Lyme~ There is a lot of money being made - NOT treating it

[Guest guest]

'There's a lot of money being made'

Andy Abrahams Wilson gives voice to those silenced by the medical

establishment

 

January 15, 2009

By J. Adrian Stanley

 

The Colorado Springs Independent, Colorado Springs, Colorado

http://www.csindy.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A34259

 

Andy Abrahams Wilson is a folk hero in the chronic Lyme community.

 

Wilson, a documentary filmmaker and founder of Open Eye Pictures,

recently released Under Our Skin, a documentary about chronic Lyme

that's been selected for 18 film festivals. Wilson says a limited

release is planned in late spring; there's no word yet as to whether

it

will play in Colorado Springs.

 

For now, Wilson is soaking up the attention and awards. Under Our Skin

was selected Best Documentary in the Camden International Film

Festival

and was a finalist for an Audience Choice Award at the Tribeca Film

Festival. It also won two awards from International Health and Medical

Media.

 

Wilson has been interviewed by " America's doctor, " Dr. Mehmet Oz, and

has seen the movie earn a positive review in The Lancet, a respected

medical journal. We spoke with him about Lyme and the movie.

 

....

 

Indy: Patients talk about going to a doctor they've been with forever

and having that doctor be hostile to them when they mention Lyme. Why

the hostility?

 

AAW: I think the word in the medical community is that Lyme disease is

the disease du jour. It's the thing that hypochondriac patients cling

to. I think that's one thing. And they don't know anything about Lyme

disease. They're not taught it. It's not in the medical books; they

literally don't know. What they know is sort of the PR, the medical PR

about it, which is that it's over-diagnosed and over-treated, and

[instead] it's easily diagnosed and easily treated. So, that's what

they

believe. They believe it has a psychosomatic basis. And I think for

those who may not be so naïve or uneducated, what they're dealing with

is fear. They don't want to deal with it. They know how contentious it

is, and they know they could put their licenses at risk if they were

to

diagnose it and treat it.

 

Indy: What needs to be done?

 

AAW: Part of the reason for the film is, it's just not enough to say

we

need more research dollars, 'cause there's been a lot of research

dollars, and those research dollars have gone into the same hands. And

like [Dr.] Willy Burgdorfer says — the discoverer of the Lyme

spirochete

[spiral-shaped bacteria] in our film — for 30 years, money has gone

into

the hands of the people who produce the same thing — nothing. So it's

not just that we need to throw money at this. We need to create

massive

awareness, and it needs to happen from the bottom up, because it's not

happening from the top down.

 

Indy: It seems like, if Lyme is really dangerous in the long term, it

would be cheaper to treat patients as soon as they get sick, when it's

easier to treat. Why hasn't that happened?

 

AAW: [Experts] have their reputation at stake. In some cases, their

profession has been built on this, and they don't want to admit defeat

or admit that they were wrong. They also have a lot of commercial

interests, in some cases.

 

And it's also much more profitable to treat chronic illness than it is

to treat acute illness. From a system perspective, there's a lot of

money being made on keeping people chronically ill, whether you're

giving them steroids, anti-inflammatories, antipsychotics,

antidepressants. There's a lot of money in that. And there's not a lot

of money in antibiotics.

 

Complete interview: http://www.csindy.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%

3A34259

 

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