IDSA never answered Blumenthal's damned subpoena
Mort Zuckerman
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Subject: IDSA never answered Blumenthal's damned subpoena
Date: Feb 12, 2009 6:44 AM
I fail to see why refusing to turn over their
own self-incriminating data to Richard Blumenthal
would have cost IDSA $250,000.00 in legal fees. I would
say IDSA got ripped off by their lawyers.
Instead of turning over their data, the murderer
JJ Halperin did an end-run around Blumy and wrote
new bogus guidelines as if they were independent
from IDSAs (or, really, the ALDF's):
http://www.actionlyme.org/ALSLYME47.htm
Maybe IDSA's $250,000.00-Lawyers advised them to
commit this crime:
http://www.actionlyme.org/080430_RICO_CABAL_CAVES.htm
Kathleen M. Dickson
http://www.relapsingfever.org
======================================
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/02/set-objective-medical-standards-get-sued.ars
Set objective medical standards, get sued
The medical journal JAMA contains an article that describes a
disturbing collision of medical science and the US legal system.
Written by a pair of lawyers, the article describes how a national
medical organization's attempts at formulating treatment standards for
Lyme disease has been run off the rails by an alliance between an
organization that advocates a minority medical viewpoint and a state
Attorney General. Over two years later, the standards are being
revised, and the organization that produced them has spent a quarter
of a million dollars on legal fees.
Lyme disease, named after a town in Connecticut where it first rose to
prominence, was initially difficult to diagnose and treat. The
identification of the causative agent, however, has allowed the
development of sophisticated tests for its presence and successful
treatment with antibiotics. A subset of patients, however, report the
persistence of a poorly-defined set of symptoms that persist after all
signs of the bacteria's presence have been eliminated. These
persistent symptoms in the absence of any evidence of infection are
the source of all the trouble.
John Timmer
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The Infectious Disease Society of America has a membership that
includes both scientists and medical professionals, and engages in
both advocacy and professional development, in addition to managing
some academic journals. As part of its professional role, it produces
a large set of practice guidelines, which should "assist practitioners
and patients in making decisions about appropriate health care for
specific clinical circumstances." Lyme disease is among those for
which standards are available, having been produced in 2006.
As the JAMA article describes, when examining the persistence of
symptoms after the apparent end of bacterial infections, the ISDA was
swayed by the facts that there was no clinical evidence for any
persistent infection, and by the fact that the symptoms, which include
fatigue, headaches, and generalized muscle pain, can have a wide
variety of causes. It labelled those symptoms "post-Lyme syndrome,"
and noted that the primary "treatment" used for it—massive and
persistent antibiotic doses—hasn't been demonstrated to be effective,
and exposes patients and society in general to a variety of other
risks. The same conclusions have been reached by the National
Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control.
Unfortunately, that reliance on current best evidence didn't go over
well with the International Lyme And Associated Diseases Society,
which believes that chronic Lyme disease is a real medical phenomenon,
and maintains its own treatment guidelines, which state, "many experts
believe that this condition should be treated with repeated and
prolonged antibiotics." Shortly after ILADS protested, Connecticut
Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (also known for his crusade
against online predators on social networking sites) became involved,
launching an investigation of the IDSA based on the premise that, in
the process of formulating its guidelines, it violated state antitrust
laws.
The lawyers who penned the JAMA piece take this argument apart.
Blumenthal's reasoning was apparently that its review process unfairly
excluded certain viewpoints, and its reviewers had conflicts of
interest. The authors note that the authors of the competing ILADS
guidelines also had conflicts, but (in contrast to the targets of the
investigation), these weren't disclosed in its guidelines. From the
antitrust perspective, they write, "applying the antitrust 'rule of
reason,' a challenger must show that the professional organization
both possesses substantial market power and that the anticompetitive
effects of its standards outweigh patient benefits." Leaving aside
whether voluntary guidelines have market power, they argue that the
investigation failed the second test "because IDSA guidelines
substantially advanced patients' interests."
Of course, a group like the IDSA has to weigh whether spending its
limited finances on legal fees is in the interests of patients and the
medical community. After $250,000 dollars spent, it decided to reach
an agreement with the Attorney General, one that allowed Blumenthal to
declare victory. A separate panel will reevaluate the 2006 standards.
Blumenthal stated that the results, "can serve as a model for all
medical organizations and societies that publish medical guidelines."
According to the authors, the only way in which this is a model is
that this should never happen again. Referring to the advocates for
the existence of chronic Lyme disease, they write, "when high-quality
research repeatedly was inconsistent with the group's hypotheses, the
community should have sought other answers." As for Blumenthal's
office, they conclude, "when political leaders using the force of law
sued IDSA for its appropriate scientific conclusions that differed
with the results they desired, they abused the public good."
As we've seen in the recent uproar over vaccine safety, questionable
medical ideas can persist in the public well past their scientific
expiration date. But this case highlights the danger posed when legal
threats become legal actions. Medical science and public health
organizations shouldn't be forced to choose between spending money on
defending their reliance on a scientific analysis and funding more
research and public outreach.
JAMA, 2009. DOI: 10.1001/jama.301.6.665