I hope the link works or you can paste it; I came across recently and its an update on the Conn. AG Press Release regarding the hearing on the IDSA's flawed guidelines: "Attorney General's Investigation Reveals Flawed Lyme Disease Guideline Process, IDSA Agrees To Reassess Guidelines, Install Independent Arbiter" Very encouraging to Lyme patients, hopefully this will be the beginning of truth in Lyme Disease!! To view the entire IDSA agreement, go to the Attorney General's website.
-------------------- --Lymetutu-- Opinions, not medical advice! Posts: 96239 | From Texas | Registered: Feb 2001
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poppy
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
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posted
This is very old news. The review was held, reviewers chosen by IDSA, this not objected to by ethics guy who needs to find some other occupation. Guidelines review find them just jim dandy.
In other words, no punishment for the crime.
Posts: 2888 | From USA | Registered: Mar 2004
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Dekrator48
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Member # 18239
posted
It was written in 2008.
The IDSA held their review and made sure it turned out in their favor.
-------------------- The fibromyalgia I've had for 32 years was an undiagnosed Lyme symptom.
"For I know the plans I have for you", declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future". -Jeremiah 29:11 Posts: 6076 | From Pennsylvania, USA | Registered: Nov 2008
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posted
I think we should remember that the "IDSA" and the "IDSA Lyme committee" (who authored the atrocious guidelines) are not one and the same thing.
The IDSA are a leading professional body with thousands of members, all of whom specialise in Infectious Disease. However, the vast majority of them do not specialise in Lyme. They look to the Lyme committee for guidance just as any doctor would consult a perceived "expert" opinion in any matter he was not specialist in himself.
The problem lies in the fact that the committee was not representative of specialist knowledge on Lyme, but only of the point of view of the narrow clique of Denialists. Anyone else was faced with the choice of self-censoring their own viewpoint, or being thrown off the committee.
It is not the thousands of ID doctors who created such a biased committee - that is a failing of the directorship of the IDSA.
Senator Blumenthal's initiative forced the IDSA directorship to announce they would convene an "independent" review committee to take a fresh look at the flawed Lyme guidelines. Every member of this new panel was then vetted by the Professor of Ethics mentioned by Poppy, to ensure they had no financial conflict of interest.
Nevertheless, the new panel declared that the flawed guidelines were valid.
I did predict at the time that this would happen. Not because I believe that the ethics professor was crooked or incompetent, as Poppy is implying (I have no evidence of that - if anyone does, they should publicise it) - but because the professor did not (and was never asked to) vet anyone for conflicts of interest with the US biological weapons establishment.
There were panel members there who potentially had that conflict of interest. Moreover, until we understand that the issue of Lyme as a sensitive, biowarfare matter is at the root of the denial, we will be puzzled when events like the IDSA review panel happen. The IDSA directorship would undoubtedly have been leaned on by the government to ensure that the Denialist point of view was upheld. They would have passed this pressure on, in turn, to the panel members.
When many ordinary people, doctors included, are tapped on the shoulder and told they must act in a certain way because of "national security" - they usually do so unquestioningly.
We need a bit more questioning. Even President Nixon claimed, during the Watergate scandal of the 1970s, that he had to do what he did because of "national security".
Luckily not everyone bought that.
Elena
-------------------- Justice will be ours. Posts: 786 | From UK | Registered: Oct 2007
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poppy
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posted
Sorry, eightlegs, not convinced about the ethics guy. There are easily found lists of characteristics of good guidelines preparation procedures. Any so-called ethics expert that didn't consider anything but financial conflicts of interest did not do his job, especially since the case against those guidelines was well known. So, I say incompetent is the right word.
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