Lyme article in Vitality's February issue

Hot off the press! Check out the excellent Lyme article in this month's Vitality Magazine. The piece, by medical science author Ms. Helke Ferrie, is subtitled "An Emerging Epidemic with No Effective Means of Treatment in Ontario".


You can access the complete article at VitalityMagazine.com -- look for print editions at your local health shop.

You should be aware of some important correspondence that Lyme Action sent off last month. Helke does a nice job of introducing these letters in her article. Once we have ascertained how they are being received, we'll share more info about them with you. But to begin with, last month we wrote to the Ontario Attorney General, the Minister of Health, and the Premier, presenting our arguments and suggesting it would be highly appropriate for us all to sit down together and talk things through. Please consider writing them yourself and demanding the same -- their respective contact pages are hot-linked above.

Here is the concluding section of the Vitality Lyme article:

THE CHALLENGE AHEAD

Invariably Lyme patients and doctors will ask, “How is this possible?” Some years ago, exasperated by the problems then facing environmental illness patients, I asked the same question of criminal lawyer Michael Code, then of Sack Goldblatt Mitchell and now a professor at Osgoode Hall. His reply was: “It is not necessary to understand the motive for a crime. It is only necessary to prove that it is a crime.”

To stop this crime it is necessary to be correctly informed. The sources given below provide the best available information. Once you are informed, join the efforts of Lyme Action Group and CanLyme by writing to your MPP and demanding action. Canada cannot afford another blood scandal or another SARS crisis. In Ontario, patients and doctors alike cannot be expected to endure the policies of antiquated regulatory agencies that ultimately ruin human lives.

Also, Ontario’s Regulated Health Professions Act must become patient-centered and research-user-friendly for doctors and reflect what Health Minister Caplan was reported to have said in the Toronto Star last November: “I want to support a health-care system that allows people to... try new things. Innovation should be the hallmark.”

Lyme Action Group summarized the Lyme Disease crisis best when they wrote in their January 14 letter to the Attorney General: “This untenable situation ensures that the lowest common denominator of medical knowledge will continue to maintain a correspondingly low standard of innovation, and Chronic Lyme Disease patients will have to continue seeking help abroad. We feel, this is an intolerable situation for patients and for society.”