in the Washington area were notified Friday that the filters on biohazard sensors that make up the BioWatch network detected the bacteria Sept. 24, when tens of thousands of people were on the Mall for antiwar demonstrations and the National Book Festival.
"The samples were collected between 10 a.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. Sunday. The naturally-occurring biological agent -- which is on the 'A list' of the Department of Homeland Security's biohazards, along with anthrax, plague and smallpox -- was detected in small amounts, said Gregg A. Pane of the D.C. Department of Health.
"Detection of the bacteria turned into an incident with nationwide implications, because thousands of protesters had come from throughout the country. The infection is not spread from person to person, but tracking potential patients became a coast-to-coast undertaking. Police said that more than 100,000 people attended the rally; organizers put the figure at 300,000.
"After the filters were tested in Washington, further tests were done by CDC laboratories in Atlanta, Knocke said.
"Meanwhile, the CDC was using its nationwide tracking system to look for unusual occurrences of pneumonia-like symptoms in every state, Roebuck said....
"[O]ne theory is that tularemia bacteria, which occur naturally in soil, might have been kicked up by the thousands of feet stomping on the Mall grounds that day.
"Homeland Security and the CDC work together to operate the BioWatch sensors. The $60 million-plus system was created in 2001 to monitor air in more than 30 U.S. cities....
"A similar incident occurred in Houston in October 2003, when two air sensors detected fragments of tularemia bacteria. There were no human cases of tularemia reported after the incident, and some experts in the bioterror field said they believe the incident was actually spurred by a strain of the bacteria that does not affect humans.
"'It's probably something that just lives in the environment,' said Tara O'Toole, who is director of the Center for Biosecurity, sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. 'We forget that microorganisms rule the world. Now we're looking and finding things we didn't know were there.'
"Tularemia, often called 'rabbit fever' because small animals are often carriers in rural areas, was amassed by the U.S. military as a biological weapon in the 1960s." Here in the Washington, D.C., area, we just endured the driest September in a long time--if not the driest September on record. My packed-dirt driveway is a dust bowl, and my lawn is completely dormant. Therefore, this recent detection of tularemia on The Mall could be a naturally occurring phenomenon which would have gone unnoticed without the biosensors.
Even so, I remember back to the anthrax attacks of 2001, when the CDC at first thought that the first anthrax-related victim, the man who died at AMC in Florida, must have been exposed to anthrax in the wild. We soon learned that the presence of anthrax in Florida, New York, and Washington, D.C., was no accident, but rather a deliberate attack or attacks. The anthrax attacks of 2001 have never been solved, and those of us who live in close proximity to them continue to be nervous about the threat from bioweapons.
For all our advances in technology, our understanding of unusual phenomena in nature remains limited. And, this time, the D.C. area didn't go into paranoid mode--a good sign, I think--and our government officials appear to have acted appropriately and prudently. Yet this harmless incident is a reminder of our vulnerability to bioattacks.
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Andie333
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Loco, this whole biowarfare research thing is pretty chilling, if you ask me. I know the TX lab mentioned in the CNN report has very lax security. I have no reason to think it's different for other labs, and from what I've read, most have at least some dealings with ticks.
To me, it's the height of arrogance to create and/or proprogate a "disease" or condition and expect to be able to contain it, no matter how tight the security or how strict the conditions.
At Plum Island, infected livestock reportedly were housed in fenced but open areas. The island is part of the migratory route of several different birds. Cows eat grain; birds eat grain...
I think Dana's right too -- a major difference here is numbers of casualties in AIDS vs Lyme. But I do know this disease results in a number of fatalities. Does anyone have access to any information about that? Estimated numbers of suicides and/ or undx or dx Lyme deaths? Loco? Lou?
Really, if the stories are compelling enough, the numbers can pale next to the power of a family's struggle. It's just getting those stories told in the national media (I have seen this happening already in small daily or weekly papers, just not in the mainstream press).
I can't forget, either, that so much of the mainstream press is now under corporate ownership. That can shift the entire dynamic.
Andie
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Andie333
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I was just thinking back to articles I wrote about serious topics in a popular national magazine in the late 80s and 90s:
Bulemia (the gist was the late Princess Diana's struggle with the disease) Gambling addiction (Pete Rose) Domestic violence (OJ Simpson) Even the AIDS piece (which was -- unimaginably -- 16 pages long) This was framed by details of a 15-year-old named Ryan White who had been befriended by Elton John.
So I think again about celebrity voices. If anything society is even more celebrity-driven now than it was then. It's either that or marching, and I can barely make it across the kitchen, let alone the length of a march route
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Greatcod
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The EIS was founded in 1951. At that time, the Cold War was on, as was the war in Korea. The mision of the EIS was biowar defence The founder of the EIS was Alexander Langmuir. In 1952, he published in the American Journal of Public Health an article entitled "Biowar Defense: The Epidemic Intelligence Service of the Communicable Diseases Center." Without question, that has remained part of its mission to this day. Dr.S was discharged out of the EIS in 1975 and went to Yale Med, where he "discovered" Lyme 3 month later. The doctor who sent Polly Murray to Dr.S was an EIS doc who was on assignment to the Conn. Department of Public Health. She was originally to see someone else at Yale. Steere's entomologist was and is a Detrick consulant. McSweegan is a biowar guy, as is David Dennis. Dr. K is bringing biowar bucks big time to BU. UT Galveston got the other big grant-It is viewed as an expansion of Shope's 4000 sq ft BSL4 lab. Shope was a co-author on one of DR S's early Lyme ppapers.Before Galveston, Shope was a Yale virologist who had worked at Detrick. Shope is mentioned in "257" as someone who visited Biowar Nazi Traub in Germany, to see the guy his father had trained(yes, you read the right). There is much more, but try to keep in mind that the US has fought wars in all kinds in climates. Diseases caused a serious number of casualties in the WWII Pacific theatre. As a last thought, the US didn't prosecute the monster's of the infamous Japanese Unit 731, but set them free when they turned over their biowar data. And all biowar knowledge cuts both ways.
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Got to admit, great cod, that I assumed the public health surveillance of normal epidemics was the original motivation for EIS, that the biowarfare stuff came later.
So, I looked it up on their website, and you are right. Of course, you are also right that it cuts both ways, and if accidents happen, well you can't make omelets without breaking a few eggs. Too much money in biowarfare defense now to admit to any mistakes. Of course, accidental releases may not always be recognized immediately, unless some psychopath decides to mail the stuff.
Here is a copy and paste of several paragraphs from their website:
The EIS was established in 1951 following the start of the Korean War as an early warning system against biological warfare and man-made epidemics. The program, composed of medical doctors, researchers, and scientists who serve in 2-year assignments, today has expanded into a surveillance and response unit for all types of epidemics, including chronic disease and injuries.
Over the past 50 years, EIS officers have played pivotal roles in combating the root causes of major epidemics. The EIS played a key role in the global eradication of smallpox by sending officers to the farthest reaches of the world; restored public confidence in the first polio vaccine after a defective vaccine led to panic; and discovered how the AIDS virus was transmitted. More recently, EIS officers have documented the obesity epidemic in the United States, helped states reduce tobacco use, and studied whether disease outbreaks were a result of bioterrorism. Many of the nation's medical and public health leaders, including CDC directors and deans of the country's top schools of public health, are EIS alumni/ae.
In 1991 a New York TV producer of one of the top news shows contacted me regarding my view that AIDS was man-made. He asked for copies of my books and promised to get back to me. I sent the books, but didn't expect to hear from him again.
My previous experience with media people was that the man-made story was taboo. The major TV networks are owned and controlled by powerful business interests, and I sensed that pressure was put on the executives not to air the man-made AIDS story. The American public had fully accepted the monkey story. It would be foolhardy to scare viewers into thinking AIDS was another government screw-up.
I was surprised when the producer called a few weeks later to explain that his staff of reporters had checked out my story with government officials. Predictably, the health officials said the man-made story was preposterous and without merit. The producer prodded them for specific information about the hepatitis experiment. What happened to the men who volunteered? How many were still alive? How many died of AIDS? Surely this information was available. The government officials were evasive. The medical records of the gay men in the experiment were confidential; none of that information could be divulged, and certainly not to media reporters.
Without the cooperation of the government, the producer complained he couldn't get a "balanced" story. Did I have any ideas? I suggested that the AIDS biowarfare story was the most covered-up genocide program of the century. Did he really expect to get the cooperation of health officials in exposing the truth? How did his staff expose other government cover-ups? The producer was sympathetic, but he finally admitted the story was too explosive to tackle without more evidence. I protested. What about the body count of dead gay men? Sorry, he said, that could not be used as evidence.
Where was the evidence that six million Jews were exterminated by the Nazis? Where were all the bodies? Where was the documentation? The evidence was the fact that, before the war, there were cities and towns filled with Jews. After the war they were gone, and the missing Jews were never again seen alive.
Where were my young friends from ten years ago? Half of them were dead from AIDS? Straight people didn't lose half their friends and lovers from AIDS. Only gay people. But none of this seemed relevant to the producer who repeatedly asked for "evidence" and "documentation" to prove my theory. The body count, overloaded with gay men, proved nothing.
It was true. There was no overwhelming evidence on the published reports of the hepatitis experiment to prove that the trials were designed to kill gay men. But if one searched the medical literature carefully, there were clues that indicated gays in the experiment were severely damaged by the AIDS virus. In fact, the hepatitis group was far more damaged than any AIDS group in Africa, where the experts claimed the disease supposedly started centuries ago. And if one carefully studied the graphs in Cladd Stevens' 1986 hepatitis report showing the rate of HIV infection in the men in the experiment, one thing was clear--all the men in the gay experiment were doomed to die of AIDS.
The evidence was contained in the gay blood stored at the New York City Blood Center.
When a HIV blood test for AIDS virus antibodies became commercially available in 1985, it was possible to determine exactly who was infected with the virus, the epidemiologists tested old gay blood specimens stored at the New York City Blood Center, to determine whether they were infected. When old, pre-1978 American blood specimens from various groups were tested, there were no HIV-positive samples. This clearly demonstrated that the AIDS virus was not present in the U.S. before 1978.
Through the retrospective testing of blood specimens of the 1083 men in the original hepatitis B experiment, as well as the blood of over 10,000 gays screened by Szmuness, it was definitely determined that the AIDS virus was introduced into the gay community sometime around 1978, the same year the gay experiment began.
June Goodfield recalls that Szmuness, in the months before November 1978, had made some preliminary and unreported inoculations into two hundred people, presumably gays. Thus, even before the experiment officially began, some volunteers were already injected with the experimental vaccine.
Was the experimental hepatitis B vaccine contaminated with the AIDS virus? The vaccine was manufactured by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and also by the Merck drug company. During the clinical trials, Szmuness was concerned about possible vaccine contamination. According to Goodfield, virus contamination was suspected in a vaccine batch made by the NIH, but never in the vaccine made by Merck.
The connections between Merck, the military biowarfare establishment, and the NIH, are well-known to medical conspiracy buffs. The Merck Company is no stranger to biowarfare. George Merck, who directed the company during the Second World War, also directed America's germ weapon research program. As part of the War on Cancer in the early 1970's, President Richard Nixon transferred part of the U.S. Army's biowarfare unit at Fort Detrick, Maryland, over to the National Cancer Institute under the direction of the National Institutes of Health.
After finishing a large experiment in which thousands of blood samples are tested and stored, the specimens are usually discarded. However, after the vaccine trials ended, Szmuness insisted that the Center keep all the tens of thousands of blood samples donated by thirteen thousand gay men. When asked why he was keeping so many vials of blood, Szmuness replied, "Because one day another disease will erupt and we'll need this material."
As late as 1983, several infectious disease specialists reported that AIDS might be related to the hepatitis vaccine because it was discovered that 93% of their AIDS patients tested positive for hepatitis B blood markers! Because the hepatitis B vaccine was manufactured from the blood of gays who carried the hepatitis virus, the physicians feared the AIDS virus could have contaminated the vaccine. Health officials at the CDC reassured everyone that the vaccine was safe.
The safety of the experimental vaccine was also defended by Cladd Stevens, who collaborated closely with the Szmuness in the gay trials. When Szmuness died in 1982, Stevens became the official spokesperson for the experiment. In a May 1983 report she claimed that only two men in the experiment had been diagnosed with AIDS. One was diagnosed two years after receiving the vaccine; the other four years after. "There is no excess incidence in the high-risk population," she emphasized.
Stevens' reassurance was premature. In 1983, the year she penned her report, the sad truth was that one out of every three men injected in the experiment was infected with the AIDS virus.
Prior to the official discovery of the AIDS virus in 1984, the CDC and the vaccine makers repeatedly assured the public that the new commercially-available, non-experimental hepatitis B vaccine was safe. However, Abbott Laboratories, the manufacturer of the commercial hepatitis vaccine, was more cautious about its safety. In their brochure urging gay men to take the commercial vaccine, the company advised: "Many people are concerned about the possible transmission of AIDS and Kaposi's sarcoma; it is unknown whether these are conveyed by blood or blood products. The current hepatitis B vaccine, although produced from the pooled blood of chronic (virus) carriers, is manufactured utilizing several processes believed to inactivate all known groups of viruses."
Although the CDC was confident about the safety of the commercial Hepatitis B vaccine, the public was not. Word quickly got around that the vaccine was made from gay blood. As a result, many people refused to be injected with it. Even though the vaccine is no longer manufactured using gay blood, many people still fear the hepatitis B vaccine because of its association with gay men and AIDS.
In 1986 Cladd Stevens' group did a second follow-up study of 212 men who were injected with the experimental vaccine. Amazingly, 6.6% of the men had positive tests on blood samples taken during the period November 1978 and October 1979! By 1981 over 20% of the men were positive; by 1984 (the end of the study period) over 40% tested positive. Most of the HIV-positive men were immunodeficient.
Since the first cases were discovered in 1979, the media has shocked the public with a never-ending number of sensational AIDS stories. Yet never once has the media given credence to the idea that AIDS is man-made. One of the most outrageous and homophobic AIDS stories concerns "Patient Zero."
In October, 1987, the best selling book And The Band Played On was published. Randy Shilts, a gay man and the first newspaper reporter to cover AIDS full time, wrote an exquisitely detailed historical account of the epidemic. He blamed the Reagan administration for ignoring the epidemic, and for its shameful refusal to fund AIDS research and education.
Despite the brilliance of his book, Shilts is likely to be best remembered for promoting the story of "Patient Zero"--a promiscuous, young Canadian airline steward named Gaetan Dugas, who is accused of bringing the AIDS virus to America.
The medical "facts" about Shilts' Patient Zero (along with lurid details of his sexual life) were eagerly supplied by epidemiologists at the CDC and by Manhattan physicians. Gaetan Dugas was diagnosed with AIDS-related Kaposi's sarcoma in June 1980 in New York City. For a year before his AIDS diagnosis Dugas suffered from swollen glands and a skin rash. Shilts' sensational account of Patient Zero, replete with wanton gay promiscuity and bathhouse sex, was shamelessly promoted in a media blitz.
Although Shilts admitted his Patient Zero theory remains "a question of debate and...ultimately unanswerable," he still claimed Dugas brought AIDS from Paris to North America. Dugas "no doubt...played a key role in spreading the new virus from one end of the United States to the other." Unmentioned by Shilts are medical reports that indicate the AIDS virus was already "introduced" into the New York City gay community, two years before Dugas was diagnosed!
The blood tests from Szmuness' experiment show that the AIDS virus was definitely present in specimens dating back to 1978-1979. In blood specimens dating back to 1980 (the year Gaetan Dugas was diagnosed) Cladd Stevens has reported that twenty percent of the men in the experiment were HIV-positive! Thus, it is inconceivable that Dugas could have flown in from Paris and infected such a large number of gays, some of whom were infected as early as 1978-1979. Furthermore, the "source" of Dugas' own HIV infection was never ascertained.
No matter. The media had a field day with the story. Time (October 19, 1987) reviewed And The Band Played On in its medicine section as "The Appalling Saga of Patient Zero." The cover illustration of California magazine showed a shadowy airline steward deboarding a plane, suitcase in hand, as "Patient Zero: The Man Who Brought AIDS to California." The bold headlines of the New York Post (October 6) read: "The Man Who Gave Us AIDS--triggered gay cancer epidemic in U.S." Not to be outdone, the Star tabloid featured Dugas as "The Monster Who Gave Us AIDS," and condemned him "a modern typhoid Mary--the man who infected a continent with AIDS." Even the supposedly scientific AMA publication, American Medical News (October 23) fell for the story, claiming Dugas "may have brought AIDS to the United States."
These accounts of a dead man serve as examples of how AIDS "facts" become propaganda that is then used to suit various political, scientific, social, moral, and even literary agendas.
Along with the Patient Zero story are other AIDS myths which have attained the status of truths. None is more widely believed than the African green monkey story, one of the most powerful fairy tales of our time.
Grown-ups know that fairy tales are never true. But, like children, adults can suspend belief and be entranced by the adventures contained in the world's most beloved fairy stories.
And so we pretend. And we make fairy stories real.
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Andie333
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posted
I've been watching the movie, And the Band Played On, about the early days of AIDS.
And again, I think Dana's got a point about AIDS finally getting press because of its mortality rate, despite the fact it was concentrated initially in a population most people didn't care too much about.
But I know offhand of three people who have died from complications of Lyme. My knowledge is really limited. There must be others. Again, has anyone kept track of this? All I've been able to turn up on a search has been statements like: Lyme fatalities are "rare" or "uncommon"
I also wonder if there's been a spike in ALS dx and deaths in the past few years. An acquaintance of mine -- a vibrant mom in her 40s -- died about 6 months ago from what the ducks said was ALS. But ever since my dx and learning more about this disease, I've wondered.
Anyway, I'd be grateful for any information anyone has. I'm at least going to start trying to gather information. If my Lymey brain ever cranks up again, maybe I can start writing.
Andie
Posts: 2549 | From never never land | Registered: May 2005
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lymeloco
Unregistered
posted
How can something like this happen? Heard this a little while ago on the news. This happened in Wilton N.H..
By SON HOANG Union Leader Correspondent 6 hours, 21 minutes ago
Wilton -- Students at Wilton-Lyndeborough Co-op High School were stuck in their classrooms for more than four hours today after a slide intended for viewing anthrax under a microscope came apart, prompting a scare and causing officials to lock down the high school.
According to a note sent home with students, who were released from school around 3:30 p.m. yesterday, a slide came apart in the hands of a student.
Deputy State Epidemiologist Elizabeth Talbot determined that the slide, which she said may be 25 years old, would not get any staff or student sick. The slide was treated with preservative stain that kills even fresh bacteria.
Anthrax, caused by the spore-forming bacteria Bacillus anthracis, is an acute infectious disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It usually occurs in animals, but occasionally is transmitted to humans via a cut, inhalation or consumption of contaminated meat. Exposure can cause sickness and in some rare cases, death.
The lockdown started just before 11 a.m.
"It happened right before the first lunch," said a student who identified himself as Mike Ford, a junior from Lyndeborough. Ford, who called from his classroom on his cell phone, said students had all "just been hanging out" in the same classroom, doing nothing, for more than four hours.
"We're all hungry and kind of annoyed," he said late yesterday afternoon. "Everyone is pretty upset."
Students were sent home with a letter to parents -- some of whom had been advised of the situation by their children who had called from their classrooms -- explaining what happened.
A community informational meeting is scheduled for Nov. 28 at a time and place to be announced.
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(more? or is that too much already?)
Posts: 8430 | From Not available | Registered: Oct 2000
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Andie333
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
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posted
I don't know about anyone else, Lou, but I'm singing right along!
Andie
Posts: 2549 | From never never land | Registered: May 2005
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Linda LD
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posted
To comment on the AIDs epidemic post.
My brother (the one who doesn't believe my family has Lyme and says my saying my children have Lyme is "tragic!" And nearly said Menchover by proxy...
When he was in med school--around 1978 to 1981--he came home and talked about how all the Hatians (or was it cuban refugees?) that were in Memphis had some "weird" venerial disease that was killing them. He was talking about AIDs before AIDs had a name...
L
Posts: 1171 | From Knoxville, TN US | Registered: Dec 2004
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lymeloco
Unregistered
posted
Here a duck, there a duck...everywhere a duck,duck! I also was singing along!
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dontlikeliver
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Member # 4749
posted
I also recently watched 'And the Band Played On' and felt inspired by what they did, getting together in large numbers to bring attention to the matter. (candle light march for instance).
We need to 'make some noise', but we would need large numbers.
DLL
Posts: 2824 | From The Back of Beyond | Registered: Oct 2003
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Southampton Lyre
Unregistered
posted
Hello Linda,
When your brother is in a better mood, please ask him if he remembers if they were Haitians or Cubans? It would be interesting to know.
Cuba has made many accusations against the US alleging biological attacks, but one of these has been substantiated beyond any doubt, and involved African Swine Fever virus, a virus whose "vector competence" in ticks Plum island was working on for years.
More recently Steere camp entomologist DF worked in Plum Island on the same thing - vector competence of Ixodes ticks for African swine fever virus.
Oh, and tell your brother that Munchausen's-by-proxy is now an officially discredited diagnosis here in Britain. Its originator, Professor Roy Meadow, was stripped of his medical licence a few months ago. (see www.msbp.com)
Southampton Lyre
quote:Originally posted by Linda LD: To comment on the AIDs epidemic post.
My brother (the one who doesn't believe my family has Lyme and says my saying my children have Lyme is "tragic!" And nearly said Menchover by proxy...
When he was in med school--around 1978 to 1981--he came home and talked about how all the Hatians (or was it cuban refugees?) that were in Memphis had some "weird" venerial disease that was killing them. He was talking about AIDs before AIDs had a name...
riversinger
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 4851
posted
One of the big differences in the AIDS movement and the Lyme movement is that the AIDS group was, largely, a very cohesive movement.
Already marginalized by society as a whole, and used to forming their own underground society, they already had a structure from which to pull together and protest. Some of them were already very active and outspoken, and were simply able to turn their focus onto the AIDS picture.
Also, as a community, the ones who were well, stood behind those who were ill. They did not have to depend on their families to support them, as often they did not. But they could turn to their lovers and friends, others who were also at risk, to stand up and fight when they were too sick to do so themselves.
The Lyme community is a completely other kettle of fish. Lyme can, and does hit everybody. Gay, straight, Republican, Liberal, conservative treateres, alternative treaters, no matter what your point of view, you can get Lyme. And hate and argue with all the OTHER people who have Lyme, and have different ideas about how to handle fixing the problem.
We don't have lovers and friends and families and whole communities standing up for us, because each one of us is just an individual with Lyme. Our families are struggling with whether or not they believe us, and how to take care of us. We are not a cohesive, collective group, with similiar wants, needs, and hopes.
Now, the truth is, that those at risk for AIDS are actually much more diverse than most think about. There are plenty of straight, ordinary women who got it from their bisexual, or in the closet, or drug using, or prostitute using, husbands or boyfriends. There are children who were born to women with HIV. Across the world, there are endless scenarios on how you could be expsoed. It is not just gay men we are talking about. But they were the face of the AIDS protest movement here.
We don't have a face like that to present, at least until we agree to put aside our differences and MAKE one. We have to somehow find a way to put forward a cohesive front, stop the infighting among the various groups, and work together.
You asked about whether your brother said Hatians, or Cubans.
HAVANA - When Cuba discovered its first AIDS case in 1986 among soldiers returning from Angola and Mozambique, alarm bells went off in the island's Communist leadership.
The virus was largely unknown and 300,000 Cuban soldiers who fought in Africa over a decade could have been exposed.
Authorities scrambled to test all military personnel that had been in Africa, and quickly found dozens of cases.
Story continues below ↓ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- advertisement --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HIV-positive Cubans, at first mainly heterosexuals but later increasingly homosexuals, were shut away in a sanatorium, a controversial policy that drew international criticism.
Cuba stopped quarantining in 1993 and allows people with HIV to stay at home after a course to teach them how to look after themselves and not spread the virus.
Universal free access to locally made generic anti-retroviral drugs has kept AIDS cases and deaths very low, said the UNAIDS program.
Almost 20 years later, Cuba has one of the lowest rates of HIV infection in the world, a prevalence of less than 0.1 percent of its sexually active population.
That's six times less than the United States and a big exception in the Caribbean, the second most-affected region in the world after sub-Saharan Africa, according to UNAIDS.
Cuba, a country of 11 million people, now focuses heavily on prevention and will mark World AIDS Thursday by sending out volunteers to distribute free condoms on the streets of central Havana to encourage safe sex.
Since 1986, only 6,782 Cubans have tested positive for HIV and 2,784 have developed AIDS, with 1,314 deaths, according to the Health Ministry.
``The quarantine was very effective in stopping the first wave of the epidemic that came from Africa, given the amount of people we had over there,'' said Cuba's top AIDS expert Dr. Jorge Perez, a director at Havana's Pedro Kouri Tropical Medicine Institute.
``Of course, it was painful for the people interned,'' he said.
Pets and lovers Cuba still requires mandatory HIV testing for pregnant women, blood donors, army recruits, prison inmates and all adults with sexually transmitted diseases.
But at the Los Cocos sanatorium in a mango and coconut grove on the outskirts of Havana, the 300 resident HIV patients are there because they want to be.
They live in bungalows with room-mates or their partners. Pets are allowed, there is a basketball court and the food is better than in the average Cuban household.
Besides 24-hour medical care, Los Cocos gives gay patients a refuge from Cuba's homophobic society.
``I've been here eight years and decided to stay. I have everything I need: food, medicine, housing and the doctor right there,'' said Josue, 36, who lives with his gay lover.
Another resident is Maria Julia Fernandez, an anti-AIDS health worker and widow of the first AIDS case detected in Cuba, Reynaldo Morales. He was a soldier who returned from Angola in 1986 and died at 45 after 11 years at Los Cocos.
Fernandez has lived with HIV for almost two decades without developing AIDS and does not take anti-retrovirals.
Anti-retroviral arsenal When Cuba adopted its outpatient program for people with HIV in 1993, only 15 percent of the patients left the sanatoriums.
``We were surprised. We thought the sanatoriums would empty,'' said Los Cocos director Rigoberto Lopez.
Mass testing allows Cuba to detect 80 percent of HIV cases in their first year of infection, public health official say. The virtual absence of intravenous drug use in Cuba has helped too.
Cuba's big advantage in the fight against AIDS is that its biotech industry produces six anti-retroviral drugs -- ZDV, DDI, D4T, 3TC, DDC and IDV, Lopez said.
``The manufacture of generic drugs brought an extraordinary turnaround in the lives of people who live with HIV, giving them a better quality life, clinically and psychologically,'' he said.
Deaths have dropped from 25-30 to 4 or 5 a year at Los Cocos.
Cuba currently treats 1,900 AIDS cases with generic drugs that cost the state $350 per person a year, and will soon start producing protein inhibitors to replace imports, Perez said.
Perez expressed concern about a steady increase in HIV-positive cases among men who have sex with men, saying: ``We have done a lot in controlling the impact of AIDS, but we cannot sit back contented.''
Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.
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Andie333
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posted
A turning point in AIDS coverage came with a young boy named Ryan White battled with that disease.
Ryan was a hemophiliac who contracted AIDS via blood transfusions. The boy and his family were so ostracized by schoolmates and neighbors and so harrassed that they ultimately had to move to an entirely different city.
Suddenly, as Ryan's story received press, people in general began to be open to the possibility that AIDS wasn't a disease that just "those" people had.
Ryan made the cover of People Magazine twice in the mid 1980s.
By then, most everyone realized they could be vulnerable to AIDS, either by direct infection or indirect. And, as noted, it could be found, as Lyme, in people regardless of ethnicity, sexual preference, age or income.
And, as pointed out in several of the articles posted, there actually wasn't a cohesive "plan" for treating AIDS. Some who were infected followed a more traditional route; others went to Mexico or Europe or S. America in search of something. While scientists got into an ego-driven squabble about finding a solution.
For years, too, AIDS was misdiagnosed. Once diagnoses began to surface, the reactions weren't always predictable. Friends would often avoid PWAs (People with AIDS) for fear of being infected themselves. This often made medical care diffiuclt and it was hard sometimes to find funeral homes willing to deal with people who had died from the disease. Sometimes, the families were supportive; otherwise, due to fear or previous family divisions, the family support was non-existant.
Sadly, it took the face of Ryan White (who subsequently lost his life to AIDS) to finally being that disease into the mainstream.
Andie
Posts: 2549 | From never never land | Registered: May 2005
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just don
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Member # 1129
posted
Even in the very small town I live this has touched it. I met a nice young couple years ago when I was in the business of making home loans for a major savings and loan. This would have been in the 1985-1990 era. I cant remeber now IF I was able to help them or not. I still remember exactly what house they lived in. He was a "hemopheliac" also. needing regular blood transfusions to stay alive because he couldnt manufacture on his own. Somewhere apparently in those early years of not knowing he contracted HIV from the blood. he had infected his wife, unknown at that time also. They had a young daughter like 8-9 yers old who was born about same time as infection, as was thought. The husband went into full blown Aids and died. Within months the wife died. Then about a year later the daughter died also. The WHOLE family wiped out from this unfortunate set of cercumstances. The community did care and was rocked with emotion at the time. There was newspaper articles regarding same inbetween mother and daughters death, trying to promote understanding and NOT having shunning of the daughter. Tragity times ten!!! Aids is such a terrible thing. I guess I am more insulated than most being of the midwest, but it does rear its ugly head alot. I think it is a sign of understanding and education to see aids as a cause of death in the obits. You see so many very "young" people dying these days. So many heart attacks and failures. What is ever contributing to these events??? Or is it something else they call 'X' because they dont know better. I 'DO' know they would not call lyme, 'lyme' here on a bet because we dont have it 'here'. And not one local duck knows what it is, if it slapped them in the face. So its called 'x', 'y' and 'z' and left at that. If MY kids dont say that I died or succumbed to lyme or at least fought it for ___X amount of years, at least, I am going to haunt them till they die!!! LOL. But actually a serious matter. I think we should ALL discuss with our survivors to print every word of lyme the paper or our obits will hold!! It is propably the only real worthwhile contribution I can make, anymore!!Because I remain--just don--
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