Outstanding Commentary/Blog

I just saw this new blog post today and was very impressed. Maybe some of you have already seen it. The part that really, really hit home with me was this section of it (below), which relates directly to my experiences working for years in the IC, CFS, fibro, IBS nonprofit realm. Their denial of Lyme is extreme -- you can smell the fear! There are nonprofits that actually get offended and silent when you even mention Lyme: Potential impact on disease charities; There are many charities built around diseases that may in fact be misdiagnosed Lyme disease or caused by Lyme disease. This is a multimillion dollar business and to name a few examples, includes The National Fibromyalgia Association, The National Multiple Sclerosis Society, the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation, and The ALS Association. For example, the National MS Society tax statement filed with the IRS shows over $109 million in 2008 income. Foreign MS Societies are not included. The ALS Association shows over $50 million in revenues for 2008. The Arthritis Foundation states revenues of $133 million in 2007. In 2001, Allen Steere, one of the IDSA Lyme guideline authors, was honored as a “Research Hero” by the Arthritis Foundation. While the MS Society, for example, has suggested screening for Lyme disease, the cheap and unreliable ELISA test is used and probably is not consistently done. As far as is known, none of the other disease charities suggest any screening for Lyme disease. If Lyme disease was found to be the causative factor of a significant portion of these syndromes, charitable funding for these organizations would suffer a significant drop. Here is a link to the entire blog post -- really, really on the money: http://lymesentinel.blogspot.com/2010/03/underdiagnosis-of-lyme-disease.html  

My sincerest apologies. I had not realized that these were your rules. I will adjust accordingly.

Actually, I think I shall just remove it. It was the first time that I ever used it and I was not even sure how it would look once posted. Now I know. I was just trying to give everyone a sense of what my conditions/symptoms are without writing a long, tedious post about everything.

Thanks and again I'm very sorry.