Our letter to the editor is here.
An abstract of the Baxter article is here.
The editorial by Dr. Lantos is here.
The reply to our letter to the editor by Baxter is here.
Lantos response to our editorial is here.
The LYME POLICY WONK blog is written by Lorraine Johnson, JD, MBA, who is the Executive Director of LymeDisease.org, formerly CALDA. Contact her at lbjohnson@lymedisease.org. On Twitter, follow me @lymepolicywonk.
The IDSA panel list has been revised to reflect the fact that Dr. Paul Duray has resigned from the panel. The IDSA does not post this type of information as a stand-alone announcement. Instead, they revise their prior notices. So you have to keep a close watch on their website for changes. What they did was add to his listing the following: Resigned from the Panel on October 7, 2009, due to a family illness. I am sure that everyone’s heart goes out to Dr. Duray and we wish him and his family the best during this trying time. Let’s light a candle for Dr. Duray and his family.
One of the most frustrating pieces of the Lyme disease puzzle is that testing for…
California’s Board of Pharmacy (BOP) is considering regulation changes that would restrict access to certain…
I recently took part in a webinar on “long haul” illnesses, otherwise known as infection-associated…
A recent article in Lancet written primarily by authors of the IDSA Lyme guidelines aims ”to blow apart the world of the Lyme disease advocates”–a goal that sounds more appropriate to warfare than medical journalism. Most of the authors of the article were under investigation by the Connecticut Attorney General for violation of antitrust laws in connection with the development process for the IDSA Lyme guidelines. The opinion piece is included in Lancet’s “personal view” section and reads like a personal vendetta from those named in the antitrust investigation, referring to patient advocacy groups as “antiscience” and making ad hominem attacks on physicians who treat chronic Lyme disease.
What do Representatives Chris Smith and Frank Wolf have in common? They know how to ask the right people hard questions. What do the IDSA, the NIH, and the IOM have in common? They’ve honed the skill of the artful dodger. Representatives Smith and Wolf want to know why the NIH “stepped back” from its charge to run a state of the science conference and handed that hot potato to the IOM. One big difference between the NIH process and the IOM process? The NIH process considers bias a conflict of interest, meaning IDSA folks wouldn’t be sitting on an NIH panel. But, drum roll. . .the IOM permits panels to be biased and coincidentally has a panel that consists almost exclusively of IDSA folks, 4 of 6 panel members. Oh, and one more thing, the IOM is not technically considered to actually be ‘the government’. This is a picture perfect example of plausible deniability. The NIH didn’t stack a panel. The IOM did with IDSA folks. But, hey, they like bias and they are not accountable, are they? A copy of the letter from Representatives Smith and Wolf to Dr. Francis Collins of the NIH together with Collins response can be downloaded at the bottom of this blog post.
