A few days ago Mr Caudwell (co-founder of Phones 4U) pledged at least £1 million to help Lyme Disease. His own family has been devastated by this disease, with about 11 close members getting a positive diagnosis from Armin Labs in Germany. He has said that he wants to encourage the government to contribute more towards research and doctors training across the UK and wants our help to make this happen. If you go to his Facebook page you will find a template letter that you can copy and use to send to your local MP if you are in the UK. In his recent appearances he has talked very candidly about aspects of Lyme disease that a lot of people aren't aware of including its potential for transmission by other insects (not just ticks) and transmission from mother to baby in utero. We aren't being given this information because despite its high probability, the research data about this and other issues was considered by NICE as too poor to use. Rather than compiling a chapter where they could have detailed what data is available as a matter of public safety, they ignored it. They also completely failed to provide any guidance that will help doctors to manage patients with Chronic Lyme Disease. In fact, worse than that, they failed to acknowledge its existence. There are good animal and invitro studies that prove the persistence of Lyme beyond treatment but this data wasn’t found to be acceptable for NICE to use. Part of what Mr Caudwell was saying is that he wants us to have a national database where we can track Lyme Disease, not just geographically, but also in terms of signs and symptoms and treatment efficacy. This is a great plan and really would help steer our management BUT, this level and type of research would still not be acceptable for NICE so it would have no impact whatsoever on our guidelines…. If we want things to improve, then we have to get NICE to change the way they use data. That’s what this petition is about. Mr Caudwell can see that this campaign will run parallel with his and retweeted the petition yesterday. We sincerely thank him for this support. Please help us too by sharing, especially to your healthy friends. Just go to the page and click on the "Share to Facebook" link.