Lyme Protest in San Francisco Last Weekend

Because of the IDSA annual conference being held in San Francisco last weekend, Oct 8, 2013. a demonstration/teach-in was held outside of the Moscone Conference Center in downtown San Francisco. It was sweltering hot out, which is something of a rarity in SF, but still pretty well attended. Several long-time Lyme patients spoke, including Jordan Fisher Smith and Barbara Arnold, Esq.  There was some media coverage, but not as much as we would have liked. However, out of the event several encouraging results emerged:

•  The SF Chronicle is going to interview some local Lyme patients and cover the event in arrears. 

• This email came in later today (the Tuesday after the event), from Kris Newby, coproducer of the very successful Oscar-nominated documentary film about Lyme disease, Under Our Skin: 

On Oct 8, 2013, at 2:02 PM, Kris Newby wrote:

I attended Dr. Wormer's IDSA session on TBDs on Saturday in SF, and at the end of his talk, the panel moderator said that the IDSA "was in the beginning stages of updating the IDSA Lyme guidelines."

No NIH or CDC attendees were present bc/ of the gov't shutdown.

The LymeDisease.org protest outside the meeting benefited from a power outage in the Moscone Center, which forced everyone at the conference onto the street so that they could see the protesters and the billboard truck, which urged ID physicians to treat chronic Lyme patients.

Kris Newby
Under Our Skin

I have to admit, I got a big kick out of that.