Politics, Funding and Publicity

Guidelines should be based on science, not economics and vested interests.

Concerning: A Workshop on the Critical Needs and Gaps in Understanding Prevention, Amelioration, and Resolution of Lyme and Other Tick-borne Diseases: the Short-Term and Long-Term Outcomes October 11, 2010 - October 12, 2010.

"As Lyme disease experts gather for a two-day scientific workshop a trio of disease advocacy groups have withdrawn their participation, claiming that the meeting is biased.

Time for Lyme, the Lyme Disease Association and the California Lyme Disease Association decided to walk away from the meeting, arguing that organizers are not presenting enough information about the possibility that the disease can be chronic, and requires a long-term regimen of antibiotic drugs."

As usual it appears the patient advocacy groups although excessive in their endorsement of long-term treatment are likely correct about the existence of a chronic condition and the conflicts of interest present in those who develop and enshrine the various guidelines.

While walking out of conference is regrettable I do think the fault lies with the scientists who are too close to financial issues. Guidelines should embody the state of the knowledge and should be an indication of the return on investment of steps to be taken, guidelines should not freeze out valid viewpoints with substantial supporting evidence simply because they are so unpopular. This issue was explored a few years ago by the Attorney General of Connecticut issuing a subpoena for records relating to the exclusion of unpopular viewpoints from the guidelines. It would seem strange to see a state attorney-general involved in the issue and it would seem strange to hinge the investigation on antitrust law but for Lyme Disease what state is more relevant than Connecticut?

The science is established. Just as L-forms persist but are often ignored by medicine, it seems that persistent spirochetes exist after antibiotic treatment of mice. Ticks raised in a laboratory and free of the spirochete will acquire an infection after they have feasted on mice that have completed a lengthy course of antibiotic treatment and have tested negative for the spirochete. Such xenodiagnosis is an established technique of immunology.

Concerning The Gout ...

Note: As to the term The Gout as to simply Gout, it seems that this is similar to those who say The Calculus rather than merely Calculus. It sounds as if they have a classical education and know what they are talking about.

Medicine rarely studies healthy people. Medicine has very little knowledge about a healthy joint. Most studies of joints are of the knee and ofcourse relate to painful knees. Synovial fluid is rarely studied or even collected from healthy joints. It ofcourse seems reasonable to assume that whatever is known about synovial fluid from a knee joint is applicable to synovial fluid from other joints but this is not proven. The best source for information on the constituents of synovial fluid are the Ciba-geigy tables even though the studies are quite archaic.

Even people with good health insurance rarely get microbial cultures performed or dna studies that focus on infectious agents. Animal bites, particularly cat bites, are good ways to transmit a variety of microbes, particularly Pasturella Multicida which is a pleiotropic life form.

Many microbes send out volatile signals referred to as Quorum Sensing chemicals that indicate the microbes health and density. Microbes often cease acting as individuals and start to act as part of an organism when the microbes all sense that they have sufficient numbers to be a significant voting block.

Conversely when microbes are in great distress due to a host's immune system successfully fighting them off, many microbes form what is referred to as an "L-form". This is basically a cell wall deficient organism. Since the immune system largely focuses on the cell wall of invaders as well as the cell wall of infected cells, its difficult for the body's immune system to deal with an L form. If the immune system and the pathogen are considered to be battling armies, then the cell walls can be likened to the uniforms. Armies often use camouflage and even resort to wearing an enemy's uniform. An L-form can be thought of the equivalent of a soldier going naked. Neither side really sees his uniform and therefore ignores him. Ofcourse these are all childishly simplistic analogies but they do convey a certain fundamental truth. L-forms tend to escape not only the immune system but also our diagnostic tests.

There are many indications that Gout is a microbial linked disease and that particularly it can be affected by fungal metabolites such as are found in beer, mushrooms, etc. Yet medicine focuses solely on uric acid levels and purine metabolism and ignores the fact that all known remedies that had any efficacy were anti-fungal agents. It is particularly suspicious that in addition to foods that are simply high in purines and therefore eventually increase a person's purine levels, there are some foods that seem to trigger a gout attack far to fast for it to be the result of a modest increase in dietary purines.