The reality of it all
I am generally speaking for US. Please read the snippets taken from the documentary “Under Our Skin” to show you how much information is sheltered and twisted either to make profit or to prevent from paying up. On one hand we have these scientists hiding information, so they can bank money in the near future. Get rid off the scientist that use government dime for research then hide information for personal profit.
On the other hand we have insurance companies that are lobbying to avoid paying out Lyme patients by twisting the truth. By the time the majority of medical professionals catch up with the Lyme trend, we may have a global Lyme disease epidemic on our hands. Lyme disease is spreading 5 times faster than AIDS now. Even than insurance companies deny coverage on regular basis using CDC guidelines. We all know AIDS can kill you, yet the drugs to control HIV are so good nowadays that, with treatment, most AIDS sufferers can enjoy long and active lives. On the other hand Lyme patients don’t have the necessary testing, treatment available to them or even sufficiently educated doctors. Get rid off the cheater insurance companies. How much longer will the government ignore the issue at hand?
Kris Newby, Science Writer:
In a way it is the perfect storm of diseases because of the timing of couple events in the history of medicine. In 1980 the United States said it was okay for government intuitions and universities to patent and profit from live organisms. So the lyme disease organism was discovered in 1981 and all of a sudden there was the equivalent of an oklahama land grab. People looking under their microscopes patenting pieces of the organism. The people that are credited for being the lyme disease experts no longer shared information about a new, really dangerous pathogen. They horded the information, because they wanted to protect future profits.
Merill Goozner, Director of Center for Science in the Public Interest
You have professors especially in the biosciences, are trying to take their discoveries, often made on the federal nickel, and take them private. They patent them. They start firms. What’s commercialize-able is driving the research agenda in too many cases, not what’s medically necessary and what’s medically useful.
Kris Newby, Science Writer:
The other thing that happened was the rise of managed care. Insurance companies and HMOs realized that if they can get researchers and universities to define diseases and write guidelines for diseases a certain way, then they could help manage the escalating medical costs. Really what this means is, the people previously protected public health – so like the CDC (The Center for Disease Control), and NIH and Universities, who didn’t have any commercial interests – all of a sudden they were partners with pharma, and their motivations completely changed. We no longer had oversight and checks and balances in our scientific system in the US. It was rife with conflicts and just now, 20 years later we are beginning to see what happens when you have unchecked conflicts in medical care.