The Lyme wire

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.