TOUCHED BY LYME: Here’s my tweet to the president. What’s yours?

The public is invited to tweet questions to President Obama about the economy and jobs, and he will tweet his responses. Since Twitter messages are limited to 140 characters, it keeps things short and sweet.

Here’s my message to the President:

Untold 1000s are denied access to Lyme treatment by IDSA & CDC, hurting families & the economy. Please fix this. #AskObama

Every day, I hear from Lyme patients who are denied proper medical care for their illness based on the asinine treatment guidelines promulgated by the Infectious Diseases Society of America (a private organization) and embraced by the Centers for Disease Control (an arm of the US government).

Following directives from these two groups, doctors tell these patients that either they aren’t actually sick (hello?) or if they do have Lyme, a short course of antibiotics will cure it.

Receiving little or no medical treatment, people with Lyme disease get sicker and sicker, often losing their jobs, their houses, and their marriages in the process. Children with Lyme often miss a lot of school, and may require costly services to deal with disabilities and cognitive impairments arising from untreated or undertreated Lyme disease. Pregnant women with Lyme can unwittingly pass it on to the unborn, saddling the future generation with both physical and financial burdens.

All this is a tremendous drain on the nation’s economy and well-being.

Mr. President, you can fix this. Have the CDC look at Lyme disease from a broader view than its IDSA-supplied blinders currently allow. Many significant, peer-reviewed scientific studies are currently being suppressed or ignored by the IDSA, and consequently, the CDC. This doesn’t serve the cause of having healthy citizens or a healthy economy.

Click here to tweet your own message to the president. (Remember, couch it in terms of the economy and jobs.)

The TOUCHED BY LYME blog is written by Dorothy Kupcha Leland, CALDA’s VP for Education and Outreach. Contact her at dleland@lymedisease.org.