Open letter to the Medical Contact editors by Thomas Grier
Written by Huib, published Sunday June 26th, 2016
TO: Editors of the Arts & Patient magazine (Medisch Contact)
Dear Editors: I am writing to express a concern about the article you recently published, written by Professor Jan Keppel Hesselink. The article was a position paper about how patients and the lay-public have exaggerated concerns or misrepresented the seriousness of Lyme disease and modern vaccines.
As someone who has been involved with Lyme disease and Lyme disease research since 1990, I have concerns about academics who express strong opinions on this subject, but offer little or no scientific support or research of their own to support that patients are trying to influence medicine in a negative direction.
Since 1991 I have fought for pathology based Lyme disease research to put certain myths and misinformation about Lyme-Borreliosis to rest. For over 25 years the lay-public has been told facts about Lyme disease that quite frankly are not true and were never true. Many of these untrue facts are still being propagated by major physician groups and medical institutions; but lets look at the facts from a position of human pathology. Then decide who is misleading whom?
We were told that only the Ixodes dammini tick could carry Lyme disease and that it was only found in the NE USA therefore Lyme disease was only in the NE USA. The truth is there never was an Ixodes dammini tick, Dr. Andrew Spielman of Harvard misidentified the Black Legged tick which is found throughout North America and several close cousins of this tick all carry the Lyme spirochete and B. burgdorferi is found all through the Northern Hemisphere.
We were told that Borrelia burgdorferi was never intracellular. In truth Lyme disease is very much an intracellular disease and I have attached our own research photos to support that Lyme disease enters the brain and then enter both glial cells and human neurons. We urge every country to do human-brain autopsies as we have done, to see the whole truth of this disease.
We were told for over two decades that Lyme disease is not transferred from mother to fetus. (2006 Dr. Gary Wormser Yale in Under Our Skin documentary.) Once again we have the pathology evidence from 1989 of eight fetal autopsies showing Borrelia in the umbilical fluid, in the placenta, and in almost every fetal organ at necrotopsy. (See attach images)
What else did they get wrong? (When I say they I generally mean in my opinion that the misinformation about Lyme was most damaging from those that had the most influence on the Medical Community which includes the CDC, Yale, SUNY, Harvard and Mayo Clinic, the ACP and the IDSA)
Another untrue truth we were told was that only one species of Borrelia causes Lyme disease. Did they learn nothing from Relapsing Fevers? Borrelia changes and evolves like no other bacteria. It is constantly changing and evolving. We now have 12 species that cause Lyme disease and several species that we call Lyme-Like.
Another non-fact is that we were told that there was only one reservoir host – the white footed mouse. Of course now we know many rodents and birds are carriers of the disease and transmit it to feeding ticks. The range of these animals is far beyond the NE USA where we were told was the only place Lyme disease could exist.
In the Yale medical Report by Marc Voortman it says that patients with a positive ELISA test but a negative western blot can ignore symptoms like a bull’s-eye rash, Bell’s Palsy, and swollen joints and no treatment is necessary, but if the Western Blot test is positive you can treat up-to 2 weeks with doxycycline. I have attached pathological proof that two weeks is not sufficient for late Lyme symptoms.
The list of misinformation shows that the medical experts from the very discovery of this disease got over a dozen major-critically important facts about Lyme Borreliosis completely wrong, and perpetrated misinformation long after pathology had proved them wrong.
The most damaging untruth about Lyme disease was the insistence that Lyme disease does not persist in the human body after antibiotic treatment.
Attached are photos from a patient that lives just a few miles from me. He was a logger who was sick for 30+ years. He was diagnosed with Lyme disease and treated with aggressive antibiotic combinations for over seven years. When he died we found both Borrelia burgdorferi and Borrelia miyamotoi in his brain, and we found live B.burgdorferiand B. mayoni in his testicle.
Lyme disease does persist. It gets into the brain and inside brain cells. (Attached pathology photos from brain autopsies) In addition we have cultured B. burgdorferi out of Alzheimer’s brains.
It is unfortunate to see a position paper like this in 2016 considering that this is the year that many major Universities are clamoring to be the first to publish that they have found an infectious etiology to Alzheimer’s disease, and Borreliosis is the front running contender as a brain pathogen. While we have been using pathology for over twenty-years to prove Borrelia and Alzheimer’s are related, others are just now waking up to the fact that having both a cause and a potential treatment for Alzheimers, is worthy of major recognition.
2016 is the year that the race for the Nobel Prize has begun in earnest, and the group that gets accepted recognition of Borrelia in human brain causes Alzheimer’s pathology will most likely win the prize. You will see papers by Harvard and other major Universities vying for the pole position to prove Alzheimer’s has an infectious etiology.
While others live in the past and criticize patients for their efforts to use pathology to prove their illness has been mismanaged, the medical community has moved on and accepted that the facts they once thought were true are now part of history, and that the Lyme patients were in fact more right than the experts.
Lyme disease persists in the brain, the serology tests are missing brain infections, pregnant mothers can transmit the disease to their unborn child, sexual transmission is likely now that we documented Borrelia in human testicles even after antibiotics, and Lyme disease is found through-out the Northern hemisphere caused by more than a dozen species of Borrelia and carried by many ticks, and Lyme disease can kill as it did in the New York man who had Borrelia in his heart.
So when a patient disagrees with their doctor and explains that they are still sick after treatment. Who is right? The doctor citing 30 year old dogma, or the patient that died and had a brain-autopsy done that revealed a persistent brain infection despite years of antibiotics?
Thomas M. Grier
Executive Director of the Dr. Paul H. Duray Pathology Research Foundation
drs. Huib Kraaijeveld
"This book perfectly describes the plight of millions of patients, who suffer from chronic Lyme Disease in many countries all over the world."
Prof. Christian Perronne, France
"This book is a gift of truth and passion to humanity."
Mia Morales, Lyme patient, USA
"I received the book exactly on the day that I had decided to end my life. Huh?! Yep. I am 35 years old years and have been ill for 19 years. Now I know why: Lyme. Everyone should read this book!"
Miranda, the Netherlands
"This book offers a new practical, human centered way of dealing with health information. It is also ringing a bell for the new time how to work together towards health and thriving."
Kim Schimmler, MD, Germany
"This pioneer's work made it perfectly clear that, when "i" becomes "we", even illness becomes wellness."
Frans Vermeulen, journalist, the Netherlands
"In his crucial work on Lyme disease, dedicated social researcher Huib Kraaijeveld does not pretend to have all the answers, but guides us towards asking the upsetting and essential questions."
Prof. Cees Hamelink, professor Communication Sciences & Human Rights, the Netherlands
"This book reads like a thriller! It touched me deeply and I am sure it will change the course of history."
Linda Graanoogst, journalist, the Netherlands
"Well, I am wiping my eyes and blowing my nose, while tears stream down my face. I guess that is a good sign. You hit the nail on the head claiming that Lyme survivors need 'understanding'. I would like my own partner to read this book."
Anodea Judith, PhD & author, USA
"What an awakening perspective! Huib has successfully set a quantum leap for understanding and managing Lyme disease by common people."
John Wong, bestselling author, Singapore
"A true and unpretentious caretakers' guide to understand Lyme. This book will help you to completely understand what your friend is going through; regardless of the symptoms they have. I wish it had been written ten years ago, because it can actually save lives!"
Cheryl Versalle, Lyme patient, USA
"This book actually speaks to people beyond its target audience (caretakers of people with Lyme Disease): people like me who are not travel companions, but to whom it is not hard at all to have or develop understanding and compassion. This makes the reach of this book bigger, much bigger if you’d ask me. I am amazed a book can do all of this!"
Saskia Steur, business blogger, the Netherlands
"This book reads like an exciting novel, were it not that it concerns a deadly serious issue. It calls to contribute and take care of each other and our world. Read, weep, feel and act!"
Manfred van Doorn, leadership expert, the Netherlands
"A creative and very intelligent vision to dive even deeper into the world of Lyme, to look at yourself, other people, but also the entire world around you."
Friend of someone with Lyme
"The book indicates that Lyme disease can be a sexually transmitted disease. This will cause a tidal wave of awareness all over the world. Like the child in the old fairy tale The Emperor’s New Clothes, who exclaimed: 'But the emperor is wearing no clothes!'"
Ola Aniel Petterson, STD campaign leader, Sweden
"What a brilliant sociological work! I am sure it will have much impact."
Professor Neuropathy, Germany
"This book is a big eye opener. Both for friends of people with Lyme disease as well as for people with Lyme. Or for any other health issues, for that matter."
Martin Möhrke, medical research leader, Europe
"I cannot read any other book for more than two minutes now, in this hell called Lyme. Yet yours I cannot stop reading! I should have put it away hours ago to clean the house. But I simply cannot stop."
Ineke, wife of a husband with Lyme, the Netherlands
"This book is a delight to read. It offers soft candlelight and warm campfire camaraderie on an often dark and lonely journey."
Laura Bruno, medical intuitive Lyme expert, USA
"A very honest and yet witty way of helping those with Lyme disease. This book is full of ideas on how to help your friend with Lyme, as a travel companion on this crazy journey called 'Lyme'."
Lisa Hilton, Lyme advocate, USA
"Both the personal experiences as well as the author’s sharp mind turn this into an incredibly inspiring book that raises the consciousness of its readers."
Kara, ex Crohn disease patient, the Netherlands
"Tempting, informative and eminently readable! Shifting the Lyme Paradigm is an absolute eye-opener for those who are not aware of what the journey of Lyme disease entails."
Terri Mackinnon-Cross, CEO WorldLymeDay.com, Canada
"This book gave us the recognition and acknowledgment, which were like a band-aid on an open wound."
Sara, Lyme patient, Belgium
"Very insistently written based on intensive, almost existential, personal experiences, this book also gives a clear overview of all relevant information for both patients and caretakers."
Jan Eendebak, former chairman Lyme Foundation STZ, the Netherlands
"A relief to read, written by an expert who shares his dedication to his own path with us, and brilliantly written."
Muna, mother of a daughter with chronic Lyme, the Netherlands
"Playful, frightening, informative and encouraging."
Merel, kinesiologist, the Netherlands
"This book made me realize that there is too little known behind the phenomenon Lyme. In a challenging manner the author provides understanding of Lyme disease and suggestions for tackling this disease. I have 'prescribed' this book to many of my patients and mostly astonishment was soon followed by recognition. An absolute must for anyone with (still) unexplained symptoms or the people close around them."
Duco Kanij, osteopath, the Netherlands
"This book guides you through the labyrinth of Lyme swiftly, while it took us YEARS to even get this far."
Eugenie van der Linden, ex-Lyme patient and therapist, the Netherlands
"This book is an absolute 'must read' for everyone! For patients, for family and friends, and for doctors who can finally learn that Lyme is more than what is written in their textbooks and that they should not be able to dismiss "unexplained" complaints as psychological too quickly!"
Anne Fierlafijn, MD, Belgium
"Shifting the Paradigm of Lyme is not like any other book on Lyme that I have read. It appeals to a higher consciousness, and is analytical in an introspective way that is pleasant to read. This book is a friendly and warm reminder that no Lyme patient is ever alone."
Thomas Grier, biologist, USA
"This book show how caring friends can intervene to provide succor and alliance ‘against the odds’ of a potentially serious and very complex illness that is still poorly understood by mankind."
Kenneth Liegner, MD, USA
