Today the Connecticut Attorney General's Office made an important announcement. Their antitrust investigation of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), started by A.G. Richard Blumenthal in November 2006, has concluded that there were many conflicts of interest amongst the members of the IDSA's Lyme disease expert panel, and that the IDSA's policies were not followed during the construction of the panel.
A number of thus far unnamed panel experts had a variety of financial conflicts of interests, though no specifics have been officially released. Suffice it to say that some members have interests within the health care insurance industry, and the panel was essentially constructed by a select few to support a forgone conclusion that long-term or chronic Lyme disease does not exist — an interesting conclusion from a panel whose members largely do not specialize in vector or tick-borne illness, but much different diseases such as HIV/AIDS and cancer.
The official press release is here. The IDSA has agreed to a set of guidelines for arbitration and for the construction of a new Lyme disease expert panel involving external, independent reviewers. The ombudsman (arbiter) of this new panel will be Dr. Howard A. Brody, an expert on medical ethics and conflicts of interest and author of the book, Hooked: Ethics, the Medical Profession and the Pharmaceutical Industry. The full guidelines to which the IDSA agreed can be found here.
This is very exciting news for anyone who's experienced chronic complications as a result of Lyme disease, and for anyone who knows such a person. My only hope is that this landmark turn of events will also help support other efforts, like the Lyme and Tick-borne Disease Prevention, Education, and Research Act of 2007, a bill that people are hoping Representative Frank Pallone will give a hearing before the House within the next two months. The bill was originally proposed to the 109th Congress, but failed to get a hearing before the end of 2006, after which the 110th Congress took office and the new bill was proposed to take its place. If this bill isn't heard before the end of June, there won't be enough time for it to pass into law and it will have to be proposed again as the Lyme Act of 2009.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
"Please God, it won't come to that!"
Late yesterday (and earlier this evening) a friend told me of this nifty little program called Flock. Flock is a modification of Mozilla Firefox, rebuilt specifically for Web 2.0 services. It currently supports a good number of popular Web services, including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and LiveJournal. In any case, it's pretty neat and inspired me to finally start using my Blogger account (acquired through Gmail).
This will more than likely be a general, personal Web log for some of the many things that I find online or that run through my head each day. As for myself, I am a college sophomore living in Maryland state, U.S., pursuing an education in the social sciences. I am currently suffering from chronic health complications as a result of long-term Lyme disease. (While there is a lot of controversy around the disease today, it is known to create chronic complications if not treated quickly and, unfortunately, I had the disease for years before being physically diagnosed.)
Both these things are very important to me. School is important because I come from an uneducated lower-lower-class family and am a first-generation college student. My illness is important because it pervades my every activity, every moment of every day, and has for some years. It has effected my strength, speed, balance, memory, ability to eat or think clearly, and my overall mental and emotional state.
You may be able to guess, then, why my blog is titled "A Blog to Remember." It's a reference to the 1958 Titanic film A Night to Remember, based on the 1955 book of the same name. I had no idea what I could possibly name my blog but, after doing a quick search, found this post about blog names. Somewhere amidst reading that post, and seeing that "blog" itself is perhaps the most common word to appear in blog titles, the title came from nowhere. To me its meaning is twofold: it first represents just what a blog does, and what this one will do for me in particular—that is, work to remember the events of my daily life in a concrete form; and second, it refers to the sinking of the Titanic to which, in some ways, my life has felt like a parallel.
If all goes well, I'll try to post here at least once a week. I doubt I could manage daily at this point, but if I can, I will. Now it's time to see if this bout of insomnia can finally end.
This will more than likely be a general, personal Web log for some of the many things that I find online or that run through my head each day. As for myself, I am a college sophomore living in Maryland state, U.S., pursuing an education in the social sciences. I am currently suffering from chronic health complications as a result of long-term Lyme disease. (While there is a lot of controversy around the disease today, it is known to create chronic complications if not treated quickly and, unfortunately, I had the disease for years before being physically diagnosed.)
Both these things are very important to me. School is important because I come from an uneducated lower-lower-class family and am a first-generation college student. My illness is important because it pervades my every activity, every moment of every day, and has for some years. It has effected my strength, speed, balance, memory, ability to eat or think clearly, and my overall mental and emotional state.
You may be able to guess, then, why my blog is titled "A Blog to Remember." It's a reference to the 1958 Titanic film A Night to Remember, based on the 1955 book of the same name. I had no idea what I could possibly name my blog but, after doing a quick search, found this post about blog names. Somewhere amidst reading that post, and seeing that "blog" itself is perhaps the most common word to appear in blog titles, the title came from nowhere. To me its meaning is twofold: it first represents just what a blog does, and what this one will do for me in particular—that is, work to remember the events of my daily life in a concrete form; and second, it refers to the sinking of the Titanic to which, in some ways, my life has felt like a parallel.
If all goes well, I'll try to post here at least once a week. I doubt I could manage daily at this point, but if I can, I will. Now it's time to see if this bout of insomnia can finally end.
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