Anonymous Internet Harassment using an anonymous remailer:
Notice that "Chuck" uses an anonymous remailer in his story about how women who
have children with Lyme disease, have put ticks on their children, themselves,
in his "Obsession" story, in which he also pretends to be a woman (Ed has
Serious sexuality/mysogyny issues):
http://www.actionlyme.org/MCSWEEGAN_AND_MUNCHAUSENS.htm
McSweegan was also at the Jan 31, 2001 FDA LYMErix vaccine meeting and later
posted this anonymously, using a remailer:
http://www.actionlyme.org/McSweegan_Stalking_Feb_2001_38a561b9b28962b5.htm
That was after I told the FDA that LYMErix was bogus
because they used a bogus blood test to qualify it and that Yale and SmithKline
illegal threw out vaccine failure data as "unconfirmed Lyme"
http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/01/slides/3680s2_11.pdf
The SPECIFICITY of each antibody to Lyme is ACCURATE for diagnosis.
If you require 5 SPECIFIC antibodies to be present, when, as Steere says,
these antibodies evolve over time, that decreases the ACCURACY of the test, or misses
more cases.
Steere himself said these antibodies appear over time, and that new IgM was
diagnostic of persisting infection:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=PureSearch&db=pubmed&details_t
erm=3531237%5BUID%5D
The opposite is what we now have as a test for Lyme, that the CDC claims is
accurate but is NOT according to the FDA rules for a method validation. What we
have now for a Lyme test is like saying I cannot be white female unless I have
blond hair, am shorter than 5'-4," and have a certain level of estrogen in my
blood.
The entire STUPID idea for a Lyme vaccine for a relapsing fever borreliosis was
Ed McSweegan's, as you can see from his harassing letter to Senator Barry
Goldwater, where he not only exposed the fact that the Navy experiments with
illegal nerve gas, but that the US Navy was incompetent, and he also verbally
assaulted the entire Department of Defense, as the Commanding Officer of the
Naval Medical Research Unit in Bethesda stated.
McSweegan's harassing letter and the Navy's response is on my homepage.
You can see that McSweegan has stalked and harassed everyone, and is very, very
mentally ill.
Please look into the
matter.
KMDickson
--
http://www.actionlyme.org
===========
Obsession
By Edward
McSweegan
Honorable Mention
"Are you back online
with those crazies?"
"They're not crazy.
And neither am I."
"Well, you're making
me crazy. And the kids."
I listened to his
angry exhale. I could feel his eyes on the back of my neck as I stared at
the computer screen. My skin is super-sensitive since the disease started.
He said, "The kids
are in bed, in case you manage to drag yourself away from that online
loony bin."
I listened to his
feet stomp into our bedroom.
The kids are fine.
He's fine too. But I'm not. Doesn't he understand that? It hurts just to
sit here and type out my messages to the group. I don't know what I'll do
if I can't type anymore. Who will I talk to about this endless nightmare?
I shouldn't say
that. Frank was a good husband. He went with me to the doctors. I had all
the symptoms. I still do. There's fever, sweats, chills, sore throat,
upset stomach, shortness of breath, joint pain, headaches, eye floaters,
confusion, forgetfulness…, confusion, irritability--that's mostly Frank's
fault--tremors and exhaustion. I think there are more. They come and go.
The first doctor I
saw didn't have a clue. He poked and prodded and asked about the flu.
"It's June. Who gets
the flu in June?” I asked.
"It happens," he
said from behind the barricade of his desk.
I tried most of the
doctors in town. None of them knew what they were doing. None of them made
a diagnosis I could accept.
***
On grocery day, I
was still wondering why I felt so bad when I overheard two women talking
about Lyme disease and the ticks the older woman said she kept finding in
her yard. I backed out of line with my cart.
“Excuse me,” I said.
“What were you saying about those ticks?”
"Oh, it's dreadful,
dear. Nasty, blood-sucking creatures. Then you get all those horrible
complications that never go away. The doctors never manage to diagnose
it," she said. “It’s a nightmare.”
I was so excited. I
grabbed her arm as if she might suddenly disappear. "Yes, I think I have
that." I told her about all my symptoms and the doctors' silly ideas about
flu and aging.
"My dear, they have
no idea.” She waved a dismissive hand. "You need an expert.”
“And you need the
right information to make sure they give you the right antibiotics," said
the other woman.
"Where can I…?"
"The Internet. There
is a whole community of wonderful patients who can help you get the right
treatments for this awful thing."
She scribbled some
Web addresses on the corner of her grocery list, tore off the paper and
handed it to me. "You check here before you waste more time with those HMO
docs. We have to help ourselves, dear. Keep in touch."
Well, she was right.
I found everything on the Internet. Some victims had posted their
symptoms, a do-it-yourself diagnostic survey, and heart-breaking stories
about ruined health and indifferent doctors. Now I didn’t feel so alone.
***
Frank took me to
another doctor and I got the Lyme blood tests. All the tests came back
negative, but I knew they would. The Internet sites said the tests were
inaccurate so you had to rely on how you felt.
The doctor shook his
head and said I was wrong. “Online chat rooms and newsgroups are not
reliable medical sources. You shouldn’t listen to faceless strangers just
because they’re agreeable and accessible through a computer.”
I saw Frank nodding
in agreement. I think that was when he decided I was obsessed. That was so
unfair of him. All I wanted was to feel better again.
Driving home, he
said, "Honey, none of the doctors can find any evidence that this is Lyme.
They did the blood work. I think we need to re-focus and ask what else it
could be."
"No. The tests are
unreliable. The Internet says you can be seronegative."
“Then why’d you take
‘em in the first place?” He raked his fingers through his "Look, a
pregnancy test isn't always reliable either. But you take five of them and
if they're all negative it's safe to say you're not pregnant. Right?"
He had that nodding,
eager look on his face. I could see he was hoping I would just agree. But
I couldn't. Other people failed the tests and still had Lyme. I knew I did
too. "I'm not pregnant," I said. We drove home in silence.
***
The doctor refused
to write me a script for antibiotics. I’d already used all the antibiotics
I got from the all the others. It’s so outrageous having to beg for the
medicine you need to get well. Lucky for me, someone in Lyme Chat said you
could buy antibiotics online. They were for aquarium fish, but so what. I
bought three hundred dollars worth before Frank saw the credit card bills
and went ballistic.
A week later, Frank
suggested we see a specialist at the university hospital.
Well, he seemed nice
enough. He read through my charts and asked me about my lab work. I didn’t
tell him about the aquarium antibiotics.
He made a temple of
his fingers and said, "You know, these ticks are clever little vampires.
They have tiny saw-toothed heads to cut through your skin and burrow in."
He jabbed two fingers onto the desktop. "Then they secrete a cement that
holds them in place. That's why they're so hard to pull out. Now once they
get themselves anchored they release various chemicals to dampen your
immune system and keep your blood from coagulating."
I felt faint.
"And the bacteria
they sometimes carry, they're sort of shaped like microscopic worms or
snakes. A lot of people imagine these things wiggling through their skin
and corkscrewing into their nerves and joints."
I scratched at a
sudden itch on my arm.
“These can be very
powerful and disturbing images for many people. Sometimes they can be
overwhelming, even when there is no tick. No parasite. No bacteria."
"What?" I asked.
"You mean, not real?"
He drummed his
fingers on his desk. "It's a condition called 'delusional parasitosis'.
Lyme disease fits this paradigm for a lot of people: some of whom are
often so desperate for a physical explanation to an illness when, in fact,
it may be more appropriate to explore an emotional or psychiatric…."
I was out of my
chair and out the door before he finished telling me I was nuts. In the
car, I screamed at Frank for tricking me. “I’m not crazy.”
"Look, you need
help,” he pleaded. "You need to get well. Who cares how that happens as
long as it happens? Those hypochondriacs on the Internet are just
re-enforcing your belief in something no one else can see."
"Then I'll have to
show you," I said.
***
On Saturday, I got
myself out of the house and drove over to the kids' school. Where the
playground backed up to the woods, I unfolded one of our queen-size white
sheets and dragged it over the uncut grass. I saw a tick expert do this on
the Discovery Channel. Then I turned the sheet over.
"There they are." I
started laughing. Reluctantly, I knelt down and counted the tiny black
dots clinging to my sheet. I used a stiff blade of grass to flick the
little monsters into an old baby food jar. I jammed the lid and hurried
home.
I showered and
shampooed. Then I went into our backyard with a fresh white sheet; I had
to throw the first one away. How could I ever sleep on it again? I dragged
the sheet around the yard until I found a tick. Thank God we didn’t have
as many as the school. I showered again, threw away the other contaminated
sheet, and waited for Frank to come home.
When he came in I
waved the jar in his face and said, "Here's your proof. We're infested."
He took the jar and
peered at it. "What's this?"
"Ticks. Nymphal
ticks. The kind that infect you. They’re loaded with Lyme bacteria and God
knows what else."
He rolled his eyes.
"Oh, please. I'll spray some pesticide if you're afraid of the backyard.
Is there any dinner or do we have to eat ticks?"
I stormed upstairs
and got back online to tell my fellow victims about the ticks I found.
Later, Frank came
upstairs to nag me about my Internet sessions, but I ignored him. After he
went to bed I found my jar of ticks in the kitchen and brought it
upstairs.
The boys were
asleep. I straightened out their sheets and blankets. I know I haven’t
been the best mother to them lately. But I’m so tired from having to fight
this disease alone. I need help.
I unscrewed the
jar's lid and sprinkled the ticks into their hair.
Someone has to
listen to me.