While I for one have no reason whatsoever to doubt the safety, efficacy, and vital public health function of vaccines for measles, chicken pox, etc., I had the understanding that there were completely legitimate, science-backed reasons for keeping current lyme vaccines out of wide distribution.
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In the pipeline. The initial version was pulled, the details in the article paint a fairly familiar pattern.
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Well that’s definitely a job someone wanted since they were a kid.
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The FDA, not the CDC, is responsible for ensuring the safety and efficacy of vaccines. I do trust both the FDA and the CDC. Having worked in pharmaceutical manufacturing, including for human injectables, regulatory compliance, and antibody production (though not vaccine production), I do have at least some claim to understanding how the system works.
I’m sorry to hear about your struggle with Lyme, and wish a vaccine had been available to prevent you ever contracting it.
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Sorry but just because someone “believes” that Lyme is under reported or under treated or anything else doesn’t mean those things are true. Acting like doctors are somehow a cabal of actors seeking to ignore your symptoms is really insulting to the people who bust their ass every day trying to make sick people well.
Science is science. Current science disagrees with most of chronic Lyme. Doctor hopping till you get a doctor who “believes” in you and is willing to put you on insane doses of antibiotics (to the extent my eyes pop out even thinking about it) seems exceedingly unwise. Antibiotics are pretty awful for you, at least if you can avoid them. That someone is willing to write you a large dose of them for something that is at best extremely dubious is not a mark of bravery.
Part of the reason it’s hard to diagnose Lyme generally is the tests suck. Why do they suck? Probably because it’s a confusing disease.
Which is not to say you don’t feel like shit and quite likely you have something awful going on that modern medicine (an extraordinarily imperfect science) may not be able to explain.
I really, really do have tremendous compassion for people who are suffering from whatever this is. It seems unlikely that chronic Lyme is what is described and extremely unlikely that large doses of antibiotics are going to do anything more than make people really sick.
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Why do responsible physicians avoid treating “chronic Lyme” with large doses of antibiotics?
“Randomized placebo-controlled studies have shown that antibiotics offer no sustained benefit in people with “chronic Lyme”, with evidence of both placebo effects and significant adverse effects from such treatment.”
Because current science tells them that it’s a bad thing to do. So if you find a doctor who tells you it’s a good thing to do, you found a bad doctor.
It’s not that I don’t understand that people are suffering. It’s that I don’t like the propagation of sham medicine.
Written by one of the smartest and most measured docs I know of:
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/lyme-two-worlds-compared-and-contrasted/
Reading this article, and comparing it to my experience working in the modern medical system, these treatments are laughable. It’s clearly a sham. It’s sad that people are so sick and so desperate that they are willing to be suckered so hard, but ultimately it’s clear that’s what’s happening.
Please tell me how uncaring I am now as I go to bed for a 12 hour shift tomorrow taking care of sick people.
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On the topic of things that can be done to reduce tick populations, are the elimination of the invasive Japanese barberry,
and some invasive honeysuckle plants.
Barberry are one of the things that deer won’t eat, but the plant itself seems to be a perfect incubator for deer tick nymphs, with ideal humid microenvironments. The honeysuckle, on the other hand, is tasty to deer, causing them to congregate in suburbia, and there presence is associated with an increased tick population. The actual environmental dynamics may be more complicated, but in both cases elimination of these plants seemed to reduce tick populations.
The plants below are thought by some scientists to be complete assholes. Remove, but carefully, and don’t plant new Japanese barberry.
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Sucking in a lungful of cigarette smoke while standing downwind of a cloud of nuclear fallout…
It’s true. Medical science already knows everything it needs to know. We can just stop here. /s
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The anti-vaxers are one issue, but there’s currently additional economic factors that discourage the development of new vaccines, as there’s more money to be made by developing drugs for chronic conditions that you need your entire life, as opposed to a once or twice in a lifetime shot.
The article below goes into details, one point I’m not sure about is the conclusion that private/public research collaborations are key, whereas I think it’d work just as well if the gov’t did it all in house.
https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.24.3.622
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FDA approves vaccines but am I wrong that the CDC generally creates the vaccine schedule and determines which vaccines are essentially required - As such I would say they play a pretty large role in the process.
Thanks for your condolences… If the previous Lyme vaccine actually caused arthritic symptoms in healthy patients like the lawsuits alleged I suppose we will never know. I think the fact that chronic lyme is so poorly understood many doctors refuse to ackowledge it even exists doesn’t bode well for a silver bullet vaccine for the disease to likely be effective in the real world anytime soon.
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While I share your worries about chronic lyme disease, I think not treating it with antibiotics doesn’t diminish the risc of it becoming chronic. Unless you count dying as ‘preventing it to become chronic’.
An old work partner of mine went to one of these quacks. The doctor gladly took his money. Even told him that Lyme was sexually transmitted so he shut down emotionally cause he viewed it the same as having HIV or Hep. Chronic lyme is like morgellans doesnt exist.
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interesting use of the word “research”
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my girlfrind’s parents live in a wooded area of long island. We took her dog out there for a weekend and just in the few walks we went on, along a paved road but the dog wandered a bit into the dry leaves and brush next to the road, he got like a dozen ticks. I dont know enough to know if those specific types of ticks carry lyme, but it just made me glad the dog is vaccinated and freaked me out that I can’t be. I like walking in the woods. I’d prefer not to have to worry about getting a debilitating disease from doing that.
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Yeah, our neighborhood’s surrounded by woods. I’ve pulled off three ticks this season, so far. Whenever I do yardwork, I always wear this one pair of jeans that I treated with permethrin. I was getting the ticks anyway – tht’s when I looked at the can again and noticed it said re-apply after 6 weeks. I had treated them last summer, and figured that if the permethrin will supposedly survive multiple washings, surely it would survive hanging the jeans up over the winter. Anyway, re-sprayed the jeans, no ticks this week…
A year or two ago I had a small “bull’s-eye” around a tick bite. The doctor didn’t even bother with a test, said “that’s good enough for me.” He prescribed antibiotics and I had no other symptoms besides the bull’s-eye. (Well, so far.)
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That is my practice as well. The blood work requires about 6 weeks to turn positive, so if you tested at the target lesion stage and it was positive, it was not for that bite anyway. I treat the rash on sight, and save the bloodwork for weird symptoms that could represent secondary or tertiary Lyme. As I said, mean nasty SOB of a germ.
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I got Lyme in the Berkshires 11 years ago. I was warned by 3 people, one of which was from Old Lyme not to run on the trails and to be very careful when I got back to check for ticks. I did the first day, but not the second day, I didn’t discover the tick on my ankle until I got out of the shower 2 days later. It was so tiny, I thought it was a small scab and I picked it off. It was alive, I still have it in a bag.
At that point, treatment was to wait and see if you got it. July 4th, I got it with a vengeance. I had a temperature of 104 and not quite the signature rash due to the location. NP, a month on antibiotics cures all, or so I thought.
After the antibiotics, I developed arthritis in my hands and hips, I could feel my body attacking itself. I was a fit 47. I don’t blame Lyme for this, I blame the month of antibiotics wiping out the gut portion of my immune system, but I didn’t know that at the time. Both hips ended up getting replaced and now I feel like I’m back in the same situation.
I had a tooth ache which led to antibiotics for 2 weeks, the first time I had long term antibiotics since I was on for Lyme. Now the arthritis is back and I’m scrambling to get my gut restored before any more damage happens. I think a compromised gut may be the real source of chronic Lyme.
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I have a feeling that wouldn’t bode well for teaching kids about checking for ticks.
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My 7 y/o got a tick on her head behind her ear. We didn’t notice it until the next day, and when we tried to take it off the head was still there. After an hour or two of trying to hold her down and use tweezers, we said f-it and took her to the walk-in clinic. Another hour of screaming and it was out.
/CSB
Worth a buy:
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