TOUCHED BY LYME: A "Manhattan project" for Lyme disease?
A prominent Lyme-treating physician from New York calls for an all-out effort to combat the Lyme epidemic.
The “Manhattan project” was the code name for the all-out effort by the US government and its allies to develop an atom bomb during World War 2. Now, an important Lyme doctor in New York is calling for government officials and others to put forth a similar all-out effort to combat Lyme and other tick-borne diseases.
Writing in the Poughkeepsie Journal, Dr. Kenneth Leigner says this should be of particular concern to New Yorkers:
By total numbers of cases, New Yorkers have been more heavily impacted by this tick-borne scourge than citizens of any other state in the nation. All strata of society are being seriously affected, including children. Many ill with Lyme disease have had their lives derailed. With the passage of time and without proper treatment, the condition worsens and can result in progressive debilitation and disability. Unable to work or pay taxes, such individuals may end up drawing disability benefits. Their illnesses are a financial burden to themselves, their families, private health insurers and, through Medicare SSI and Medicaid, to state and federal governments.
Leigner cites the need for better tick control, better testing, more effective treatments, and better physician training. He continues:
Most problems have solutions, but in order to address them, they must be acknowledged. If we could put a man on the moon, we can solve the problems posed by Lyme disease and other tick-borne infections. We just need the will to do so.
Click here to read Dr. Leigner’s entire article.
Click here to read the Poughkeepsie Journal’s investigative series on Lyme disease.
TOUCHED BY LYME is written by Dorothy Kupcha Leland, LymeDisease.org’s VP for Education and Outreach. Contact her at dleland@lymedisease.org.
All true.
This doctor is correct. When I think of my own costs to the system after years and years of this not being diagnosed, it’s horrendous! And in the end, I will die a horrible death also. I knew years ago that all of these conditions had to be caused by just one thing. It’s just that doctors themselves don’t “clue in” when a patient has medical records 6 inches thick that there might be something at the base of all of this. Had they asked more questions, I think they could’ve arrived at that base 10 years ago. It was “I” myself who suddenly, after so much sickness, asked for the Lyme test.
Unfortunately, the insurance companies don’t realize how expensive it can be to “not” diagnose and treat this disease. It probably costs the at least 3 or 4 times the amount it would’ve cost to treat it.
Because of all of this silly thinking, once the patient has had it for several years, the next best option it appears, by these corporations, basically doesn’t amount to much less than murder. By then they don’t want to save the patient at all because it’s their fault in the first place that they have let the case become so chronic, and now they don’t want it treated.
Susan,
There’s treatment? My friend has been suffering for years!