Dr. Bartley Cryan:

Yes, it could be a groupthink. I would suggest the reverse. I would suggest the other side is groupthink. The Deputy mentioned international conferences. There has been quite an amount of debate, both verbally at conferences and in the literature, about this whole subject. Following a diagnosis of chronic Lyme disease, the scientific basis for protracted antibiotic therapy for this poorly defined condition is non-existent. When it becomes existent. the treatment, modification and management of it will change. At the moment there is not a sufficient weight of scientific evidence to suggest that seronegative patients who have this symptom complex with the huge potential list of differentials have actual occult Lyme disease. While variety of suggestions have been put forward, if one goes through them one after another, it is very difficult to prove a negative. We got blood in from a person who wanted to find the undetectable viruses. I rang back asking which undetectable ones she specifically wanted us to look for. She said that if we could not find them, they must have an undetectable virus. The absence of something does not mean it is present. There is no scientific proof to suggest that this occult Lyme disease syndrome actually exists. People are doing a lot of research. The Lyme disease diagnosis is not an exact science at the moment. It should, hopefully, be improved. People have been looking for this particular cause.

I was present at a conference 25 years ago where chronic fatigue syndrome and Lyme disease were being discussed and they were trying to find linkages between the two. This line of investigation has been going on for quite some time and there still is not tangible scientific evidence. The crucial thing is that people do not get misdiagnosed. If one is diagnosed with the syndrome and one does not respond to the treatment, the chances are that one has got something else, but time has moved on. We do not repeat testing until it goes negative. The only reason we might repeat a test is to confirm there was not a mix-up with patient labelling or something like that. In fact, every significant test we get, we will always get a second sample from the patient to confirm that it is positive, and occasionally one will do them to monitor therapy. Once one is positive, one will be positive for life and those antibodies will be present. It is the same with all the viruses and various other infective agents that we have come in contact with.