http://www.gordonmedical.com/unravellin ... y-protest/
Door: Kenneth B. Liegner, M.D.
Er zijn 4 mogelijkheden waarom iemand aan deze stelling blijft vasthouden.
1- They can be ‘dumb as bags of rocks’.
2-They can be character-disordered, with excessively rigid thinking, and perfect, impenetrable circular logic.
3-They can be corrupt.
4-They can be sociopaths.
One thing is for damn sure: they are truly lousy clinicians.
In 1991 the Lyme disease organism, Borrelia burgdorferi, was grown from the cerebrospinal fluid of my patient Vicki Logan at the Centers for Disease Control in Fort Collins, Colorado despite prior treatment with intravenous antibiotics. Her case made the front page of the New York Times Science Times in August of 1993.
In 2012, the Embers Rhesus monkey study demonstrated conclusively in a primate model closest to man, that Lyme infection can persist despite application of intravenous antibiotics and that animals can be seronegative on antibody studies despite harboring persistent active infection.
Lyme disease is the first infectious disease of truly epidemic proportions that emerged hand in hand with another new phenomenon affecting the health of Americans: the penetration of managed care in to the health care market place.
An infection that can be chronic and require a long-term treatment approach does not fit the ‘business model’ of managed care: predictable premiums, predictable costs, predictable profit. With managed care it became feasible to control costs by defining away the chronic infectious aspects of Lyme disease.
The Infectious Diseases Society of America Clinical Practice Guidelines for Lyme Disease which appeared in 2000 and 2006, insist that chronic Lyme disease does not exist. These guidelines have proven an effective tool for the health insurance industry to justify denial of reimbursement to patients for treatments that their doctors prescribe.
Health plans and insurers and hospitals red flag physicians not conforming to IDSA guidelines for sanctioning and often report them to State Boards of Medical Practice to ‘break their knees’. This cowardly and despicable ‘modus operandi’ is an assault on physicians’ most prized possession: professional autonomy and independent medical judgment.
Hospitals, once proud and independent entities with endowments and a tradition of ‘charity care’ have been ‘captured’ by the insurance industry and are now, often, little more than ‘corporate profit centers’.
Health plans do not want thinking, feeling professionals: they want ‘trained monkeys’ on a ‘commoditized’ health care assembly line, following electronic medical record-prompted ‘algorithms’ designed to maximize corporate profit.
The Hippocratic Oath has now become a ‘quaint anachronism’ superseded by a new Corporate Medical Ethic. “He who pays the piper calls the tune”.
IDSA guidelines (ook onze CBO richtlijn voor lyme)) also serve as a shield for medical neglect, protecting physicians who fail to diagnose or treat (or treat adequately) patients with chronic Lyme disease, who suffer irreversible neurologic injury as a result.
.....................
Raymond J. Dattwyler, signatory to the 2006 Lyme disease guidelines which assert that chronic Lyme disease does not exist states exactly the opposite in a United States patent that issued almost contemporaneously with the IDSA Guidelines.
Allen C. Steere, signatory to the 2006 IDSA Lyme Disease Guidelines which declare chronic Lyme disease does not exist, states exactly the opposite in his published scientific articles and private letters.
He sought a correction when his first name was incorrectly listed in the 1993 Logan Science Times article as “Robert’ and advised the Times his opinion had been incompletely reported and requested it be clarified. According to the Times correction: “he says that the small percentage of patients who have inflammation of the brain despite standard antibiotic treatment do have persistent infection.”
....................
You cannot have it both ways!
...................
Honest science does not need to suppress opposing views.
.................
When patients suffer, deteriorate neurologically and die due to corporate decisions, who is responsible? Is there impunity? Or is there a penalty?
................
Recently, in New York State, six physicians who care for persons with chronic Lyme disease have been simultaneously under investigation by the OPMC. What message does this send to other physicians? What implications does this have for persons with chronic Lyme disease to access proper care within the State of New York and elsewhere?
If nothing else, it indicates that a memorandum of understanding is inadequate to protect physicians and the patients with chronic Lyme disease who depend on them for care.
Force of law is necessary to accomplish this, and to compel insurers to pay for treatment their physicians have determined is medically necessary for this condition.
Legislation containing some or all of these elements has been passed or is currently under consideration in a number of States. Insurers can never be trusted to do the right thing for patients with chronic Lyme disease. Such decisions must be taken out of the hands of the insurance industry.
................
Presently we have underway a vast, de facto nation- and world-wide “Tuskegee Experiment” of untreated or under-treated chronic Lyme disease.
In the year 2000, due to fortuitous circumstances, and unbeknownst to Dr. Dattwyler, I gained access to CDC-funded experimental methods in his research laboratory for more than 140 specimens of frozen cerebrospinal fluid on my patients. Whereas only 2% of specimens tested positive on standard spinal fluid tests, some 62 % of specimens tested positive on one or more of the four experimental assays used. Ironically, Vicki Logan’s CSF tested more than 7 times higher than the positive cut-off for detection of Outer surface protein C antigen, in the very laboratory of Empire Blue Cross & Blue Shield’s own expert consultant.
................
The results of these CDC-funded studies on direct detection of OspA and OspC antigen and IgG and IgM borrelia-specific immune complexes in spinal fluid have never been published.
Why not? Did someone at CDC “deep six” the results of this research project? If so, who made this decision, and why?
I demand the “raw data” from these CDC-funded research studies, which have never seen the light of day, be made public immediately.
.............
