Swordsmyth
06-02-2019, 07:39 PM
It was a sad sight, the mother of a 5-year-old with chronic Lyme disease practically begging for help because no doctor will treat her daughter.“What can I do about this?” she asked U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, an air of desperation in her voice.
That was the tenor of Wednesday’s Congressional Town Meeting on Lyme and tick-borne diseases. More than 200 people, most of them impacted by Lyme or a related ailment, came to hear Smith and his panel discuss the latest in a long-running battle to get chronic Lyme recognized (https://www.app.com/story/news/health/2018/11/15/lyme-disease-congress/2010815002/) by the medical establishment. You can hear Smith talk about Lyme disease in the video at the top of this story.
“Massive numbers of people are getting seriously ill from ticks and the federal response to date has been woefully inadequate,” Smith said, later adding, “Never in my 39 years in Congress have I seen such pushback.”
Upward of 300,000 Lyme cases are diagnosed each year in the U.S. More than half are children, and New Jersey is one of the hot spots (https://www.app.com/story/news/health/2017/09/07/colts-neck-familys-uphill-fight-against-chronic-lyme-disease/636603001/). For many who are diagnosed promptly, the standard month-long course of antibiotics mitigates the illness. But detection is difficult, and for some the symptoms continue for months or years.
The influential Infectious Diseases Society of America has declined to recognize chronic Lyme in its clinical practice guidelines, so sufferers are left to find a “Lyme-friendly” doctor, which is not easy.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve hit my head against a wall about this,” Smith said, citing a litany of bills he sponsored that went nowhere because of what he calls “the flat-earth society” of insurance companies and their bedfellows in Congress (https://www.app.com/story/life/wellness/2016/05/31/rep-chris-smith-lyme-disease-culture-denial/84893764/).
Now Lyme advocates have a new weapon — an explosive book that alleges the epidemic spawned from an American biological warfare experiment gone awry — and Smith, a Republican whose districts stretches across parts of Monmouth, Ocean and Mercer counties, is appealing to President Donald Trump for action.
The book is “Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons” by Stanford University-based science writer Kris Newby. A chronic Lyme sufferer herself, Newby documents how the U.S. military infected ticks with complex, hard-to-detect pathogens in the 1960s. The book’s linchpin is an interview with late scientist Willy Burgdorfer, who did the infecting and references an accidental release of weaponized ticks that might have ignited all of this.
The relationship between the experiments and the continued denial of chronic Lyme is something Smith would like to see explored further.
“If this (book) is true — and the documentation is very persuasive — we were doing bio-weapons work that was grossly immoral,” Smith said in an interview with the Asbury Park Press prior to Wednesday’s town meeting. “It’s a shocking read, and I hope it adds to our push. Looking at what happened might help us come up with how we deal with it now.”
He wrote a letter to that extent to President Trump and three inspectors general — of the departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Agriculture — requesting a “serious and comprehensive investigation” into the book’s assertions.
“We owe it to the overwhelming number of patients currently suffering from Lyme disease,” Smith wrote in the letter, dated May 14. “These individuals — and the American public — deserve to know the truth.”
Although he has not received a formal response, Smith said his appeal got the attention of members of Trump’s inner circle. If Congress won’t act on his bipartisan bill (H.R. 220) to bump up funding for research — currently a measly $11 million for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and $28 million for the National Institutes of Health — he’d like to nudge Trump to enact changes via executive order.
More at: https://www.app.com/story/news/local/communitychange/2019/05/30/lyme-disease-bitten-chris-smith/1212255001/
That was the tenor of Wednesday’s Congressional Town Meeting on Lyme and tick-borne diseases. More than 200 people, most of them impacted by Lyme or a related ailment, came to hear Smith and his panel discuss the latest in a long-running battle to get chronic Lyme recognized (https://www.app.com/story/news/health/2018/11/15/lyme-disease-congress/2010815002/) by the medical establishment. You can hear Smith talk about Lyme disease in the video at the top of this story.
“Massive numbers of people are getting seriously ill from ticks and the federal response to date has been woefully inadequate,” Smith said, later adding, “Never in my 39 years in Congress have I seen such pushback.”
Upward of 300,000 Lyme cases are diagnosed each year in the U.S. More than half are children, and New Jersey is one of the hot spots (https://www.app.com/story/news/health/2017/09/07/colts-neck-familys-uphill-fight-against-chronic-lyme-disease/636603001/). For many who are diagnosed promptly, the standard month-long course of antibiotics mitigates the illness. But detection is difficult, and for some the symptoms continue for months or years.
The influential Infectious Diseases Society of America has declined to recognize chronic Lyme in its clinical practice guidelines, so sufferers are left to find a “Lyme-friendly” doctor, which is not easy.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve hit my head against a wall about this,” Smith said, citing a litany of bills he sponsored that went nowhere because of what he calls “the flat-earth society” of insurance companies and their bedfellows in Congress (https://www.app.com/story/life/wellness/2016/05/31/rep-chris-smith-lyme-disease-culture-denial/84893764/).
Now Lyme advocates have a new weapon — an explosive book that alleges the epidemic spawned from an American biological warfare experiment gone awry — and Smith, a Republican whose districts stretches across parts of Monmouth, Ocean and Mercer counties, is appealing to President Donald Trump for action.
The book is “Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons” by Stanford University-based science writer Kris Newby. A chronic Lyme sufferer herself, Newby documents how the U.S. military infected ticks with complex, hard-to-detect pathogens in the 1960s. The book’s linchpin is an interview with late scientist Willy Burgdorfer, who did the infecting and references an accidental release of weaponized ticks that might have ignited all of this.
The relationship between the experiments and the continued denial of chronic Lyme is something Smith would like to see explored further.
“If this (book) is true — and the documentation is very persuasive — we were doing bio-weapons work that was grossly immoral,” Smith said in an interview with the Asbury Park Press prior to Wednesday’s town meeting. “It’s a shocking read, and I hope it adds to our push. Looking at what happened might help us come up with how we deal with it now.”
He wrote a letter to that extent to President Trump and three inspectors general — of the departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Agriculture — requesting a “serious and comprehensive investigation” into the book’s assertions.
“We owe it to the overwhelming number of patients currently suffering from Lyme disease,” Smith wrote in the letter, dated May 14. “These individuals — and the American public — deserve to know the truth.”
Although he has not received a formal response, Smith said his appeal got the attention of members of Trump’s inner circle. If Congress won’t act on his bipartisan bill (H.R. 220) to bump up funding for research — currently a measly $11 million for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and $28 million for the National Institutes of Health — he’d like to nudge Trump to enact changes via executive order.
More at: https://www.app.com/story/news/local/communitychange/2019/05/30/lyme-disease-bitten-chris-smith/1212255001/