Second Local Lyme Disease Lecture To Be Hosted By Rotary Club

By John Voket

The second local talk on Lyme disease this month is scheduled for next Monday, May 22, at The Fireside Inn on South Main Street. While next week’s event was not specifically coordinated with a May 2 activity that was sponsored by the local Health District, Kevin’s Community Center, and the School District, it will expose local residents to two additional high profile authorities on the subject.

Coincidentally, Dr Georgina Scholl, who accompanied state entomologist Dr Kirby Stafford during the Health District forum May 2, was the keynote speaker at last year’s Rotary information session. The May 22 lecture at the Fireside will feature Dr Richard Horowitz and Pat Smith.

Dr Horowitz is the former assistant director of medicine at Vassar Brothers Medical Center in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and currently holds private practice in Hyde Park, N.Y. He specializes in diagnosis and treatment of complicated Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses.

As an internist with 20 year of experience in treating more than 8,000 cases of persistent (late) Lyme disease, Dr Horowitz has also authored numerous scientific articles along with serving as a featured speaker in many conferences and workshops over the years on Lyme disease.

He is currently the first vice president, International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society, Inc (ILADS).

Ms Smith is the president of the Lyme Disease Association, Inc, and is the past chair of the New Jersey Governor’s Lyme Disease Advisory Council. The international organization is dedicated to Lyme disease education, prevention, and raising research dollars.

According to the association’s website, about 96 cents of every donated dollar to the cause has been used on programs. In its search for a cure for chronic Lyme, the LDA has already funded dozens of research projects coast to coast through researchers at institutions such as Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Fox Chase Cancer Center, University of California, Davis, and University of Pennsylvania.

Some of the research has been featured in peer-reviewed journals, and some very significant genome work initially funded by LDA has shown that different strains of Borrelia have the ability to exchange genetic material among themselves, a trait greatly benefiting their survival and probably confounding the body’s ability to eradicate the organism.

The pair will specifically discuss the challenges and problems related to the diagnosis and treatment of Lyme and other tick-borne illnesses that are prevalent in Newtown and the region. They also plan to reveal the two standards of care that are typically meted out to those seeking medical help for symptoms of tick-borne diseases.

Maggie Shaw of the Newtown Lyme Disease Task Force told The Bee during a recent visit that she is particularly concerned that insurance companies have been focusing on low-cost alternatives that might not be the best treatment in certain diagnoses. In a 2005 release from the California Lyme Disease Association, author and Executive Director Lorraine Johnson, JD, MBA, noted that insurance companies have placed the full weight of their economic clout behind the less expensive short-term treatment protocols.

“More expensive longer-term treatment options are discredited as ‘experimental’ or ‘not evidence-based,’” she wrote. The point, of course, is that the science underlying both the short-term and the longer-term treatment options is equally uncertain (like prostate cancer).

“The appropriate response to equivocal research findings in health care outcomes is to fund more research. It is estimated that only 20 percent of medicine practiced today is rooted in double-blind studies. The bulk of medicine today is practiced in the gray zone,” the report stated.

During the May 2 presentation at the middle school, and during her appearance before the Rotary last year, Dr Scholl focused on the elimination of a significant local population of deer as the most effective way of eradicating an explosion of Lyme disease among state residents. She has been working closely, and serving as an officer with, the Fairfield County Municipal Deer Management Alliance.

In a follow-up interview Dr Scholl deferred to the latest information supplied by her fellow guest, Dr Stafford. He referred to a study that was conducted at Great Island, Mass., where a 593-acre tract saw a correlation between the deer reduction of 70 percent between 1982 and 1983. He noted that larval ticks became significantly more scarce from 1984, and showed a further slow decline in numbers over six-year period of the initial study there.

Dr Kirby also personally participated in a state study at Mumford Cove in Groton where strategic hunting (culling) has reduced the deer population 92 percent from 100 deer per square mile to 12 per square mile. That study, which began in November 2000, is still ongoing; however, the data posted so far is striking.

By the third year of the study, the estimated deer population in Mumford Cove exploded to more than 100 per square mile, and the population of residents reported 30 new incidents of Lyme disease. By the ninth year of the study, with the deep population reduced to 10.5 per square mile, new diagnoses of Lyme disease had dropped to just three.

Newtown Health District Director Donna Culbert told The Bee this week that considering the number of cases diagnosed locally in recent years, the community cannot be exposed to too much information. She feels, however, that because of the sheer volume of messaging on the subject of Lyme disease, the community is becoming complacent.

“But they need to remain informed and use the information made available to them,” Ms Culbert said. “The numbers are not going down, and this worries me.”

The May 22 talk at The Fireside is free and open to the public and begins promptly at 7 pm. For more information, interested residents can contact the Newtown Lyme Disease Task force at 270-3301 or the Health District during normal weekday business hours at 270-4291.