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CALDA press release for San Diego IDSA Conference 2007
California Lyme Disease Association
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 28, 2007
IDSA boots out two Lyme disease exhibitors
When infectious disease doctors from around the country convene in San Diego next week, they’ll learn lots of new information about different threatening illnesses. But they won’t hear a word about chronic Lyme disease. The organizer of the conference, the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), has made sure of that.
“Originally, we were approved to have an information booth at the IDSA conference,” said Phyllis Mervine, president of the California Lyme Disease Association (CALDA), a nonprofit representing patients with the tick-borne illness. “But the conference organizers changed their minds and won’t let us in.”
Mervine said the IDSA won’t say why. “We feel they are trying to suppress scientific information they don’t agree with,” she said.
The point of contention involves the scientific debate about the treatment and diagnosis of Lyme disease, the fastest-growing vector-borne infection in the United States. According to Mervine, the IDSA says chronic Lyme disease doesn’t exist and doesn’t recognize as valid the many studies showing that Lyme can survive short-term antibiotic treatment.
Mervine says that most of the members of CALDA have suffered for years with symptoms of Lyme and other tick-borne infections. Yet, she says, the IDSA—which has broad influence in the medical world—denies care to people in their situation.
“It’s unconscionable that very sick people are simply shown the door. It’s like denying care to people with AIDS, cancer, or heart disease,” Mervine says.
CALDA is not the only organization the IDSA has booted out of its conference exhibit hall this year. IGeneX, Inc., a California laboratory specializing in tests for tickborne diseases, had reserved a spot for the San Diego convention. But, according to IGeneX CEO Nick Harris, the IDSA refunded his company’s check for a vendor exhibit and said they are not welcome.
Dr. Harris is a board member of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS), a professional medical society that published Lyme disease guidelines in 2004. In 2006, the IDSA updated its own Lyme guidelines to specifically prohibit many of ILADS’ diagnostic and treatment recommendations.
Some state medical boards have used the IDSA guidelines to prosecute doctors who do treat people for chronic Lyme. This prompted the Connecticut Attorney General’s office to launch a civil investigation of the organization for possible anti-trust violations. But instead of conducting an internal investigation of the allegations against the guidelines authors, IDSA responded by launching a media attack on the attorney general, ILADS doctors and patient groups supporting the investigation. “This is not what you’d expect from a responsible medical society,” Mervine said.
At the conference, CALDA had planned to distribute information on treating chronic Lyme from the IDSA’s own journal, Clinical Infectious Diseases, as well as copies of the ILADS guidelines.
“We were hoping to have a conversation with doctors at the conference,” Mervine said. “It’s really the patients who are being hurt by the IDSA’s close-minded attitude.”
