Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 28 November 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

Lyme Disease: Discussion

9:00 am

Photo of Stephen DonnellyStephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We have a pretty good medical and scientific community in this country that brings new treatments on line all the time. In a while, we will be told that the guidelines produced by the Infectious Diseases Society of America, IDSA, are those upon which the vast majority of clinicians in Ireland base their treatment. The IDSA comes up with the guidelines. The witnesses in session two will go on to tell us that there is a consensus statement on clinical management by the scientific advisory committee of the Health Protection Surveillance Centre in Ireland, the Infectious Diseases Society of Ireland, the Irish Society of Clinical Microbiologists, the Irish Institute of Clinical Neuroscience and the Irish College of General Practitioners. Let us assume they are very smart, switched-on people and they have this consensus view and let us assume Dr. Lambert is right. What is it about this issue that such decent and clever people who dedicate themselves to this stuff are just not listening or are not seeing something? Why are they unable to see something in this case? Indeed, NICE in the UK has just concluded the same thing as the bodies I mentioned. How are so many eminent scientific and medical bodies saying it does not exist when Dr. Lambert is treating people who have it and Ms Lawless has it? What is going on?

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