| > the treatments tested were from 30 days to 12 weeks - hardly what I would consider 'long term therapy' that's currently advocated/practiced by LLMDs ahh! there is something here. I't subtle but I think it's a really important process you've described: Conventional medical experts took the anecdotes and lyme theories, and decided to test "long term" therapy that was being advocated by less-conventional but still well-meaning providers at the time. These were the results: they showed there was no benefit. So conventional thinking moved on, and the now-fringe thinkers simply moved the goalposts. Any scientist is going to be open-minded about the possibility of something being effective, even if they don't understand it. But at this point there are far better places (meaning "likely to show efficacy") to invest research resources. And the question we're all asking ourselves is: if the alt-medicine community is so convinced that there is a benefit, why on earth won't they perform a randomized, placebo-controlled, clinical trial. We already did several, and published them. If the alt-lyme community still wants to continue making claims and expect to be listened to, they are going to need evidence. That seems like it should be uncontroversial to me, but here we are. |