Breaking this up for all of us
neuro lyme patients who can NOT
comprehend or read long, solid block
text.

Also, the ads on right side have
chopped off part of my viewing area
so I'm dividing this so I can read
what I type! uffda :)

BettyG
*************

Chimp attack: Can Lyme explain it?
Forbes wants to know.

By Pamela Weintraub

on March 7, 2009 - 1:12pm

in Emerging Diseases

Sad news from the Cleveland Clinic
that the woman attacked by a chimp
in Stamford, Connecticut last month
may have suffered not just
disfigurement, but brain damage.

Some people have pointed to Lyme
disease as a provocation for the
chilling attack.

Living in my old stomping ground,
Stamford, CT, the chimp named
Travis was diagnosed with Lyme
disease.

Given that Stamford is at
ground zero for the disease,
it's not a surprise.

One publication, Forbes.com, has
questioned whether chimps could
even get Lyme disease.

Taking a snarky tone about the
disease itself in a post called
"The Chimp Attack-Lyme Disease
Connection," the pub posed a
question to the public on its website.

"One angle that didn't make that
much sense was that the chimpanzee
was supposedly being treated for
Lyme Disease.

Forbes has written about the
over-diagnosis of Lyme Disease in
humans.

We'd like to know: Can an ape get
Lyme Disease? Could the chimp's
owner have been giving him medicine
that contributed to the attack?"

Working in the Forbes.com building
on the 11th floor of 90 Fifth
Avenue in my role as senior editor
for the award-winning science
magazine, Discover, I was surprised
when the snide post floated up
from the bowels of the building below.

Disappointed patients, picking up
on Forbe's condescension and
history of skepticism toward them,
responded online:

Said one poster:

I had Lyme Disease AND I ATTACKED
TOO - out of pain, fatigue and
frustration.

My boyfriend, thankfully,
understood and stuck by me anyway.

He put up with a lot of things I
never would have and deserves to
be commended AS DO ALL OF US who
know about, fight to educate others, and SUFFER through the horrors of this disease.

How many genes do we have in
common with chimps, again???

And another:

Of course apes can get Lyme disease.
So can other animals and humans.

Were my colleagues at 90 Fifth
laughing at this patient response?
I hope not.

Can Lyme disease, a brain infection
sometimes associated with anxiety
and very rarely, rage reactions,
explain the tragedy?

In my opinion, the answer is no.

Chimps are wild animals and male
adolescent chimps, in particular,
are known to defend their turf and
impose their will violently.

In fact, responding to the situation,
Richard Blumenthal, Attorney General
of Connecticut, this week proposed
a new law aimed at banning primates,
alligators, kangaroos, wolverines
and other types of wild and
potentially dangerous animals from
Connecticut private homes and yards.

In announcing the bill, Blumenthal
said, "We are playing Russian
roulette in our homes because we
have put dangerous animals in them."
The story was carried in Connecticut
newspapers on March.

There's no question that patients
with neurological Lyme disease may
commonly suffer numbness in
extremities, memory loss and
confusion.

Just read the scientific literature,
and you will find that anxiety,
depression, and OCD have all been
triggered by Lyme.

And yes, relatively rare violent
reactions have been reported in the
peer review.

But it would be wrong if the
Connecticut chimp attack caused
anyone to fear Lyme disease patients,
or to think their infection might
send them on killer rampages like
the rage-infected zombies in Danny
Boyle's post-apocalyptic thriller,
28 Days Later.

Instead of looking to Lyme disease
to explain these events, we would
all be better served by exploring
issues of animal rights:

Especially the call for keeping
wild animals where they belong,
in the wild and out of our
neighborhoods and homes.

As to whether a chimp can get Lyme
disease, here's a shout-out from
the science mag on 11 to my
curious Forbes colleagues on the
lower ten.

Yes, you guessed it, I went not to
the public but to some real
scientists to help me out on this
issue.

Here's what they have to say:

"Borrelia [the Lyme spirochete]
can infect chimps, but they would
have to be bitten by an infected
tick --their habitat does not
overlap with that of the tick so
very unlikely in the wild.

Primates have been inoculated
[with Borrelia] in studies in the
lab." --

Eugene Davidson, Ph.D., former head
of microbiology at Georgetown
University for 15 years, who has
studied Lyme disease in non-human
primates,

"I don't know why a chimp couldn't
get Lyme disease.

Mario Phillip and Andy Pachner have
infected other nonhuman primates.

But those were experimentally
induced. How would a chimp emcounter the ticks that transmit it?

Was the chimp allowed to run free
outside in an area with a risk of
infected ticks?" --

Alan Barbour, M.D., director of the
Pacific-Southwest Regional Center
of Excellence for Biodefense and
Emerging Infectious Diseases at the
University of California Irvine.

Note to the public:

No need to fear Lyme patients.

You might more likely find the sickest
of them at home, too fatigued to
get to work, in too much pain to
care for their children or visit
with friends.

You might find them in bed.

All in all, it's not too cool to
make a joke out of a tragedy:

The tragedy of a women whose face
was ripped off by a chimp and the
tragedy of thousands of patients,
often the butt of the kind of
sarcasm found in Forbes --

those with a disease diagnosed too
late and treated too inadequately
to achieve a total cure.

Not PC to make fun of the sick and
injured. Not funny Forbes, not
funny at all. And while I am at it:
not journalism.

Pamela Weintraub is the author of
Cure Unknown: Inside the Lyme
Epidemic and senior editor at
Discover Magazine.

**************

Pam another outstanding article
discussing the lyme disease this
chip had.

Yes, my heart goes out to the poor
woman attacked who lost her face,
both hands, her nose, eye lids, and
has brain damage according to the
newspaper I read today!

Congrat to R. Blumenthal for
starting a law BANNING primates from
living in people's homes.

Yes, we chronic lyme and
co-infection patients are not to be
feared! We were just unlucky to
have been bitten by infected ticks,
mosquitos, etc. that were carrying
lyme and many other co-infection
diseases!

BettyG, Iowa lyme activist

Forbes is owned by such a moron. The only reason these idiotic things are printed is because he has the money to finance it. What kind of serious journalism comes out of a rag that regularly prints stuff on who is the richest this or that?

Of course, primates can get human diseases. That is why they are used in research.

Furthermore, a pet in CT clearly has plenty of opportunities to get a tick bite, unless it is kept in a cage indoors at all times, not very likely. Also, research animals are frequently kept out of doors. I don't know every primate center layout, but I bet you there are some that have outdoor cages.

And, those animals get moved around between primate centers. There was a research study proposed several years ago, to determine if babesiosis (WA-1) was being spread from infected animals in a primate center to animals and people outside it. This was in a region that was not thought to have that type of babesia. But no one is going to tell the public these things are going on.

Instead, we will hear the sneering and stupid remarks from Forbes. Apparently no one there has ever passed a science course in high school or college.

Man, when I heard the 911 tape on this attack,, I was traumatized, and still am. It was horrific. I love animals of all kinds, but they need to live in their own environment, and we need to stop imposing upon it.
I heard the chimp was on allot of drugs from the owner, and I thought that maybe the chimp was living with rage from his past, possibly seeing his family die the same way.

It was horrific to hear though,, I wouldn't suggest anyone to listen to that tape.

"I don't know why a chimp couldn't get Lyme disease. Mario Phillip and Andy Pachner have infected other nonhuman primates. But those were experimentally induced. How would a chimp emcounter the ticks that transmit it? Was the chimp allowed to run free outside in an area with a risk of infected ticks?" --Alan Barbour, M.D.,

True, but on the other hand, there’s no evidence that chimps do contract Lyme. There’s nothing published in PubMed so it’s just as likely that a chimp might not contract Lyme, or might present with the kind of silent or subclinical infections typical of felines and the 10% of people who show up positive in sero-epi surveys.

As for self-diagnosed Lymees wanting to blame their own bad or criminal behaviors on Lyme (“I had Lyme Disease AND I ATTACKED TOO.”), it won’t work. It’s already been tried.

There was the 1999 CT case of the nut who tried to kill someone with an ax and blamed it on Lyme. There was the 2003 CT case of the nut who strangled his fiancée and blamed it on Lyme. There was the 2007 NY case of the nut charged with attempted murder who blamed his actions on Lyme. There was the 2006 NY case of the nut who bludgeoned his 70-year-old mother to death and blamed it on Lyme. There was the 2006 NY case of the drug dealer (NY Post: “The Lyme made him coconuts.”) who blamed his behavior on Lyme. There was the 2004 CT case of the woman who was charged with second-degree harassment of and threatening a state attorney. There was the 2005 hunger strike staged by a UK woman who insisted she had Lyme disease. There was the 2008 VA woman who tried to blame her hit-and-run conviction on Lyme disease. There was the 1998 NY case of first-degree murder in which Lyme was a defense. There was the 2003 VA divorce case in which the wife tried to back out of a previous agreement citing Lyme “brain fog” and fatigue.

Anyone got more stories of such behavior?

I don't know about the Virginia case, but fatigue and brain fog are common and uncontroversial symptoms of Lyme disease. Why pile THAT on your list? Pam Weintraub

regarding anon's dismissal of my scientist interviews --they come closest to giving us the probable truth. Unless anon is a scientist who has worked with Borrelia across the species his opinion that these scientists might be wrong holds far less weight than the words of the scientists themselves. Quoting the experts: We call it journalism. Asking the public to make fun of sick patients: We call it mean.

I read a newsletter about an athlete who had Lyme and almost went suicidal because of the treatment and because of the Lyme. her site is here: http://www.BeatLymeDisease.com

I guess it can cause serious rage.