Under Our Skin 2: Emergence Page #3

The illnesses that we see now,

almost all chronic illnesses,

including the neurological,

are almost entirely caused by microbes

and their activity in us,

and the microbes are

no longer symbiotic with us

because we are not symbiotic

with the environment.

My hope is to help people

to step out of the fear

and the hysteria around lyme disease,

and to show what it means

to treat and heal holistically.

I don't think for me

antibiotics were the answer.

When they were needed,

they were very appropriate,

and they were the answer;

but to get me out of

this chronic illness,

it was gonna take way more

than just a pill to kill off the bug.

Now I understand that healing

happens on all levels,

so taking on your own pain

emotionally and spiritually,

that was the greatest

breakthrough for me.

You know, we talked a long time

about whether or not we should

try for the fifth time.

I'd had four miscarriages,

and we knew that the risk

of him being sick

and the risk of him being born

and dying right there was out there,

but I knew that

I always would have regretted not trying,

and I knew that if he were

born and he were sick,

we could care for him.

Jared was born with lyme disease,

and he started coming here,

and he made it.

You know, he's done

very well. He's made it.

He's a happy little kid.

If I did not have

Dr. Jones in my life,

I probably would not

have had a little boy.

The fact that he was born,

and he was born well enough for me

to hold him and care for him,

and he grew, was amazing.

It's a miracle. I really

think it's a miracle.

I call him my miracle baby all the time.

So I received a diagnosis

of a terminal condition,

and after I received that,

I gave up my medical license,

stopped my medical practice,

stopped my research.

I got rid of about $100,000

worth of laboratory equipment.

I donated it to colleagues

who were doing lyme research.

My medical career had ended.

It was a rough time.

It was definitely a rough time.

When they diagnosed Alan with

the frontotemporal dementia,

a lot of it was based on scans

and psychological testing.

A couple years later,

they redid his testing,

and they tell him he passed

with flying colors.

And then they said, "well,

you don't have the dementia,"

and then we were basically dismissed.

I was lucky that there,

over time, was a healing.

And what caused

the healing, I don't know.

In "under our skin," Alan

MacDonald, Dr. MacDonald,

first exhibited the roll of biofilm.

One night as I was looking

at a culture of borrelia,

I saw a large colony of organisms

protected by a gel-like substance.

And as I was reviewing the pictures,

it became clear that this

was very reminiscent

of what they call a biofilm.

A biofilm was a hallmark

of a chronic infection.

It is a gelatinous substance

that encases the germs

and protects them from

immune system attack

and protects them from even antibiotics,

rendering the infection more chronic

and more difficult to treat.

Chronic infection is denied

by the infectious disease society

of America at all costs.

Everything that is built into biofilms

is essentially supportive

of chronic lyme infection.

So, that's strong evidence

that the role of borrelia in many cases

is due to chronic borrelia infection

of the biofilm type.

Over the last number of years,

more and more evidence has come out,

including the biofilm

work by Alan MacDonald,

that supports his notion

that chronic lyme exists,

in other words an infection

of borrelia of lyme

that can persist for long periods of time

and even be treatment-resistant.

There was a study that was on monkeys,

a very important, groundbreaking work.

When you treated a rhesus monkey

for the same period of time

that you would treat a human,

they continued to have

persistent spirochetes in their tissues.

And then the last thing they

found, which is also critical,

is they found that monkeys

that were not treated

that had been, you know,

had been given a lyme disease,

that those monkeys, over time,

tested negative on the test, too.

So there's something that

happens in the immune system

so that you can't detect.

Lyme disease was first

identified in the 1970s,

but it now turns out

that it's much more common

than previously estimated,

about 10 times more.

The CDC now estimates there may be

as many as 300,000 new

lyme infections a year.

It's a really important jump.

It's six times the number of HIV cases,

50% higher than the number

of breast cancer cases.

It's a huge problem.

There's conjecture in

the lyme disease community

that the reason the CDC

all of a sudden reannounced

that lyme disease cases

are really 300,000 a year

is to premarket

for an upcoming lyme disease vaccine.

The vaccine is entirely dependent

on antibodies to one

protein, which is ospa.

They've chemically

combined a European ospa

with a United States ospa,

and they believe that this

combination, which is unique,

will provide protection against anything

that a tick can put

into your bloodstream.

But the co-infections and many strains

are not within the job description

of vaccine protection,

so the vaccine's not like

kevlar that stops all bullets.

The worst thing that could

happen to the patient community

would be for people to come in,

use the patient community to market

a vaccine that harms patients.

The last vaccine that they had out

actually harmed patients.

It harmed people who weren't sick.

If lyme disease responds

to 30 days of treatment across the board,

what's the need for the new lyme vaccine?

One of the problems

is that there hasn't been

a strong interest

in going after treatment options

because most of the treatments

are cheap generic antibiotics.

But with vaccines,

it's a patentable product,

and it's got a large market.

It puts into question

the scientific integrity

of people doing the studies.

Some of the consultants

in connection with this new vaccine

are idsa guideline members.

Members of the CDC, idsa and others

have patents for diagnostic

testing and for vaccines.

They've arrogantly used their

pulpit to deny other patents.

When I was doing research,

it just appeared that

the CDC was a key player

in fanning the flames

of the lyme disease war.

They wouldn't talk to us

directly at conferences

or they wouldn't answer our

questions over the phone.

My impression is that CDC and idsa

was trying to avoid

having information released

in a nationwide documentary film.

July of 2007,

we filed a freedom of information act.

It asked for emails from three employees

and financial disclosures.

By law, the CDC is supposed

to release those documents

in about a month,

but they weren't released

for 5 years, 4 months, and 24 days.

When I finally received the documents,

we got 3,000 pages back.

Over half were censored,

and they never did give us

their financial disclosures.

The big thing is, the CDC

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