Today’s letter to Gary Wormser of New York Medical College who has controlled the Lyme disease narrative for the past thirty years and has also been named in a racketeering lawsuit in Texas District Court.

Court document: https://www.dropbox.com/s/18uyrli878ug51m/LymeDisease%20RICO%20Lawsuit.pdf?dl=0

------ Original Message ---------- 
From: CARL TUTTLE <runagain@comcast.net> 
To: gwormser@nymc.edu, eugene.shapiro@yale.edu 
Cc: brett.giroir@hhs.gov, Alex.Azar@HHS.GOV, tickbornedisease@hhs.gov (65 Undisclosed recipients) 
Date: January 4, 2019 at 10:48 AM 
Subject: JAMA: Shapiro ED, Wormser GP. Lyme disease in 2018: what is new (and what is not) 

JAMA

Shapiro ED, Wormser GP. Lyme disease in 2018: what is new (and what is not).
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2696480

Jan 4, 2019

Division of Infectious Diseases, 
New York Medical College, 
Valhalla, NY 10595
Attn: Gary P. Wormser, MD

Dr. Wormser,

In reference to your response to my letter to the Editor published in the December 18th issue of JAMA, it would appear that you and your coauthor Dr. Shapiro conveniently ignored my question highlighted below: 

Excerpt from my letter to the editor:

Controversies About Lyme Disease
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2718786

-Carl Tuttle

“It is well known that untreated streptococcal pharyngitis can progress to rheumatic fever, causing irreversible heart damage. Untreated syphilis leads to progressive disability and dementia, and untreated HIV infection progresses to AIDS with significant disability and death. What happens to the patient with Lyme disease who goes months, years or decades before diagnosis because of a false negative serological test?”

 ________________________

Untreated Lyme is destroying lives, ending careers while leaving the patient in financial ruin as reported by the disabled Lyme community for the past three decades. The absence of a bulls-eye rash after tick bite allows patients to progress to severe neurological disease instead of obtaining a prompt diagnosis and early treatment.

I would like to call attention to the following quote taken from an interview with Professor Willy Burgdorfer, the discoverer of the Lyme disease spirochete:

“The controversy in Lyme disease research is a shameful affair. I say that because the whole thing is politically tainted. Money goes to people that have for the past thirty years produced the same thing. Nothing.”  - Willy Burgdorfer

Source: (Live interview)

Prof. Willy Burgdorfer Talks About Lyme Disease
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCnrUmAPcOE

Your fixation on the acute stage of disease after early treatment Dr. Wormser has done nothing to advance our understanding of how Lyme disease disables its victim.

For example:

Subjective symptoms after treatment of early Lyme disease.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20102996

Gary Wormser, New York Medical College

(Financed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control)

RESULTS:  

“At 12 months after enrollment, only 5 (2.2%) of 230 evaluable patients reported new or increased symptoms, and in none of the patients were these symptoms of sufficient severity to be functionally disabling”

_____________________________ 

Summary of Wormser’s study: Anyone experiencing symptoms after the one-size-fits-all treatment approach is just experiencing nothing more than the “aches and pains of daily living.”

So basically, Wormser’s results are then assumed to apply to the entire patient population; in other words, Lyme is no big deal which has wrongly influenced our nation’s response to this serious life-altering health threat. The research into how Lyme disables should have been completed by now but the misclassification of Lyme as a simple nuisance disease (hard to catch and easily treated) has paralyzed the response to this runaway plague.

Many infections as I continue to point out evolve into an entirely different and serious life-altering/life-threatening disease when left untreated.

Post Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome (PTLDS) after early treatment and untreated Lyme of months, years or decades are two entirely different disease states; the latter being ignored for three decades. Patients who have had a prolonged exposure to the pathogen are almost always incapacitated.

Purposely avoiding the advanced stage of disease hides the horribly disabled and anyone unable to see this is somewhat naive.

So I ask the question Dr. Wormser, What is the motivation for downplaying the severity of Lyme disease while ignoring patient outcry for thirty years?

A prompt response to this inquiry is requested.

Please hit Reply-All as I have carbon copied the Tick Borne Disease Working Group and Assistant Secretary for Health, ADM Brett P. Giroir, M.D.

Carl Tuttle

Lyme Endemic Hudson, NH