Dear Friends:
LYME-PAC, a political action committee comprised of New York State Lyme Disease patient support groups, has once again written to almost 150 members of the New York State Legislature to voice its concern that the OPMC is singling out doctors who clinically diagnose and treat Lyme Disease for licensure investigations. The letter should be received by all NYS senators and representatives by Friday, October 6, 2000. A copy of the letter follows my signature.
In light of the upcoming trial of Dr. Joseph Burrascano Lyme Pac is urging Lyme disease patients ACROSS THE COUNTRY to participate in the grassroots letter writing campaign being coordinated by Ellen Lubarsky and Cheryl Orlowski. If you are sick and can only do one thing we urge you to write to the NYS politicians that have been listed on the action alerts and voice your concerns.
For NEW YORK STATE RESIDENTS, if your health permits further involvement we urge you to write and meet with your particular State senator and representative and lobby them to investigate the issues raised in the LYME-PAC letter. The League of Women Voters (212-677-5050) will be able to give you the names and locations of your elected officials, who will in all probability have a home office near where you live.
You can also access the following web sites to determine who your local assembly representatives and Senators are. (State senators http://www.senate.state.ny.us and assembly representatives http://assembly.state.ny.us/Members/index.html ) At your appointment, go over the points in the letter, and state that LYME-PAC requests a citizen advisory committee to the NYS DOH, made up of medical consumers, health advocates and representatives of LYME-PAC. If you need help in preparing your pitch please contact the undersigned and a representative of Lyme-Pac will assist you.
The legislature is in recess and will not be back in session in Albany until January 2001, so now is the time when they want to know what their job is. Let's tell them.
Regards to all.
Joan Green
JGreen1471@aol.com
LYME-PAC
LYME POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE
Post Office Box 0014
Cathedral Station
215 West 104TH Street
New York, New York 10025
Lyme-pac@mail.com
Dear Senator, October 2, 2000
We are writing to express our concerns about the stance being taken by the New York State Department of Health's Office of Professional Medical Conduct (OPMC) in the increasing number of disciplinary cases being prosecuted against physicians who clinically diagnose and treat tick-borne infections, including Lyme disease. Dr. Joseph Burrascano, the best known of these physicians, has recently been brought up on charges of medical misconduct by the OPMC. We believe that the charges against this doctor stem in large part from a narrow, scientifically unsupportable view of how to diagnose and to treat tick borne diseases, which the OPMC has obviously embraced.
Earlier this year LYME-PAC, together with hundreds of tick-borne disease patients, contacted you to voice our concern that the OPMC was targeting physicians for licensure investigations who are clinically diagnosing and treating tick-borne diseases. We forwarded to you a significant amount of published scientific information demonstrating that there is, at present, no clinically meaningful diagnostic test for Lyme disease, nor any single treatment protocol that has been conclusively proven to be curative. The scientific literature supported our contention that the question of appropriate treatment is still a matter of legitimate debate within the medical community.
LYME - PAC has also shared with you a letter received from the Executive Secretary of the OPMC stating that Lyme disease is almost always cured with 2 - 3 weeks of antibiotic treatment. LYME-PAC complained that the OPMC was thus admittedly and openly prejudiced against physicians who continue to clinically treat patients who demonstrate persistent symptoms despite allegedly curative treatment.
It is manifestly unfair to take action against physicians who exercise their best clinical judgment in the face of medical uncertainties; these doctors are being held to a treatment standard not borne out by the medical and scientific literature. The larger issue is the threat to all patients and doctors if such arbitrary and capricious standards are applied and used to unfairly prosecute doctors of good faith using their best judgment to help ease suffering and reduce symptoms for their patients.
We've no doubt that a fine tooth combing of any physician's patient records would turn up notes that could have been better or more complete, or fodder for clinical disagreements. The question here is why physicians who treat persistent tick-borne infections are being so closely scrutinized and held to such arbitrary and unproven diagnostic and treatment standards? Where this much science is uncertain, doctors must be free to use their clinical judgment. And patients must be free to choose the clinician whose practices most benefit them.
Our state's protective agencies should not allow themselves to be used as clubs to beat back innovation in thoughtful clinical medical practice. On behalf of the many New York State residents who suffer from tick-borne diseases, LYME-PAC is requesting your assistance in mandating a citizen advisory committee to the NYS DOH, made up of NYS medical consumers and health advocates, including representatives of LYME-PAC.
Very truly yours,
LYME-PAC
(support group leaders and addresses listed here)