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In yet another attempt to intimidate, harass, silence and ridicule Lyme disease victims, McSweegan published an internet web page listing many women with Lyme-- some of whom have participated on THIS forum--- (which he and his biowarfare buddies monitor like a hawk, I might add..)

He has since taken his libelous and threatening "hit list of women" page down-- but not before I took a copy of it for legal purposes--- to prove his harasssment and stallking.

Of course in his lies about me, Snapcrackle, he fails to mention that I was the person who first posted a thoroughly researched and footnoted WIKIPEDIA page where I listed his career in biowarfare and articles he had published on anthrax and bubonic plague, and his reprehensible novel "Deliberate Release" --about releasing a bioweapon on the public.

He also fails to mention that his scum have spent months trying to delete the Wikipedia biodefense funding information that Lisa, myself and many others have posted--- information that links most Lyme reseearchers, and some IDSA members with BIOWARFARE--- a conflict of interest which Blumenthal did not address in his recent agreement with IDSA.

He (McSweegan) apparently found out my email address from looking at my profile on Lymenet, and then he spent hours trying to find out information about me...much of it very old and inaccurate. He then made the insane and ridiculous lie that I had been kicked in the head by a horse... What a moron.

Without further ado... here's a copy of McSweegan's "hit list "-- saved to my stick.

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http://mysite.verizon.net/emcsweegan/LD.html
The Wacky World of Lyme Disease

Lyme disease is a common tick-borne infection that generates an uncommon amount of angst, hysteria, and bizarre behavior among people who think they might have the infection. The first inkling I had of this psychosocial reaction to Borrelia burgdorferi was a phone call from a local veterinarian. She called to ask about a meeting I was organizing and, in the course of the conversation, she mentioned that she had recently injected herself with a crude canine vaccine against Lyme disease. I thought that was a foolish precaution against an infection that is antibiotic-responsive, non-fatal, non-communicable, and geographically- and seasonally-limited.
But then I started to encounter far crazier people.

There was Janice Beers, a lawyer, who ran a Ohio support group for people who may or may not have had Lyme disease. Despite the diagnostics and the assurances of her two physician sons, she insisted she had Lyme disease. That singular obsession seemed to have led her to conspiracy theories about Lyme disease. Paranoia and delusion followed. She wrote 30-page tomes about these conspiracy theories and her painstakingly gathered evidence of those conspiracies, which she mailed to me and numerous other scientists, officials and politicians. (Fortunately, this was before the widespread use of blogs and websites so none of her depressing, disturbed thoughts are preserved online.) Evidently, the paranoia became unbearable and she fled her house, her family, and the state. A call to me from a family member suggested she might be headed our way--possibly with a gun--so the local police were alerted.
She never showed up and has long since disappeared from that patient/activist fantasy world called, "Lymeland." Perhaps her physician sons managed to get her the psychiatric care she so obviously needed.

Then along came Karen Forschner, another self-appointed activist for Lyme disease patients. She started one of the first Lyme disease organizations in the U.S., but her message and her personae quickly inspired some of her early backers in the scientific community to abandon her foundation and start their own. Indeed, I found her to be one of most deceitful, despicable, deluded people I have ever had the misfortune to meet. (And, in 50 years, across 32 states and 26 countries, I've had plenty of opportunities to meet people. Karen still takes the prize.)
She wanted cooperation--on her terms--and she didn't want any questions. I won't give her the first and asked too many of the second, which led to angry, threatening phone calls to my boss and wild accusations on the Internet. Eventually, she tried a $2 million lawsuit. That might have worked--bankruptcy has a way of refocusing the mind--but for the interventions of the ACLU and the pro bono work of Morrison & Foerster. They knew a petty assault on free speech when they saw one and really seemed to enjoy crushing this one.
The suit was tossed out of court. Karen and her foundation have since dropped off the map, but there is still plenty of belligerent and disturbing behavior in Lymeland.

In late 2003, for example, a woman named Kathleen Dickson, started peppering a Usenet group with my name, accusing me of all the crimes and misdeeds Karen Forschner had previously accused me of committing. I've never met this woman, but she's a friend of Karen's and perhaps she felt compelled to carry on the tradition of insane behavior in the name of Lyme disease.
Her online rants were briefly interrupted when she was arrested for doing to a Connecticut Assistant Attorney General what she was doing to me. She was forcefully confined, and presumably medicated, and then given "accelerated rehabilitation." The rehab didn't take because she's back howling on the Web. To date, she's posted my name on Usenet groups some 1,180 times.
Even more disturbing than her regular Usenet nonsense is a messy website she has assembled detailing all the related crimes and conspiracies supposedly perpetrated by me, my colleagues, the federal government, insurance companies, Yale University, her ex-husband and various family members, Jews, the FBI, various Ct. politicians and lawyers, and....well, everybody. According to Dickson, everyone is stupid and corrupt (except her) and involved in a massive conspiracy about Lyme disease, vaccines and bioweapons. Someone with an interest in psychology and a flair for computer graphics should try to distill her website and its HTML-linked accusations down to a graphic representation of her interlocking and self-reinforcing delusions. I'd pay good money to see such a projection of mental illness; It might even be a useful diagnostic.
About the same time that Kathleen Dickson was digitally foaming at the mouth, another woman appeared online to parrot her accusations about me and Lyme disease. At first I didn't think she really existed; I thought she might be an online alter ego for Dickson.

But Lisa Masterson (aka Elena Cook and [email protected]) is apparently real, British, middle-aged, and a total wackjob. The mental health folks in London appear to have scooped her up at one point. They seem to have had more success treating her than the U.S. authorities did treating Kathleen Dickson. Ms. Masterson/Cook has since faded from the Internet though her demented rants about Lyme disease, stalking, eavesdropping, and bioweapons live on in Google searches.
There is little reprieve from people with Internet connections and obsessions about Lyme disease.

The latest online conspiracy nut is another middle-aged woman in Katonah, New York named Carla Kruytbosch (aka Snappy, Snapcrackle and [email protected]). Her particular obsession is that Lyme disease is an engineered bioweapon that escaped from Nazi doctors working on New York's Plum Island. Online, she lists herself as a professor and has posted several fantastic versions of her Lyme disease conspiracy on Wikipedia. (This again shows that Wikipedia's authors are often fakes and what they write is usually inaccurate and defamatory.)
According to a blurb from Westchester Community College, she once taught web design and computer graphics, has a web consulting business called Freyfaxi Media, which does not seem to exist, and a web-based teaching site, www.thenetcollege.com, which does not seem to function. I guess she's too busy trying to rewrite reality to do any real work. Or maybe she was kicked in the head too many times by the mythical Icelandic horse, Freyfaxi.

What is it about white, upper-middle-class, college-educated, middle-aged women that compels them to use a common infectious disease as the vehicle for their emotional and psychological problems? Whatever the reasons, it's very likely that Lyme-obsessed nuts will continue to appear. Today, the unregulated online culture of blogs, Usenet posts, websites, chat rooms, web rings, Wikipedia entries, and support groups seems ideally designed to sustain and propagate hysteria, disinformation, quackery and hatred.
Someone stop the Internet! I want off!

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Posts: 696 | From New York | Registered: Aug 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by canbravelyme:
Snap:

Can you tell me how an IDSA member with a conflict of interest in Biowarfare would benefit from denying chronic Lyme disease?

Best wishes,

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Posts: 696 | From New York | Registered: Aug 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                         

quote:

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Originally posted by canbravelyme:
Snap:

Can you tell me how an IDSA member with a conflict of interest in Biowarfare would benefit from denying chronic Lyme disease?

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Posts: 786 | From UK | Registered: Oct 2007  |  IP: Logged |