CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease
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Cures deemed worse than misdiagnosed chronic Lyme disease
Peak US public health body warns of risk from treatments for disease that doesn’t exist. Andrew Masterson reports.
The CDC’s warning comes after the organisation identified a range of serious, and sometimes fatal, outcomes arising from chronic Lyme disease treatments. The adverse events include septic shock, osteomyelitis, Clostridium difficile colitis and paraspinal abscess.
The problems are caused by a wide range of treatments, which include “extended courses of antibiotics (lasting months to years), IV infusions of hydrogen peroxide, immunoglobulin therapy, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, electromagnetic frequency treatments, garlic supplements, colloidal silver, and stem cell transplants”.
Read. Comprehend. Discuss.
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@slackerd said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
hyperbaric oxygen therapy
... Chronic Lyme Disease causes the bends?
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@slackerd You forgot the scare-quotes around "Chronic Lyme Disease".
No serious medical organisation recognises the disease as real, and no peer-reviewed study has ever identified a causal agent for it. Nevertheless, over several years a large number of practices have sprung up in the US – and elsewhere, including Australia – claiming to be able to treat it.
But I bet the Black Salve guys will claim they can cure it.
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IV infusions of hydrogen peroxide
How anyone thinks this is a cure for anything I'll never understand. Depending on the concentration, this is anything from hair bleach to rocket fuel, not to mention it's a potentially very powerful oxidiser.
And this isn't a new thing, as this article from 2005 shows: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-prescription-for-death/. And this one from 2006: http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/naturopath-sentenced-for-injecting-teen-with-hydrogen-peroxide.
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@raceprouk said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
IV infusions of hydrogen peroxide
How anyone thinks this is a cure for anything I'll never understand. Depending on the concentration, this is anything from hair bleach to rocket fuel,
not to mentionbecause it's a potentially very powerful oxidiser.FTFY
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@yamikuronue said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
@slackerd You forgot the scare-quotes around "Chronic Lyme Disease".
No serious medical organisation recognises the disease as real, and no peer-reviewed study has ever identified a causal agent for it. Nevertheless, over several years a large number of practices have sprung up in the US – and elsewhere, including Australia – claiming to be able to treat it.
But I bet the Black Salve guys will claim they can cure it.
Or did I? ;)
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@slackerd said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
electromagnetic frequency treatments
It's the Illuminati, they want to give you the cancer!
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@blakeyrat said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
@slackerd said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
hyperbaric oxygen therapy
... Chronic Lyme Disease causes the bends?
HBOT is a cure looking for a disease these days, since so few people actually get the bends any more. There are places that use it as a "treatment" for Autism as well, and multiple documented cases of kids dying in them due to the high risk of fire in a super oxygenated environment.
FDA Warns Consumers About Common Off-Label Autism Therapy
Proponents of hyperbaric oxygen therapy as a treatment for autism argue that the controversy around it is "political, not scientific." But that's not actually the case.
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@jaloopa said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
@blakeyrat said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
@slackerd said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
hyperbaric oxygen therapy
... Chronic Lyme Disease causes the bends?
HBOT is a cure looking for a disease these days, since so few people actually get the bends any more.
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy was never for bends in the first place. Bends is caused by fast pressure reduction, so the treatment is to restore the total pressure and slowly reduce it, preferably using the same mixture, while hyperbaric oxygen therapy is about increasing the partial pressure of oxygen, without necessarily increasing the total pressure, i.e. using oxygen-rich mixture.
@raceprouk said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
How anyone thinks this is a cure for anything I'll never understand.
It is quite common that substances that are dangerous and poisonous work as cure for something at suitable low concentrations. And body can produce hydrogen peroxide under some conditions and it affects the immune system.
That said, IV infusion of it sounds like grossly excessive concentration. And using medical procedure without proper clinical study demonstrating (limits of) safety and efficacy against the condition is irresponsible—and illegal.
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@bulb said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
It is quite common that substances that are dangerous and poisonous work as cure for something at suitable low concentrations.
Everything is poisonous at high enough concentrations, even oxygen :P
@bulb said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
And body can produce hydrogen peroxide under some conditions and it affects the immune system.
I read about that: the white blood cells (a type of, anyway) use it to destroy pathogens (in a very tightly controlled environment inside the cell itself).
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@slackerd said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
IV infusions of hydrogen peroxide
HoLY SHIT!
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Toby Faire, hydrogen peroxide is a very good germ killer. People use it as an antiseptic for a reason: it works!
Thing is, the mechanism by which it works is by indiscriminately destroying organic matter. It's a little like saying you can cure someone of AIDS, Ebola, and the common cold by throwing them in an incinerator: yes, the disease will definitely be gone, but so will the person. The tricky thing about developing antibiotics and antivirals isn't finding something that will kill the germs, it's finding something that will kill the germs exclusively.
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@bulb said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy was never for bends in the first place. Bends is caused by fast pressure reduction, so the treatment is to restore the total pressure and slowly reduce it, preferably using the same mixture, while hyperbaric oxygen therapy is about increasing the partial pressure of oxygen, without necessarily increasing the total pressure, i.e. using oxygen-rich mixture.
This isn't accurate.
The bends is treated by pushing the diver's ppO2 to very high levels. The chamber is pressurised to a relatively shallow depth (18m) and 100% O2 is used. The diver lies there for a few hours, taking a break from pure O2 when the toxicity gets too high.
'Redoing' the dive in the chamber would be very inefficient.
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@tsaukpaetra said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
@slackerd said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
IV infusions of hydrogen peroxide
HoHOOHLY SHIT!FTFY
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@bulb said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
It is quite common that substances that are dangerous and poisonous work as cure for something at suitable low concentrations.
That sounds suspiciously like homeopathy...
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@pjh said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
@bulb said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
It is quite common that substances that are dangerous and poisonous work as cure for something at suitable low concentrations.
That sounds suspiciously like homeopathy...
... or vaccines, for sufficiently arbitrary definitions of "cure".
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@ben_lubar said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
@pjh said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
@bulb said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
It is quite common that substances that are dangerous and poisonous work as cure for something at suitable low concentrations.
That sounds suspiciously like homeopathy...
... or vaccines, for sufficiently arbitrary definitions of "cure".
Well if you're calling 'prevention' a cure, maybe.
And 'weakenend' or 'dead' as low concentrations...
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@pjh said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
@bulb said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
It is quite common that substances that are dangerous and poisonous work as cure for something at suitable low concentrations.
That sounds suspiciously like homeopathy...
But also chemotherapy.
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@masonwheeler said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
Toby Faire, hydrogen peroxide is a very good germ killer. People use it as an antiseptic for a reason: it works!
Thing is, the mechanism by which it works is by indiscriminately destroying organic matter. It's a little like saying you can cure someone of AIDS, Ebola, and the common cold by throwing them in an incinerator: yes, the disease will definitely be gone, but so will the person. The tricky thing about developing antibiotics and antivirals isn't finding something that will kill the germs, it's finding something that will kill the germs exclusively.
It is a very good cell killer damaging healthy cells (including blood cells that are trying to close the wound) as well as bacteria.
There are far safer ways to clean wounds.
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@pjh said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
@bulb said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
It is quite common that substances that are dangerous and poisonous work as cure for something at suitable low concentrations.
That sounds suspiciously like homeopathy...
Wut? That's the way it always has worked - 400 milligrams of Ibuprofen are okay. 40 grams are quite sure to kill you.
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@pjh said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
That sounds suspiciously like homeopathy
Homeopathy has two particular quirks:
- it claims that a cure for given symptom is something that in high concentration causes the same symptoms and
- the concentrations used are so absurdly low that you end up administering pure sugar or pure water.
If it is just the first rule, but in concentrations that actually do have some effect, it is immunization and is used to treat allergies: if you are allergic to something, small regular doses will cause the population of appropriate suppressive T-cells grow until they are able to keep the immune response to tolerable level next time you encounter a large dose.
But for most other medications, the first rule does not hold either. Instead, to treat some symptoms, a suitable dose of something that causes opposite symptoms is administered. And the suitability of the dose is critical—because the medication modifies something in the body, overdose is almost certainly bad and sufficiently large overdose lethal.
By the way, there is at least one poison that may be used as cure in its otherwise lethal dose: curare. It is used in treating tetanus—the main problem there is spasms, so the patient is given curare to disable all muscular activity and breathing is simply ensured with ventilator.
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Anyway, Lyme disease may be chronic and if allowed to progress to the later stages, often causes problems that persist even after the pathogen is eliminated.
However, the only approved cure for the acute Lyme disease—as confirmed by actually finding the pathogens in blood samples—is antibiotics and as far as I know, there is nothing that is known to be efficient against the aftereffects—just lot of rehabilitation.
If the doctor administers anything outside the “lege artis”, i.e. procedures tested in proper clinical study, or as part of approved clinical study with appropriate precautions and explicit consent of the patient, they are fully responsible for any adverse effects. That means doctors administering untested “cure” like IV infusions of hydrogen peroxide, for an improperly diagnosed condition, should be prosecuted for felony of bodily harm.
And in this case, it would probably not even be considered negligent. Because this is not merely failing to do proper diagnosis, this is actively diagnosing condition for which there is no medical evidence and treating it with procedure that is untested and carries unknown risks.
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@bulb said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
Lyme disease may be chronic
Citation needed.
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@bulb said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
And in this case, it would probably not even be considered negligent. Because this is not merely failing to do proper diagnosis, this is actively diagnosing condition for which there is no medical evidence and treating it with procedure that is untested and carries unknown risks.
The risks of an IV of strong oxidising agent are reasonably well known. Little things like risk of DEATH!
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@raceprouk said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
IV infusions of hydrogen peroxide
How anyone thinks this is a cure for anything I'll never understand. Depending on the concentration, this is anything from hair bleach to rocket fuel, not to mention it's a potentially very powerful oxidiser.
And this isn't a new thing, as this article from 2005 shows: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-prescription-for-death/. And this one from 2006: http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/naturopath-sentenced-for-injecting-teen-with-hydrogen-peroxide.
But.... it's a homeopathic toxin, and not a chemical in any way.
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@xaade said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
But.... it's a homeopathic toxin, and not a chemical in any way.
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@yamikuronue said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
@bulb said in CDC calls for "cures" of Chronic Lyme Disease to cease:
Lyme disease may be chronic
Citation needed.
Well, as far as I remember, there may be a long asymptomatic period between the early phase (where it may be hard to diagnose if the circular rash does not appear, because the other symptom are not very specific) and the late phases. Since chronic just means it lasts long, it fits that definition. However since the phase is asymptomatic, it can't be diagnosed in any other way then by finding the bacteria in blood sample.
In the later phase, it can also cause chronic symptoms. However, this is just the symptoms persisting even after the bacteria are killed, because the damage the disease caused can't be easily repaired. This is what the charlatans in question improperly treat as if it was still a disease.
