Class Action
brown...@my-deja.com
lawyer. My question to him was this: can we form a class action suite
(not against doctors or insurance) but against the major treating
publications. In other words, the manuals that doctors use to
administer treatment based on infectious diseases.
This is just the beginning stage of a "possible" class-action suite.
The following is information I am needing:
1)Anyone who has been denied additional treatment because the doctor
stated that it was unneccessary, based on published treatment protocols.
2)Any doctor who has been hampered in administering "proper" treatment
due to published treatment protocols.
3)Persons who have found releif from their chronic lyme symptoms after
obtaining additional treatment.
My argument is that the treating publication are causing harm, because
this is where doctors derive their treatment protocols. In addition, I
beleive there are enough peer-reviewed journal articles that demonstate
that Bb can survive agressive abx treatment and that long-term
treatment equals releif for a vast number of patients....
In addition you are welcome to e-mail my friend and give him personal
stories (brief) about your struggle to get adequate treatment.
his e-mail address is "Row...@aol.com" - he has requested that i
gather names of individuals who have personal stories that demonstrate
the current problem. If you e-mail him, please cc: to me.
Any feedback is welcome.
thanks'
rob
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Kathleen
that prove these rheumatologists haven't known what they were
dealing with from the beginning and that the journals should
know this since they have published the the history.
Namely JAMA and NEJM.
brown...@my-deja.com
brown...@my-deja.com
Any feedback is welcome.
thanks'
rob
Jonathan R. Strong
this work, great - it's a step in the right direction. However I have
two concerns:
1) It will be a tough fight - the publications can and will likely claim
that they have publicly accessible editorial standards to which
they adhere, and that the material they publish meets "objective"
criteria for publication in medical journals. While what they
publish may be the "wrong" view of the issues, it will be quite
a challenge to find a way to hold them liable for judging which
doctor's methodology or which lab's written research reports
are the "correct" view. I suspect that this could turn into a long
and fruitless fight.
2) For the same effort, it should be possible to target doctors
and research institutions that promote incorrect and patient-
threatening viewpoints, since there are many cases in which
it can be demonstrated that:
a) their views were promoted while they were in full possession
of documented, peer-reviewed research that contradicts their
views, and that they chose to ignore the findings that didn't
fit their personal agendas, and
b) patients suffered gravely as a consequence of these doctors'
and institutions' actions.
If the "bad" docs and the research institutions are held accountable
for the patients whose lives they've destroyed, this would have a
far more immediate and probably stronger impact on the practice
of bad medicine. Doctors would be put on notice that they could
not ignore a growing body of treatment experience (LLMDs) and
published research except at their peril.
If you'd rather go after the publications, best of luck to you as this
would probably help also. But I think you're looking at a protracted
multi-year fight that will have trouble establishing culpability, whereas
going after the doctors and research institutions could likely bear
fruit much faster.
Either way, best of luck!
- Jon
JWissmille
that prove these rheumatologists haven't known what they were
dealing with from the beginning and that the journals should
know this since they have published the the history.
Namely JAMA and NEJM.>>>>>>
They do know what they are dealing with and have lied to cover it up!!!!!!!
JWissmille
that the disease was self
-limiting, I stopped using antibiotics. But
then he dug deeper and
changed his mind. ...."
source: The Medical Detectives
author: Berton Rouech`e
last chapter -" The Foulest and Nastiest
Creatures That Be"
The last chapter of this book titled, " The Foulest and Nastiest Creatures
that Be" deals with Lyme disease. There is case history of a patient
in East Hampton in the summer of 1982.
The patient descibes her nightmare encounter with this horrible disease.
Her husband describes her condition and says at one point he thought she was
dying. "..I suppose
this sounds a bit silly,...But there was a time,
when Priscilla was at her
worst, when I had an awful thought: We had
never talked about death as
something that might happen to one of us.
I realized that I didn't know
if she wanted a burial or cremation....It gives
you an idea of how sick I thought she was."
The author, Bertron Rouech'e reports , "Dr. Grunwaldt told
me that he had only seen
one case of RMSF in his thirteen years
of practice on Long Island, and
only twenty cases of babesiosis. But
he had seen and treated at least
four hundred cases of Lyme disease." (1982)
Earlier in the chapter Dr.
Grunwaldt tells the author about an EM
rash he saw on Shelter Island in
1975 and again in the summer of 1976.
He talks about taking the trouble
to search the literature- " most of the
reports I found were Scandanavian,
some of them going back to the nineteen
twenties.
I found a 1962 paper by
three researchers at the university of Helsinki
which discussed a possible
relationship between Ixodes ticks and the erythema
chronicum migrans that
was then associated with meningitis. But you can't
count on a rash as an
infallible clue. For one thing, as we know now,
it isn't always present.
For another it only appears several days
after the bite and the intial
symptoms . In any event, I started
treating my cases with antibiotics,
and that seemed to do some good.
I followed Steere's work as it was
published, and that's when I realized that
what I was seeing was his Lyme
Disease. I remember a telephone conversation
I had with Steere in 1978.
He had decided that in certain cases Lyme
disease was self-limiting---that
it cured itself and after a while just
vanished. That's true, of course ,
in a way. It seems to go away, but it
really just goes underground, and
then emerges in a much more serious way.
The late complications usually
take one of three forms......arthritis....
neurological....The third form
affects the heart. When Steere assured me
that the disease was self
-limiting, I stopped using antibiotics. But
then he dug deeper and
changed his mind. We now know that prompt
treatment with a penicillin
can GENERALLY prevent the later manifestations."
"...The laboratory work--the most significant
work---was done at the
Rocky Mountain Laboratories, in Hamilton,
Montana, by a team headed by
Willy Burgdorferi.....As you know the cause
of syphillis is also a
spirochete. Not the same one...And untreated
syphillis, like lyme
disease, can later reappear, with very
serious consequences.
"The laboratory findings were published
in Science and in the Journal
of Clinical Investigation in 1982 and 1983.
And that's
about where we
stand right now. We have the disease
as an
entity, we have the causative
organism, and we have the vector---the tick.
And we have an effective
treatment. There are still some loose ends....."
The chapter ends with an author's note
" A report published in the
June 14, 1990, issue of The New England
Journal England of Medicine
suggests that the avoidance of ticks or tick
country may not be enough to
avoid exposure to Lyme disease.
Dr. Steven W. Luger.. offers both
laboratory and anecdotal clinical evidence
that biting flies--deerflies
and horseflies ---- may carry the Borrelia
burgdorferi spirochete and
transmit it to human beings. He does,
however offer a word of
consolation:"In contrast to the painless bit of
I. dammini, the bite of
flies is painful and not likely to be overlooked."
________________________________
If late manifestations can show up
years down the road and no one can
find the organism--you can't say
treatment prevented late manifestations
of the disease.
source : The American Journal of Medicine
Volume 98 (suppl 4A) April 24, 1995
pg. 4A-38S
John J. Halperin: ".......To draw an analogy
to syphilis, we know from the
infamous Tuskegee study that two thirds
of those who develop early meningitis
will never go on to develop late neurologic
disease...." there are other forms of tertiary syphilis and they are not
refered to . The organ most affected by syphilis is the heart. "There are a
lot of
reassuring data, although
WE DON"T THE ANSWER.
A.R. Pachner: ".....I know some people will
fail doxycycline therapy no matter
what some of the data show..."....The
organism does enter the CNS fairly
soon....the organism likes the basilar areas,
and sometimes it takes a while
for the inflammation and the organism to
reach there...."
Question: "I was involved in a the study
...........for treatment of late
Lyme disease. Most of the
patients that I saw in Westchester County
(New York) had well-documented Lyme
arthritis, with typical presentation and
confirmatory serology. One of the
observations I made is that almost none
of these patients had any CNS
complaints. In light of your animal data,
can you comment on that?"
Pachner: "I don't know why more patients
with Lyme arthritis don't have
neurologic symptoms. The organism goes
into the CNS early. Many of the
troubling symptomatic signs can be
attributed to early inflammation in the
nervous system. The headache, the stiff neck,
and the malaise are often due to
this intial inflammation. As my study in the
monkey shows, frequently this
inflammation can subside, but the organism
does not go away. There are
patients who have Lyme arthritis who will
end up having organism in their
brain. And we still don't know whether that
is live organism or dead organism
because PCR does not allow you to
differentiate. But, I suspect that if I
examined the brains of those patients,
a large percentage of them would have
Borrelia burgdorferi. Why do I think that?
Out of three spinal taps from
people who had no CNS symptoms whatever,
one was clearly PCR positive. It is
not a huge number, but my access to
brain biopsies is limited."
Question: "So the conclusion is, then,
that frequently the neurologic disease
is silent?"
Pachner: "Yes, silent."
_________________
They knew, know the truth and are covering it up as in-- my opinion, pure
speculation--lying!
brown...@my-deja.com
I would be going after the MERK manual and other "cookbook" type
manuals that doctors use to treat disease.... I had an experience where
my LLMD, who is in another state, wanted me to get my liver panels
checked. So i went to my primary care clinic and told the young doctor
that I was undergoing treatment for lyme and that the LLMD wanted me to
get some bloodwork done locally. The doctor asked me about my
treatment and told me he found it "laughable" and pulled out a little
manual from his pocket and told me 14 to 20 days of treatment should be
sufficient.
Well, I was mad at him, but I also realize he is heavily influence by
his little "cookbook" that he carries around.... Lyme is unlike any
other condition and the protocol that is given to many doctors is
wrong... so yes this may be a loosing battle, but it might not. Besides
if nothing else, it might cause controversy, which in itself can be
helpful to the greater cause, Who knows, perhaps when confronted with
further information, and the possibility of a lawsuit, the publishers
of these "cookbook" treatment guides might voluntarily revise future
editions...
In article <VRmJ4.306$Gz2....@news-east.usenetserver.com>,
Rita Stanley
when the CDC recognizes only conservative guidelines.
http://www.cdc.gov/epo/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr4807a1.htm
Believe me, I am all for any way to start breaking down this stranglehold on
thought and its effects on patients, doctors, research funding in Lymeland,
but you have to realize you are up against real power here. The levels of
conservative infiltration are deep and well-seeded in major power
structures. These power structures are the root of all of this as Al Steere
is the root of the conservative approaches to Lyme. And the roots are well
intertwined.
Go for the branches or go for the root?
Rita
Lee
just the leaves and branches are attacked, new growth is likely to come back.
Is the root the CDC? Lee
lo...@my-deja.com
spend a lot of time and money defending, why not offense instead? But
it is going to take $$$$$. We need someone with real financial
resources, not just nickels and dimes from sick people.
Rita Stanley
conservative guidelines, they can always use the defense of power positions
at CDC, Infectious Disease Society, American College of Physicians, etc. And
the major people behind these positions include Steere et al; and they will
be called in to back these works. Where will our docs be? Well, where are
they now? Fighting for their medical practices or afraid that they will be
singled out if they dare come forth. I am glad there are those few brave
souls that are out there now fighting.
Where are the noncon guidelines? Well, we basically have Dr. Burrascano's.
And he is being attacked (our root). Even while he is still in the game, his
guidelines can be discredited because of the investigation and controversy
swirlling about him. We don't have a unifying medical guideline published
anywhere significant that is backed by our docs.
The con guidelines are published everywhere. They are in the power position.
Our position is weak and defensive for the most part; pulling out articles
here and there to defend it. Certainly we have vailidity. The quesiton is
to know your legal battles. Which I do not.
Rita
Lee wrote in message <38F73482...@earthlink.net>...
Krin Collins
Is having this conversation in 'public' a wise course of action? Would not
it be conceivable this will get to the attorneys on the other side of a
case?? I suggest you guys keep the e-mails in a smaller group. I'm
interested in hearing how it turns out, but not if it endangers your
chances. Good luck on this bold move, whatever is decided.
Krin, an observer (with high marks in the one law course she took in 1993 &
no high regard for the legal profession despite it)
Jonathan R. Strong <j...@strong.com> wrote in message
news:VRmJ4.306$Gz2....@news-east.usenetserver.com...