Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Lyme, Alzheimer's and Gin - What is the Connection?


Found on the Web at this blog site: http://www.elenacook.org/

I'm not making a statement here, nor can I vouch for this article's accuracy. However, it does raise some interesting questions.  -Bob

Lyme, Alzheimer's and Gin - what is the Connection?

Now here's a quote for the day.

It comes from the bulletin of PHLS, which was the old name for Britain's leading public health agency, Public Health England (before it was called the Health Protection Agency).

"Borrelia is a spirochete which can cause Lyme Disease in humans, the symptoms of which include fever, rash, arthritis, and meningitis, sometimes with subsequent dementia."


Dementia?


Yes, you read it correctly. The quote comes from the March 1996 issue of PHLS' "Communicable Disease Report".

Can Lyme Disease bacteria cause dementia?

Well, if you have been aware of Lyme for any length of time, then you will probably have heard that American researcher Dr Alan MacDonald found evidence of Borrelia in autopsy brains of Alzheimer patients as long ago as the 1980's. This work was confirmed by Swiss doctor Judith Miklossy, who also found spirochetes associated with dental infections in the brain tissue.

Dr MacDonald features in the documentary Under Our Skin, where he describes his incredible findings. He recovered DNA specific to the Lyme bacteria in seven of ten autopsied brains of victims of Alzheimer's, and in zero controls.

Of course, at the time, the military-led US public health establishment lost no time in declaring the discoveries of Dr MacDonald and Dr Miklossy invalid, even co-opting Dr. Willy Burgdorfer, for whom the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi is named, into the denial too. Somehow, Alzheimer's did not fit the cozy image of a "hard-to-catch, easy-to-cure" disease.

Naturally, those who attempted to negate the Borrelia-Alzheimer link did so on false premises. For example, they declared that, in attempting to repeat the work, no spirochetes were detected under the microscope, when in fact they had only searched for spiral-shaped organisms. Dr MacDonald has repeatedly stressed the importance of searching for atypical forms, such as the rounded cystic form of the spirochete, which he has demonstrated in the brains of dementia victims using cutting-edge molecular techniques.

Between the machinations of the military-led Lyme Denial establishment, and the deafening silence from mainstream Alzheimer researchers tied to Big Pharma, the issue has been kept from the public at large for decades. With billions invested in the discovery of new drugs targeting the damage done by aberrant tau and amyloid proteins in the brain, who would want to know if existing antibiotics, many of which are off-patent, could be used to actually prevent or alleviate the suffering of the multi-millions of victims of this devastating disease?

Who would want to know if a bacterial infection had actually caused the blossoming of wayward proteins? Who would want to discover that a bacterial infection gave rise to the tangles and plaques that are the hallmark of the disease, when so much money has been invested in NOT discovering that?

Now, let's return to our own British public health establishment, which as we know, sees its role vis-a-vis its US counterpart, the military led CDC, much as a lapdog sees its role vis-a-vis his master - to lick his heels, if not something even more unhygienic. Their decades-long denial of Lyme in Britain has meant that a microscope is needed in this country not so much to identify the bacteria, but to read our Lyme incidence figures, so tiny is the number of cases they admit to each year.

From the Porton Down lab of biowarfare scientist Tim Brooks, head of Lyme diagnostics for the UK, letters go out regularly to the GP's who have sent patients' blood, informing them that chronic Lyme does not exist. So what are we to make of the fact that, eighteen years ago, this same agency published the news that Lyme bacteria can cause dementia?

We can picture the scenario like this:

It is 1996. The Spice Girls are topping the charts, a bewildered ewe is soon to give birth to the world's first cloned mammal, Dolly the sheep, the first genetically modified foods have gone on sale in the UK, and virtually no one in the entire country has heard of Lyme Disease, except for a handful of biowarfare scientists.

Three of the latter, engaged in Borrelia work, and a fourth researcher, who is not, are on their way home from a boring meeting at PHLS Colindale. They decide there is time to knock a few back before boarding the train at Victoria.

Ensconced in a posh wine bar in Pimlico, the non-borreliologist asks the other three what they are researching.

"Lyme Disease."

"What on earth is that?"

"Oh, it's some exotic American tick-borne thing. Gives you a rash and a flu. Quite trivial really."

"Sounds incredibly boring."

One of the borrelia scientists, who has had one G&T too many, takes offense. He doesn't want to be thought of as someone with a boring job. Who would?

"It also gives you dementia."

His biowarfare colleagues stare at him, shocked that he has just breached the oath of military secrecy.

"Really" exclaims the fourth scientist. When he gets home, he promptly warns his wife to use tick repellent on herself and the kids whenever they are out and about in the countryside.

When she goes to buy the repellent later that week, she tells the shop assistant at Boots, who tells the delivery man, who tells his boss, who tells his accountant, who is chatting about it at a cocktail party that weekend when his brother-in-law walks in. "Did you know," a woman tells him, "you can get dementia from a tickbite?" His brother-in-law just happens to be the fourth scientist himself. "Well, yes," he murmurs.

The fourth scientist is writing a paper on wild rats and zoonotic disease. He decides to incorporate the information about the tick-borne Lyme Disease which causes dementia, as it is obvious of great public interest, and everyone is talking about it.

The Editor of the journal, fails to censor it. After all, he was not working on Borrelia, so how was he to know it was classified information? Sometimes compartmentalization of information, the Golden Rule of spookology, can backfire.

The next morning at breakfast, the biowarfare scientist who accidentally spilled the beans in the Pimlico bar that day opens up the latest issue of the PHLS bulletin and almost chokes on his orange juice. He races to the phone, dials the special number, gives the required code- phrase:

"My grandmother's piles have got worse."

"Is it urgent?"

"Extremely urgent."

He waits on the line till he hears the familiar voice of his boss. He reports the major breach of security that has occurred, neglecting to mention the small detail of who was responsible for it.

"What can we do sir? The bulletin has already gone out!"

"Well, there's not a lot we can do now," his senior replies resignedly.

"Can't we publish an Erratum? Say it was a printing mistake? Say we meant diarrhoea not dementia? Mild diarrhoea, of course."

"No, that will only draw attention to it." Then, in a different tone: "Cheer up. Probably nothing will come of it. Who reads the damn PHLS bulletin anyway?"

Well, Elena Cook does. And you can too. At the time of writing, it is at:

http://www.hpa.org.uk/CDR/archives/CDRreview/1996/cdrr0396.pdf

Communicable Disease Report (CDR) ISSN 1350-9349 Vol 6 Review No. 3 1Mar 1996

Wild brown rats (Rattus norvegicus) as a zoonotic risk on farms in England and Wales, 
by JP Webster
pages R46-R49

(Nb. The document was also circulated in hard copy so don't bother trying to "vanish" it off the internet, Porton.)

For more information on the relationship between Lyme and Alzheimer's Disease, please visit:

www.alzheimerborreliosis.net(website of Dr. Alan MacDonald)

or http://www.miklossy.ch/(website of Dr Judith Miklossy)

Copyright © 2012-2015 Elena Cook
END

The articles by Elena Cook on her website may be distributed as long as they are reproduced without changes, attributing the author, and the link to the original URL is included.
http://www.elenacook.org/




1 comment:

  1. WONDERFUL article, read, share, which I will share. ..I took no chances, I made hard copy for my reference. I think Dr MacDonald deserves a Noble Science Award for his discoveries...shocking what he got instead.

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