Join local Lyme disease advocate of 30 years Steve Diers for a screening of the award-winning documentary The Quiet Epidemic, As Close As Your Backyard Tuesday, June 13 at 6:00 PM at Senior Coastsiders in Half Moon Bay, CA. A retired Ranger and Naturalist of thirty-nine years, Diers will provide a presentation that will focus on protecting yourself from tick bites and the challenges of getting an accurate diagnosis, and competent care if you should contract Lyme disease.

“Through its masterful storytelling, The Quiet Epidemic does what any good investigative doc should do—it informs, infuriates, breaks your heart, and fills you with hope.” – Awards Daily

To Quote Dr. Kenneth B. Liegner, a US Lyme-Literate Doctor (LLMD): one shining light in a small community of doctors who support and treat Lyme sufferers, says:

“In the fullness of time, the mainstream handling of chronic Lyme disease will be viewed as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of medicine because elements of academic medicine, elements of government, and virtually the entire insurance industry have colluded to deny a disease”. 

  The film tells the story of a young girl from Brooklyn and a Duke University scientist, who, after years of living with mysterious symptoms, are diagnosed with a disease said to not exist: Chronic Lyme disease. The Quiet Epidemic follows their search for answers, which lands them in the middle of a contentious medical debate. What begins as a patient story evolves into an investigation into the history of Lyme disease, dating back to its discovery in 1975. A paper trail of suppressed scientific research, and buried documents reveals why ticks – and the diseases they carry – have been allowed to quietly spread around the globe. 

      Starting in the 1960s, Steve’s wife Stephanie was bitten by ticks. Her Lyme symptoms came on at about the same age as the young woman in the film did. Stephanie was misdiagnosed by Kaiser Doctors. Finally, in 1989 she was seen by Dr Paul Lavoi a Lyme Literate Doctor in SF CA. He diagnosed her with Chronic Neurological Lyme Disease and said that she was the worst case that he had seen in his practice. She was disabled and unable to work to date. In the 1990’s Steve started doing research on Lyme disease and the western black-legged tick. His motive was to save others from going through the “living hell” that his wife has for 50+ years of her 67 years here on earth. 

      Over 30 years he has provided Lyme Disease and; Western Black-legged Tick Safety presentations for agencies, the public, at conferences. He provided information to individuals bitten by ticks and/or suffering with the different stages of Lyme. Steve was very active in the EBMUD Tick and Tick-Borne Disease Committee. This committee developed the guidelines for employees to protect themselves from tick bites, recommended personal protective equipment for employees and the protocol for reporting bites. Then they drafted the verbiage for the EBMUD Tick and Lyme Brochure. They worked with LymeDisease.Org staff to develop an up-to-date Tick and Lyme safety training for EBMUD employees. Beginning in 2010 he helped California State Vector Control Biologists collect ticks on 1/2 mile of trail in Calaveras County annually. In April 2013 they collected 328 adult Western Black-Legged Ticks, 6 nymphal American Dog ticks and numerous adult American Dog ticks on a 1/2 mile of trail.

1.  Which life phases of the western black-legged have the highest infection rate?
2. Did you know that California has more species of the Lyme bacteria than any other state in the US?
3. Which group has the highest incidence of Lyme disease in the US?
4. Did you know that Lyme disease was discovered in Lyme Connecticut in 1975? Hence the name and not Lymes or Limes?
5. More importantly, did you know that in 1977, Dr. Paul Lavoie of SF CA diagnosed the first two cases of Lyme disease in the far-western United States?
6. Did you know that ticks can sense a potential blood meal 50′ away?
7. Did you know that health insurance companies mandate that doctors who accept insurance must use the 2-tier test that misses 89% of the early positive cases and/or the bull’s eye rash only occurs in 6% or less of cases to diagnose Lyme disease?
8. Did you know that the atypical rash that is pink, can be any size and anywhere on the body and occurs in 34% of the cases but is missed 23% of the time?
9. Did you know that Doctors who accept health insurance have to have positive results to prescribe 10-28 days of oral antibiotics and report the case to the state health department?
10. Lyme disease should be determined by a clinical diagnosis of symptoms,  patients exposure in an endemic area (54 0f the 58 counties in CA), tick bite and possible rash.
11. Did you know the CDCs annual number of  U S cases (about 500,00) dwarfs the actual number of cases  The CDC case numbers exclude untold thousands of patients that were actually infected. This includes uninsured persons, adults >65 years of age, or members of the military, and those with Lyme that are misdiagnosed by doctors who accept health insurance.
12. One Study demonstrating that delaying Lyme treatment by as little as 9-19 days after being infected is predictive of persistent Lyme symptoms. (Bouquet et al., 2016)
13. Groups such as the Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA)I, refer to Lyme patients who continue to have symptoms after a short course of antibiotics as having something they call “post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome” (PLD) and even reiterate that the antibiotics they recommend readily “cured” Lyme. The Lyme community,  the Lyme Literate Doctors (LLMD) and those suffering with this disease for years or decades refer to this as Chronic Lyme Disease.

A Lyme malpractice lawsuit ends in a settlement. Does anybody win? (lymedisease.org)

In 2013, 17-year-old Joseph Elone died of Lyme carditis shortly after his doctor declared he didn’t have Lyme. Now the wrongful death lawsuit brought by his parents has been settled.

Lyme took her ability to walk. She’s suing for medical malpractice. (lymedisease.org)

“Nearly a decade after a tick bite ended her childhood and her ability to walk, Julia Bruzzese, 19, is looking for a kind of justice that eludes many very sick Lyme patients. She is suing for medical malpractice.” Julia is known to many as the central figure in the documentary “The Quiet Epidemic.”

To Quote Dr. Kenneth B. Liegner, a US Lyme-Literate Doctor (LLMD): one shining light in a small community of doctors who support and treat Lyme sufferers, says: “In the fullness of time, the mainstream handling of chronic Lyme disease will be viewed as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of medicine because elements of academic medicine, elements of government, and virtually the entire insurance industry have colluded to deny a disease”.