IDSA at the Helm: Crimes Against Humanity?
by Dawn Irons
"Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship to restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privileges to others: The Constitution of this Republic should make a special privilege for medical freedom as well as religious freedom."
Dr. Benjamin Rush,
signer of the Declaration of Independence.
One might wonder how Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of our Founding Fathers in America, could have known over 230 years ago the unfortunate drama that would play out before us today. The medical controversy, and dare I say tyranny, that he described then seems almost prophetic in retrospect.
My pastor is forever reminding people that, “Time proves all things.” And this is certainly the case where the ideas of Benjamin Rush are concerned. The “undercover dictatorship” who is attempting to restrict the healing arts to their exclusive medical society at the expense of denying equal privilege to other researchers and practicing physicians has absolutely proven true over time.
The Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA) has proven to be so exclusively territorial over the treatment and diagnosis of Lyme disease that they have been brought before the Attorney General of Connecticut Richard Blumenthal on charges of anti-trust violations. In layman’s terms, anti-trust violations are the attempts of one group (IDSA) to shut down their competitors for the sake of financial gain.
The competitor in this medical tug-of-war is the International Lyme and Associated Disease Society (ILADS). This group also has a set of treatment guidelines which is the target of IDSAs crushing blow of medical treatment dictatorship.
Attorney General Blumenthal, through process of investigation of IDSA, discovered numerous financial conflicts of interest and the authors of the treatment guidelines were ordered to be sidelined, in a manner of speaking, while an
independent mediator would be appointed to oversee the IDSA while they reviewed the guidelines to see if these conflicts of interests helped shape the treatment recommendations.
The Controversy
The bitter conflict between IDSA and ILADS has to do with long-term antibiotic treatment for Lyme disease. The two medical societies could not have a more polar opposite approach to the treatment of Lyme disease.
No one disputes the fact that if Lyme disease is caught early and treatment administered immediately, it can be easily cured with a standard course of antibiotics.
The problem lies in the dilemma of catching it early. The ILADS doctors who
are the physicians actually treating this disease in the trenches, as opposed to the IDSA doctors who primarily do academic research, have reported that fewer that 50% of the patients testing positive for Lyme disease have presented with the typical bulls-eye rash. It is very possible to have a rash, on the scalp for instance, that is never visibly seen.
IDSA, on the other hand, insist that the bulls-eye rash is seen in over 80% of patients with Lyme disease. But these academic doctors do not treat
Lyme patients on a daily basis.
The Consequences
When the doctors who are entrusted with medical care are engaged in bitter battles over their treatment guidelines, it is the patients who are at risk and suffer.
The vast majority of Lyme patients are finding themselves having to travel out of state in order to get medical treatment for their Lyme disease. If one’s symptoms do not resolve in the IDSAs recommended 14-28 days of antibiotic treatment, many are left with little options for continued treatment.
Insurance companies are using the IDSA guidelines as a basis for denying further treatment to Lyme patients since they report that Lyme is easily diagnosed and cured in 28 days or less. The insurance companies are clearly choosing the cheaper option because the ILADS guidelines are also recognized and accepted into the national clearinghouse of treatment guidelines for Lyme disease. But IDSAs guidelines are shorter and cheaper...and have fewer positive outcomes.
Many Lyme patients, after trying the IDSA protocol and finding no relief in the treatment, are refused longer treatments and are left to find doctors who would consider treating with the ILADS guidelines.
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Pastor Fred Winters of
First Baptist Church Maryville, Illinois was gunned down and killed by a man
suffering from Chronic Late-Stage Lyme disease. The church requests for further prayers for the family of Pastor Winters and also for Terry Joe Sedlacek and his family and friends. |
Terry Joe Sedlacek, CLD patient, was treated by IDSA standards that should have cured him. Recent tests showed his Lyme and co-infections are active and he has left temporal lobe brain damage as well due to ineffective short term IDSA treatments that offered no curative value for his late-stage of the disease. |
Can Lyme Disease Cause Mental Illness?
Make no mistake, Lyme disease, if left undiagnosed or undertreated, will affect the brain to varying degrees.
Terry Joe Sedlacek was recently made into a national news story as the Lyme
disease church shooting suspect.
Sedlacek was a member of the Saint Louis Lyme disease support group. This group knows and understands the conflicts of the IDSA vs. ILADS debate over treatment protocols. Sedlacek was suffering the consequences of an insurance company who would not cover further
treatment. The support group is now working on a fund-raiser to help with Sedlacek’s further treatment. Their website states, “Terry Joe Sedlacek has been suffering from Lyme Disease and its co-infection Ehrlichiosis for the past several years. He nearly lost his life to this disease five years ago and battles the effects daily. His medications and doctor visits are costly. New test results revealed the return of this disease and left temporal lobe damage. He will
begin a new and hopeful treatment in July; most of the expense of these treatments will not be covered by insurance.”
There is nothing that I find more disgusting than the mainstream media who have been reporting this case and ignorantly state that the “murderer is using “Lyme disease” as an excuse for his defense. All the while they are quoting only one side of the treatment debate when they interview doctors about what Lyme disease is and what it does to the human body.
The IDSA doctors who are being interviewed are the very same doctors that the Connecticut AG Blumenthal have found to be riddled with financial conflicts of interest regarding their treatment protocols. This only adds to the dictatorial behavior of IDSA trying to silence the competition and using the media as a means of censoring the ILADS doctors by not interviewing them.
The frequency of Lyme disease in the headline news over the last 2 months has been an eye opener. First their was Travis the Chimp who nearly killed a Connecticut woman while being treated for Lyme disease. IDSA doctors tried to spin that story by saying that unequivocally Lyme disease does not cause rages or violent behaviors. They blamed the incident on the medication the chimp had been taking.
Any respectable Lyme treating physician knows about the Jarisch-Herxheimer (herx for short) reaction that often occurs when the antibiotic kills off the bacteria and the die-off starts to release toxins into the body.
A herx reaction causes many symptoms that range from a worsening of all Lyme symptoms temporarily, agitation and mood swings, to severe pain. These are all a sign the treatment is working and killing the bacteria. Many doctors have tips for coping with the temporary herx reaction that will pass as the antibiotics do their job. Maybe Travis the chimp was having a herx reaction because the treatments were working at killing the Lyme bacteria, not causing him to go “crazy”.
More recently, Lyme was in the news with the tragic killing of Pastor Fred Winters at the Maryville First Baptist Church shooting in Illinois.
The IDSA doctors were once again on center stage claiming Lyme disease does not cause violent rages and psychiatric symptoms. Only this time the story is a bit more insidious because a person was murdered and the suspect had adequately undergone the standard of care for IDSA treatment guidelines for Lyme disease, which should have cured him by their standards.
Recent tests showed that Sedlacek’s Lyme disease was fully active as well as the co-infection of Ehrlichiosis. Not only was his Lyme disease not cured with IDSAs protocol, it led to further deterioration to the point of actual brain damage in his left temporal lobe. Sedlacek was also denied further treatment for the Lyme disease from his insurance company based on the IDSA treatment guidelines. The disease ran its course, untouched by the IDSA treatment protocol.
According to Dr. Richard Draper in his article Temporal Lobe Lesions, “There is a temporal lobe personality. There is an emphasis on trivia and the small details of daily life. There is egocentricity, pedantic speech, perseveration of speech, paranoia, religious preoccupations and a tendency to aggressive outbursts.”
The question must be asked: if Sedlacek had received proper treatment, prolonged treatment, for his Lyme disease, would the infection have ever progressed to the point of lesions on his brain?
As long as IDSA is at the helm and is able to squash the competitive point of view, the treatment for Lyme disease and the ability of insurance companies to deny coverage based on IDSA guidelines will dramatically increase in the years to come.
Whatever the financial conflict of interest that was discovered by AG Blumenthal when investigating the IDSA, is the risk to the American society worth allowing IDSA to crush the competing treatment option?
I say no. If IDSA remains unchecked and ILADS is not given equal access to practice their standard of care in Lyme treatment, we will see Lyme patients left to progress to the late-stage symptoms that can be alleviated or even put in remission so that further permanent brain damage does not occur as it has with
Sedlacek.
IDSA should be ashamed of themselves. There was a term that was once used to describe the needless and horrific treatment of human beings. It was called “crimes against humanity”.
If there is blame to be placed on anyone in this most recent Lyme disease associated murder, I believe it lays squarely at the feet of IDSA.
Not only did the actions of the IDSA create the treatment guidelines, they have been used by insurance companies to deny coverage.
If Sedlacek had been given longer treatment, effective treatment, the possibility is extremely high that he would have never digressed to the point of homicidal aggression and brain lesions on his temproal lobe while having a fully active infection of Lyme and Ehrlichiosis that should have been “cured” according to IDSA guidelines.
This time, they cannot say maybe Sedlacek had some other disease and never had Lyme at all! His current tests, after IDSA approved treatment, showed active infection-- a phenomenon which the IDSA claims does not happen.
Shame on you IDSA... and your crimes against humanity! The death of Pastor Fred Winters lays squarely at your guilty feet, along with the greatly deteriorated health condition of Terry Joe Sedlacek whose life will never be the same again. Shame on you!
