Under Our Skin Page #9

Society of America

Lyme Treatment Guidelines.

He believes that they have conflicts

that may be corrupting their advice.

Our investigation concerns

whether the antitrust laws

have been violated, purposefully or not,

by these guidelines.

They may restrict consumer choice

with tremendous implications,

not only for patient care,

but also the economics

of insurance coverage.

Ideally, authors of medical guidelines

should have no financial conflicts

when they make their recommendations,

but if you look at the current

IDSA guidelines' authors,

6 of 14 of them or their universities

hold patents associated with Lyme disease

or its co-infections.

4 of the 14 have received funding

from Lyme or co-infection

test kit manufacturers.

4 have been paid by insurance companies

to write Lyme policy guidelines

or serve as consultants in legal cases,

and 9 of the 14 authors

or their universities

have received money

from Lyme disease vaccine manufacturers.

The fact that 9 out of 14 authors

have a direct conflict of interest

with somebody who's involved

in manufacturing products

for any aspect of the disease

is completely outrageous.

The Infectious Disease Society of America

should establish a hard-and-fast rule

that the people who serve

on guideline-writing committees

not have any ties to any manufacturer

that has a stake in the outcome

of those guidelines,

period, end of story.

There are a lot of people

in the academic community,

I think, that know

these people are wrong,

but no one will speak up,

so, you know, at what point

will people say

the emperor has no clothes?

You know, when will

the voice of the people

finally reach a level where

the truth will come out?

I mean, I think the truth

will eventually come out,

but how many more people are gonna suffer

before the truth comes out?

As citizens, we ought

to be astonished and alarmed.

Every year,

there's thousands and thousands

of people suffering.

This is a total disgrace.

Write to the IDSA.

Chronic Lyme disease exists.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Continuing hearings on the case

of Dr. Charles Jones.

He had their records,

which did not confirm the history

that the mother had given.

He'd been told that Nevada providers

saw no reason to prescribe an antibiotic.

Nonetheless,

he prescribed for both children.

I hate to sound conspiratorial,

but I think I have a right to be.

I think that it would be

advantageous for me

as a Lyme-literate physician

and as the only pediatrician in the world

who treats Lyme patients

to be out of the picture.

There's no charge

that these patients were harmed.

In fact... how do we get past this

big elephant in the living room

that these patients

were treated successfully

and are now doing very well?

I'm 78 years old.

In the worst scenario, I lose my license.

I don't think they're going to let it go.

I know that.

Bye, Dr. Jones.

All I can do to help.

Thank you.

We all love Dr. Jones.

He's like a father to me.

If they succeed

in taking his license away,

I just don't feel that he's gonna feel

like he needs to be here anymore,

and that's very sad to me.

I don't know where my daughter would be

without Dr. Jones.

We call him the Lyme pope.

I was probably the 30th individual

who had been called

before a medical board

for treating persistent Lyme disease.

They decided

to suspend my license with stay,

which means

that I was allowed to practice,

but the damage was done.

Within a few weeks,

Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina

cancelled our contract,

and then they sued me for $100 million.

Financially, I've lost

essentially everything.

I've lost my clinic.

I've sold the building,

and in a couple months,

I'll be closing the practice.

They had the vision loss,

and they were starting

to lose their hearing there.

They were really young

when they were losing it.

Christy, my oldest child,

died 6 1/2 years ago from Lyme's disease.

She was 19 years old.

Courtney is 25 years old.

Can you say "doctor"?

Say "doctor."

Doctor.

I'm glad somebody stepped in

and helped you,

that you found the right people.

Yeah.

Hi, there, sweetie.

How you doing?

You made significant progress.

I'm delighted with the fact

that your multiple neurologic symptoms

are so much better

and that you're...

You have control of your body.

You can live in your own skin.

From someone who came unable to swallow

and in, you know, an altered...

Bedridden.

Bedridden, altered sense of smell,

and uncontrolled tremors and seizures

and couldn't stand up and... gosh.

- I'm looking good.

- You're looking good.

Well, my greatest fear is that, you know,

like some of the couples

out there who have Lyme,

that both of us will be impacted by it,

and that he would have gotten it from me.

You know, he's complained about

a lot of aches and pains.

I'm not old, but I'm getting older,

and there's, like...

There's things that I'm feeling

that probably happen to everybody.

Like, one of my eyes right now...

I got to go to a vision guy,

'cause one of my eyes is blurred out,

and I've always had 20/10 vision.

I mean, all of a sudden, this eye...

And it wasn't... it was, like,

an overnight thing, that suddenly,

I'm having issues with blurry vision

with my eyes, getting headaches,

which I account

towards the blurry vision,

but bottom line...

Mono-like symptoms.

He goes horizontal, he's out.

Just feeling lethargic.

I won't tell you that it's not

in the back of my mind

that it is possible.

Lyme is a distant cousin to syphilis,

which is obviously sexually transmitted.

Now, if Lyme were found to indeed be

a sexually transmitted disease,

that would change the landscape

of the whole argument.

The only way the Lyme disease

is transmitted

is through the bite of an Ixodes tick.

We know about Lyme disease.

It's something

that we have a good handle on.

That's really the bottom line.

Jared is a very happy baby

that just wakes up happy,

laughs all day, giggles.

He just loves life.

Jared's test came back positive

for the Lyme antibody,

which means he may be infected.

He may end up getting very sick

someday because of it,

but we're very lucky right now.

He's doing well.

I don't want to say that.

I don't want to say he has Lyme disease.

I don't like to use that term

right now...

not yet.

The controversy in Lyme

disease is a shameful affair,

because the whole thing

is politically tainted.

Money goes to people that have,

in the past 30 years,

produced the same thing:

nothing.

Lyme disease is a significant disease

we don't have a cure for.

And that we don't have accurate testing,

that should scare people,

'cause how do you know if you have it?

How do you know how to fix it?

How do you know what to do?

And by the time you're

so disabled by the disease,

you're in a panicked state.

You want help.

It doesn't matter.

You'll pay anything

to get your health back,

and the fact that doctors

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