LymeScience

@lymescience

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LymeScience@lymescience· 19d

The CDC Autism and Vaccines page received a minor update yesterday. The reference to RFK Jr's agreement with Bill Cassidy has been removed. Dark red = removed. Dark green = additions. RFK Jr had anti-vax lies added to the page in November 2025. www.factcheck.org/2025/11/revi...

LymeScience@lymescience· 27d

Thermography is not an alternative to mammograms. But Kristine Blanche’s grift pays:

LymeScience@lymescience· 29d

They’re channeling Goop in 2017

LymeScience@lymescience· Jul 9

Joseph Jemsek, MD is the “lyme literate” cult leader who falsely diagnosed Phillip Moore with “chronic Lyme” when he really had cancer. The CDC, LA Times, and WRAL wrote up his case: www.latimes.com/archives/la-... jamanetwork.com/journals/jam... www.wral.com/archive/1091...

A man in his late 30s presented with a 4-year history of fatigue, abdominal pain, and loose stools. Previous evaluations demonstrated stable mesenteric lymphadenopathy. Although he lived in an area where Lyme disease is rare, reported no history of erythema migrans, and had negative Lyme serologic test results, he was diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease by a physician and treated with antibiotics (Table). Subse-quently, the patient discontinued treatment and was reevaluated by a gastroenterologist and an oncologist. Findings from a gastric biopsy demonstrated stage IV mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue lymphoma; successive Lyme serologic test results were negative. Findings from a mesenteric lymph node biopsy and positron emission tomographic scan demonstrated stage IV classic Hodgkin lymphoma, for which the patient underwent chemotherapy. He died 2 years later of complications of advanced lymphoma.

One of Jemsek's former patients, Phillip Moore of Concord, said after the meeting that he was satisfied with the board's action.
"He will be held accountable for every patient who walks through his door," said Moore, who said Jemsek treated for Lyme disease although later independent testing showed he didn't have it.
Moore said Jemsek wanted to test his wife on the grounds that Lyme disease was spread by sexual contact. At one point, Moore said he was given an anti-psychotic drug for "Lyme rage."

For patients who have no answers after bouncing from doctor to doctor, physicians who diagnose and treat chronic Lyme disease can become heroes.
Phillip Moore initially felt that way about Dr. Joseph Jemsek, who in 2004 diagnosed Moore with Lyme in North Carolina. “He made you feel like he was the only person on the planet that was going to make you better and save you,” Moore said.
But Moore now says he feels duped. After enduring intravenous antibiotic treatments that made him so sick he had to take a three-month leave from his job, Moore learned from a different doctor that his tests and clinical history showed he didn’t have Lyme disease. This year, Moore was told he had a rare form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and that the cancer had spread.
“In my heart, I know it delayed my opportunity for treatment,” the 45-year-old father said of his Lyme diagnosis.

LymeScience@lymescience· Jul 9

Europeans were curing Lyme disease in the 1940s. Museum specimens show it's a lot older. Lyme is only spread by black-legged ticks and is fairly well-characterized. The Chronic Lyme cult is an anti-science movement that hijacked #Lyme. Its leaders defraud patients and spread conspiracy theories.

An iceberg meme titled "CHRONIC LYME ACTIVISM" with a list of negative claims written on the submerged portion of the iceberg. The text written on the underwater part of the iceberg includes: CULT-LIKE ATMOSPHERE, INCOMPETENT "LYME LITERATE" QUACKS, MEDICAL CHILD ABUSE, MULTIPLE FAKE DISEASES, REAL PROBLEMS LEFT UNTREATED, CRAZY DRUG COCKTAILS, ALL MANNER OF BOGUS TREATMENTS, TREATMENT SIDE EFFECTS, DRAINED FINANCES, CONSPIRACY THEORIES

LymeScience@lymescience· Jul 8

Excerpt from the license suspension of integrative/functional/autism quack Janelle Love, MD. Janelle Love exhibited bizarre behavior regarding a long-time patient. That foot note 🫠

15. In her interview with Board investigators, the Respondent Janelle Love] stated her practice focuses on bioidentical hormone therapy, gastrointestinal issues, toxins, and cognitive concerns.
16. The Respondent stated that the Patient was a longstanding patient and she treated her for a variety of medical conditions.
17. On August 8, 2025, the
Respondent stated the Holy Spirit told her the Patient placed witchcraft on her and her phone, prompting her to cease care. 3
18. The Respondent
acknowledged she did not notify the Patient of the termination or provide
30-days notice, and did not authorize prescription refills thereafter.
3 The Respondent admits that the Patient never discussed witchcraft, sorcery or religion with
her.

LymeScience@lymescience· Jul 1

William Thompson is the CDC employee who helped spawn the anti-vax #CDCWhistleblower conspiracy theory and the Wakefield/Bigtree Vaxxed film that hypes it. He is an utter disgrace.

LymeScience@lymescience· Jun 29

Harms of the chronic #Lyme cult: Quacks convince Yolanda Hadid that she's infested with 20+ micro-invaders, treatable only by them. Yolanda tortures herself. Bella & Anwar become victims of Medical Child Abuse. Bella donates money that could be used to abuse more kids.

LymeScience@lymescience· Jun 28

Donald Trump, 2014: Promotes anti-vax #CDCWhistleblower conspiracy theory, which was spawned by disgraced CDC scientist William Thompson. RFK Jr, 2025: Starts dismantling the US vaccine infrastructure within 24 hours of being appointed HHS secretary by Trump. And RFK Jr recruits Thompson to help.

LymeScience@lymescience· Jun 26

New study examines crowdfunding for unproven stem cell-based treatments for ALS. It’s disheartening to see quacks targeting ALS patients. Note the bogus #Lyme and toxins claims. Authors: @marcozenone.bsky.social @caulfieldtim.bsky.social @jsnyder.bsky.social Michael Jewer doi.org/10.1080/2167...

LymeScience@lymescience· Jun 23

Below: LymeScience infographic on #Lyme Arthritis Papers on Lyme arthritis by Drs. Sheila Arvikar and Allen Steere: academic.oup.com/jid/article/... pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

Lyme Arthritis: Typical manifestation of late stage Lyme disease in North America

• Average 6 months after infection
• Pain and swelling in one or a few large joints, usually a knee
• Usually no systemic symptoms
• Symptoms diminish with time, with or without treatment
• Long term antibiotics not helpful
• 100% detectable with tests
• Spread by black legged tick, attached typically > 36-48 hours
• Transmission is very restricted, geographically/seasonally

A graph illustrates decreasing percent of 21 untreated Lyme arthritis patients with recurrent attacks, over a period of 8 years from roughly 90% to 5%

Adapted by LymeScience.org from papers by Dr. Allen Steere and colleagues (1987, 2015, 2016), knee image from CDC

LymeScience@lymescience· Jun 21

The podcast @whyshoulditrustyou.bsky.social interviewed Mehmet Oz, a supporter of health fraudsters for over 3 decades: Article from 1995 www.cnn.com/HEALTH/9508/...

Dr. Oz acknowledges that his work is controversial, and that he does "get heat" for it. And some of that heat is
coming from the National Council
Against Health Fraud.
"Columbia set up an alternative medicine center funded by private people who support a fraudulent alternative," claims Dr. Victor Herbert.

A Conversation with Dr. Mehmet Oz:
On the Erosion of Trust in Experts, Rethinking Safety Nets & Fraud
Why Should I Trust You?

LymeScience@lymescience· Jun 18

A preventable death. For decades, people convinced that they have "chronic Lyme disease" have tried to heat their bodies in desperate and dangerous attempts to kill fictional micro-invaders. In a new book Wormhole, Hannah McElhinney writes about her cousin Lauren, a #Lyme quackery victim.

McElhinney said Lauren’s family only became aware she had travelled after she was already in hospital, when a message was sent via social media from an unfamiliar account alerting them to her condition. “She was in Malaysia… and they can’t bring her out of the anesthetic,” McElhinney recalled. Lauren died following complications during treatment.

LymeScience@lymescience· Jun 16

3 years ago at a crankfest, RFK Jr said he'd interfere with scientific grants and journals if given the chance:

RFK Jr at a health policy roundtable, June 27, 2023:

I'm also going to intervene directly with the journals. I'm going to call the journals into the Department of Justice and tell them that we believe that they're involved in racketeering with the pharmaceutical industry to systematically lie to the public through their retractions, through their financial entanglements, which encourage them to publish false information to promote the pharmaceutical products.
But one thing I can directly do that I'm most excited about is I can terminate a lot of the grants to infectious disease and virologists, and I can redirect those grants and just order FDA to stop writing those kind of grants and to instead start writing grants to study chronic disease.
I'm going to pressure the journals to publish great, you know, publish the results of these studies. We're going to start funneling studies to a different group of scientists, to people who actually want to see where the chronic disease is going to come from.

LymeScience@lymescience· Jun 10

Question for Dr. Stephanie Haridopolos, employee of RFK Jr: Why refer vulnerable patients to chronic Lyme cult leaders given your acknowledgement of the overwhelming science that long-term antibiotics aren't warranted (and are dangerous) for people with persistent symptoms after #Lyme disease?

Excerpt from “Making Invisible Illnesses Visible: Recognizing and Responding to Infection Associated Chronic Conditions” [IACC], where Dr. Stephanie Haridopolos is listed as co-author:
Five randomized clinical trials have failed to find benefit from prolonged antibiotic treatment (typically intravenous ceftriaxone, often in combination with oral doxycycline) in Lyme disease IACCI and four of the five found harms including frequent antibiotic-related adverse events, catheter and infusion complications, and occasional serious events requiring hospitalization including sepsis.7 [7 = NASEM committee report paid for by chronic Lyme pseudoscience advocates]
Prolonged therapy with antibiotics also increases individual and population level risks for C. difficile infection and antimicrobial resistance, respectively.
Given absence of benefit and substantial evidence of harm, there is a need to search for causes besides persistent infection which could lead to effective targeted therapies.

LymeScience@lymescience· Jun 8

Social media is toxic and taking a break is usually a good thing. It would be nice to not ghost David Sanders, who asked about the source of an anti-vaccine talking point made to RFK Jr’s bizarro ACIP that is on the CDC website. Note: The “Giving Wakefield” preprint didn’t attempt to measure mRNA.

LymeScience@lymescience· Jun 1

The NY Times wrote about the anti-psychiatry aspect of the chronic Lyme cult 25 years ago, and it’s worse than ever now. Quotes are NYTimes. Commentary about anti-psychiatry is LymeScience. www.nytimes.com/2001/06/17/m... lymescience.org/scientific-c...

LymeScience@lymescience· Jun 1

ILADS president-elect Eboni Cornish née Smith, MD has a long record of dishonesty but sadly was granted a medical license. Eboni Cornish partnered with Sam Shor & long-time SPECT scan quack Daniel Amen, MD and has heavily promoted the fake Morgellons diagnosis. lymescience.org/rogues/Eboni...

You may be in violation of Section 54.1-2915.A(4) of the Code in that you are incompetent to practice medicine, as evidenced by several evaluations submitted with your application stating that your fund of knowledge, physical/mental examination skills, and clinical judgment was not at a third-year resident level; concerns about your poor ethical and professional conduct because you were dishonest about the care given to your patients; and your misrepresentations about your competency and reasons why you were absent from work. Further, you failed to successfully complete the residency program at Georgetown University /Providence Hospital due to the concerns noted above.

LymeScience@lymescience· Jun 1

Former ILADS president Samuel Shor, MD reprimanded for Unprofessional Conduct in what looks to be long-term torture of a patient. Note how chronic Lyme quackery works: Numerous unjustified diagnoses and drugs. It's not just about Lyme. lymescience.org/rogues/Sam-S...

d. Despite the prior tests in December 2008 and January 2009 as well as additional tests in August 2013, November 2013, and September 2016, all indicating that Patient A was negative for Lyme disease, bartonella, or babesia, Dr. Shor continued to prescribe or authorized subordinates in his practice to prescribe multiple antibiotics, antifungals, antimicrobials, and/or antimalarials for LBC concomitantly with benzodiazepines, psychotropics, sedative hypnotics, and/or opioids in continuous or prolonged courses and in various combinations from approximately 2009 through 2019, absent any adequate medical justification.

LymeScience@lymescience· Jun 1

Questions for Dr. Haridopolos: Why promote the false claim that HHS hadn't fully recognized Lyme disease? Have you seen the evidence that "chronic Lyme" is an abusive cult? Victims have spoken out! LymeScience has pages on Red Flags, Medical Child Abuse, victim stories, good journalism, and more.

A false tweet from Dr. Stephanie Haridopolos of a JBizNews article with the headline Kennedy, First HHS Secretary to Fully Recognize Lyme Disease, Launches Historic National Initiative

LymeScience@lymescience· Jun 1

Top quack Joseph Burrascano, MD has financial ties to two predatory labs (IgeneX and Advanced Lab) and was found guilty of professional misconduct in treating two patients. There's very good evidence that single-dose doxycycline works as #Lyme prophylaxis. lymescience.org/rogues-galle...

The Committee sustained factual allegations that the Respondent [ILADS leader Joseph Burrascano] committed negligence in treating Patient D, by treating the Patient for ehrlichiosis, without clinical and laboratory evidence that the Patient suffered from the disease.
The Committee also found the Respondent negligent for prescribing Bicillin for Patient F on a continuous basis after the Patient suffered a seizure while on the medication.
The Committee determined that the Respondent practiced with negligence on more than one occasion in treating Patients D and F and that the Respondent subjected Patient D to unwarranted treatment.

LymeScience@lymescience· May 29

Disgusting: RFK Jr partners with the dangerous quack group ILADS. Many ILADS-associated cult leaders are featured in our Rogues Gallery. See the license revocations of ILADS board members Joseph Jemsek, MD, Phillip DeMio, MD, and Leila Zackrison, MD lymescience.org/category/rog...

LymeScience@lymescience· May 28

RFK Jr doesn't care if people become chronically infected with HepB, HIV, HPV, herpes zoster, & SSPE-causing measles as a result of his toxic policies. RFK Jr (with Stephanie Haridopolos & HHS anti-science activist Kristen Honey) is busy promoting the delusional claims of the chronic #Lyme cult.

Secretary Kennedy to Announce Major New HHS Actions on Lyme Disease in New Hampshire

WASHINGTON—MAY 28, 2026—U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will travel to New Hampshire on Friday as part of his “Take Back Your Health” tour, joining members of the state legislature and community advocates to commemorate Lyme Disease Awareness Month by announcing new HHS actions to combat the disease.

WHAT: Press conference announcing new HHS actions on Lyme disease

WHO:

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Dr. Stephanie Haridopolos, Director of National Health Communications for the Office of the Surgeon General

Dr. Kristen Honey, HHS Chief Data Officer

New Hampshire State Senate President Sharon Carson

Members of the New Hampshire state legislature

Lyme disease advocates

LymeScience@lymescience· May 28

Congressman John James will likely be the Republican nominee in the MI governor's race. He has committed to using his position to spreading bizarre beliefs. In conspiracy mongering with RFK Jr, he evokes the fundamental dogma of the chronic Lyme cult, that Lyme is The One True Cause of All Disease.

LymeScience@lymescience· May 28

Disturbing: Michigan Congressman John James and his wife Elizabeth James are part of the chronic #Lyme cult, where Medical Child Abuse runs rampant. Congressman James endorsed bizarre beliefs and predatory lab IgeneX. He claims his wife & kids have Lyme despite negative standard tests.

LymeScience@lymescience· May 27

The vile quack group Independent Medical Alliance is hyping bleach treatments used in a manner that looks like animal abuse.

LymeScience@lymescience· May 24

In the 90s, chronic #Lyme cult leaders expanded their grift to include fraudulent diagnoses of babesia & bartonella. They also falsely claimed that stretch marks meant bartonella. Long-term antibiotics in this report are hallmarks of quackery, which caused corneal deposits. doi.org/10.1016/j.aj...

An assessment of his medical history revealed that he was initially diagnosed with bartonellosis based on PCR testing positive for Bartonella henselae SA1 11 years prior when he developed fatigue, calf pain, and foot paresthesia. He completed an eight-month course of doxycycline and rifampin treatment but had multiple recurrences of symptoms which led to prolonged treatment. The regimen was changed to rifabutin, clarithromycin, and minocycline four years prior after his care was transitioned to a different physician.

LymeScience@lymescience· May 22

A nurse who worked with anti-vaccine pediatrician Shareen Ismail, MD has affirmed that Ismail asked her for fraudulent vaccination records for Ismail’s young son.

LymeScience@lymescience· May 21

Jim O'Neill and Jay Bhattacharya reject the basic concepts of science

LymeScience@lymescience· May 12

Is this the “It’s not you. It’s me.”?