Medicine, government have failed us on Lyme disease (Commentary)

By Special to Syracuse.com

Mary Beth Pfeiffer, an investigative journalist from Ulster County, N.Y., is author of “Lyme: The First Epidemic of Climate Change” (Island Press).

By Mary Beth Pfeiffer | Special to Syracuse.com

In one week recently, a Hudson Valley woman died from a paralyzing virus and an Ontario, Canada, boy suffered meningitis, both from the bite of a disease-toting tick.

This year, in Central New York, conservatively hundreds will be infected with tick-borne diseases in a growing, and uncontrolled, medical crisis. Since 2014, Lyme disease cases alone have doubled in six area counties, to nearly 500 in 2017 – or, more accurately, as many as 5,000 when under-reporting is considered.

We live in an era in which going outdoors is risky. But this unfolding epidemic – of which Lyme disease is but a significant part -- has been made worse by failures of government and medicine.

Don’t fault doctors, who have been told only the rules of Lyme disease, not the significant exceptions. Blame the medical society, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, that has crafted, promoted and fiercely defended the guidelines governing Lyme care. Blame the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has endorsed an unhealthy status quo that governs treatment worldwide.

More at this link: https://www.syracuse.com/opinion/2019/08/medicine-government-have-failed-us-on-lyme-disease-commentary.html

Discovered at: https://www.lymedisease.org/med-gov-failed-lyme-pfeiffer/

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Many Blessings,
CrystalRiver