Crypto-infections

Denial, censorship and repression - the truth about what lies behind chronic disease

Christian Perronne

• Publisher: Hammersmith Health Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781781611791
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Diseases & Allergies

The accepted message is that humankind has largely conquered infectious disease with a mixture of antibiotics and vaccines yet it is becoming clear that chronic hidden or latent infections (crypto-infections) lie behind many of today's big killers, including heart disease, dementia and cancer. From his experience as one of France's - and the world's - leading ID specialists, Dr Perrone examines the threats that both Lyme in particular and crypto-infections in general pose and how we can rise to the challenge.

11

Chapter 1

The problem of Lyme and other crypto-infections

Microbes have coexisted with human beings since the dawn of time and, for better or worse, they have contributed intimately to the organic balance, not to mention the structure and components, of our cells. However, understanding the role of microbes in the genesis of diseases is a long-term task that is far from complete. New microbes emerge regularly, such as the SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic.

Lyme disease: a critical moment in understanding infectious processes

The microbes that cause Lyme disease have caused one of the greatest controversies in the history of medicine. Lyme disease is (usually) the consequence of an infection by the Borrelia burgdorferi bacterium, a small spring-like microbe that can be transmitted by various routes, but most often through the bite of a tick. The colossal number of publications devoted to it shows the intensity of debate surrounding the disease and the crucial nature of the scientific and therapeutic issues to which they relate. Lyme disease sits at the crossroads of different complementary approaches to understanding and treating infectious diseases in general. Such an understanding has never been more 12pressing than it is today after decades in which it was assumed infectious diseases were a problem of the past. Epidemics, and especially pandemics, occur regularly to remind humanity that they always are a problem of the present and the future. The best recent example is the emergence in 2019 in China of a new coronavirus responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic.

On the one hand, despite the large number of patients who suffer from Lyme disease in its chronic form and whose symptoms, as well as reactions to drugs, cannot be explained by another diagnosis, it curiously tends to be missed by the ‘radar’ of the institutions and methods put in place to ensure objectivity in the identification of diseases, their causes and their effective treatment. On the other hand, the confusing variety of disorders and symptoms that Lyme disease is capable of producing, and the diversity of therapeutic protocols in place to treat them, are difficult to explain without calling upon factors that incontestable observations have certainly highlighted, but of which we still have only an incomplete knowledge.

To begin with, the Borreliae family of bacteria have an ability to change form and to modulate the biochemistry of their receptors, allowing them to remain ‘hidden’ for many months in tissues where they are not recognised by the immune system and are inaccessible to antibiotics.

However, to keep it simple and obvious, the dissent around Lyme disease and associated pathologies seems to stem primarily from the fact that reliable diagnostic tests have never been developed. If patients find themselves bouncing from one diagnosis to another, and from one treatment to another, according to the interests of the specialists they consult, this is because the routine tests used to identify the disease too often fail to identify the responsible bacterium that is causing their symptoms.

As a result of a lack of research, at present, into many chronic inflammatory and degenerative diseases, we do not have more 13effective diagnostic tests than those of the Pasteur era (second half of the 19th century) to identify the possible hidden microbes involved. As far as Lyme disease is concerned, there is no lack of published scientific work denouncing the poor sensitivity of blood serum antibody tests tests, such as the Elisa and Western blot assays (see later), the only ones that doctors are authorised to use, but still there is no solution in sight, and will not be unless extensive research is funded and done rapidly.

Furthermore, to add to the confusion, clinicians in most countries including France and Great Britain are prohibited from ordering the second of these tests – the Western blot assay (which is reputed to perform better in certain countries) – if the patient has not first tested positive using an Elisa assay. This is despite our knowing from all those publications that the Elisa assay is the least reliable of the two tests. As incredible as it may seem, it appears – as I will explain later – that the Elisa test results have been deliberately calibrated so that Lyme disease remains officially a rare disease. The parameters for positive and negative have been established in healthy people (blood donors), with an a priori ‘ceiling’, requiring that the test does not identify more than 5% of patients in the general population as positive. Because of this artificial ceiling, there are many examples of patients testing negative in the Strasbourg region of France (where the incidence of Lyme disease is high), who have then tested positive in Paris (less affected by the epidemic).

Moreover, these tests have been designed specifically to detect the first bacterium identified as the cause of Lyme disease, Borrelia burgdorferi. Even if, as is true of recent versions of the Elisa test, they react to a few other strains of Borrelia also, these tests still remain insensitive to the large number of regional variations presented by species of this bacterial genus, of which new specimens are regularly being discovered. The lack of investment and of concern for the fate of patients is such that 14veterinarians now have more, and better, tests than those used for humans for the diagnosis of Lyme. This is because farmers have a direct economic interest in maintaining their livestock in good health, free from tick-borne infection.

Changes in the shape and persistence of Borreliae in the cells and tissues of patients, even after several months of antibiotics, have been proven in multiple studies by a number of methods (see page 128) and these strains are not being picked up by currently approved antibody tests; thus, millions of patients worldwide wander around with chronic symptoms of Lyme infection without an accurate diagnosis. It is not surprising, in those circumstances, that the symptoms they suffer from are often the subject of erroneous interpretation (as they are antibody negative) and they are often started on ‘alternative treatments’, as Lyme infection is discounted. Many of these alternative protocols, based on an erroneous diagnosis, prove to be ineffectual at best, and sometimes harmful to patients.

In short, we are faced with a disease with multiple and changing manifestations (see page 156), which is poorly understood and whose pathological manifestations (symptoms and signs) can be extremely diverse.

It must be recognised that this is quite far from the usual disease archetype (i.e. a clearly identified cause, a table of easily identified clinical signs and a validated therapeutic protocol) to which the institutions responsible for monitoring medical research and practice (understandably) aspire. Nevertheless, there is sufficient evidence, together with converging data, and interpretative models based on sound knowledge, to provide a convincing explanation for the proven efficacy of some treatments for chronic forms of Lyme disease. The administration of appropriate antibiotics (which sometimes need to be changed to respond to changes in the shape and functioning of the bacteria), especially in combination with (or alternating with) other antimicrobial agents, can cure or 15significantly improve the condition of a large majority of patients, often previously severely disabled, and can enable them to resume a normal, active life.

Medical craze or patient insanity?

Since we now know how to successfully diagnose and treat chronic Lyme disease, why is it that a large proportion of medical research institutions and people involved in medical research in many countries, persist in denying the existence of this disease? Why do they even get to the point of abandoning patients to their illness, accusing them of fabricating their symptoms, or even demanding that doctors who try to treat them be deprived of the right to practise? What motivates them to continue to use notoriously inadequate serological tests and to sabotage research projects in this field as much as possible?

The mere fact that one is led to ask such questions illustrates the impasse that we have arrived at, and all of this in-fighting only hurts our patients. This seems so contrary – so much so that it becomes essential, at this stage, to give the reader a quick overview of the downward spiral of successive decisions, seemingly reasonable at first, which have led to this situation. I will later come back in more detail to the main episodes of this story, the conflicts surrounding the approach to Lyme disease and to ‘crypto-infections’ in general, with some thoughts on the way as to how to break the vicious circle, to the benefit of patients.

There is, however, no doubt that patients with Lyme disease around the world have been left high and dry by a health system more committed to defending its rituals than to helping them. This was the case in the US city of Old Lyme, which eventually gave its name to the disease. Here, a patient who had been labelled a hypochondriac by doctors, was successful in identifying and documenting an increasing number of cases 16similar to his own. However, the first specialist who conducted a follow-up study on this mysterious pathology believed that, as a rheumatologist, he had identified a new type of inflammatory arthritis.

According to this specialist, it was a very specific new disease that he summarily excluded from having an infectious origin, although this was suggested by other authorities. Despite his obstinacy in supporting this thesis, he finally had to renounce it when it became obvious that the bacterium responsible had been discovered. But blindness to the widespread incidence of the disease was common within health institutions.

First, as we shall see in greater detail later (page 39) and as mentioned above, the problem was compounded by the decision to calibrate blood serum test results so that the disease appeared rare, even if it meant banning other more sensitive tests on the pretext that they were too frequently positive. Then, denial about the disease was reinforced by the unsupported assertion that a relatively short course of antibiotics was enough to ensure a definitive cure; this reinforced the firm conviction that there could not possibly be any chronic forms of Lyme.

Finally, when it became clear that serious symptoms persisted for many allegedly ‘cured’ patients, a supposed ‘post-Lyme syndrome’ was invented which, although it did not explain anything and led to no effective treatment, at least allowed the medical profession to stick to the dogma. The defence of this position necessarily leads to discrediting as much as possible those colleagues who take care of patients with chronic Lyme and to denying the success, however spectacular, of certain therapeutic protocols, even if it means attributing to them an astonishing number of ‘spontaneous cures’. (As an aside, ‘spontaneously curing’ a disease that doesn’t exist is an idea that the surrealists would probably have liked: it is true that the 17writer and founder of Surrealism, André Breton, was trained as a doctor!)

It is easy to imagine that health policy makers, social security directors and the heads of private insurance companies, even with the best intentions in the world, are, for obvious budgetary reasons, more inclined to defend the status quo than to support the introduction of long antibiotic cures, accompanied by other antimicrobial agents and various investigations. Yet it is a short-sighted calculation, when we know that the suffering of patients deprived of appropriate care leads them inevitably to wander from medical department to medical department, where, from misdiagnosis to useless treatment, they end up, if I dare say so, costing more than if they had been cured. In these pages, we will discover the tragic stories of patients whose lives have been shattered, not only by their persistent pain, but also by the cruelty with which they have been treated by the medical and social care systems.

There is an amazing persistence in successive denials – denial of the disease, of the abundant evidence indicating its ancient nature and, especially, of the suffering of the patients; denial of the inadequacy of the current tests and of the current recommended treatments; denial of the effectiveness of therapeutic protocols used by the doctors who believe in the existence of ‘crypto-infections’ and treat them based on clinical suspicion and clinical response; denial of the obvious contradictions the official authorities are locked in – for example, when they forbid the most sensitive test to be used by those who test negative using a less reliable test; denial, again, of the need to develop more efficient tests that can target the diversity of strains and bacterial forms involved; and refusal, finally, to support better targeted research to validate (or invalidate) the most likely hypotheses as to the specific causes or mechanisms of the disease as well as regarding the most promising therapeutic models. 18

The theory of ‘spontaneous generation’ of disease

Nineteenth-century researchers, including Louis Pasteur in France and Robert Koch in Germany, worked in an era where the theory of ‘spontaneous generation’ was widespread; according to this, organisms could originate ‘spontaneously’ from fragments of inanimate matter. This theory, which implied that diseases could occur from nothing, or fall from the heavens, had the full support of the church, for reasons similar to those that had led it to support the idea that the Earth was flat and that it was the Sun that revolved around us: infectious disease thus appeared as a divine punishment.

These nineteenth-century scientists did, however, eventually discover the true infectious cause of many diseases by identifying the responsible microbes. These advances were made possible by developments in technology (microscopes, staining methods, culture media, animal experiments, etc). However, the theory of spontaneous generation, which we thought had once and for all been buried finds it harder to die than we had imagined and never ceases to be resurrected, in various guises that make it seem modern, especially in the dominant medical discourse concerning the many chronic inflammatory, autoimmune or degenerative diseases whose origins are still unknown. Could they be caused by ‘crypto-infections? I look at this in details in Chapter 9. When the cause of a disease is unknown, it is now called ‘idiopathic’. This is a word of Greek origin which sounds chic as well as learned and implies that the problem is a singular pathology the causes of which are ‘particular to the proper character of the interactions that induce its appearance’ – which is an elegant, obscure or hypocritical way of saying that we understand nothing about it.

This obscure term simply masks doctors’ ignorance. This is the point at which the theory of spontaneous generation 19has arrived. Louis Pasteur was the object of jibes, and often violent attacks by eminent scientists, when he dared to assert that microbes were at the origin of many diseases. For my part, I have always taught my students that ‘idiopathic’ diseases are the diseases of ‘idiots’ (experts, not patients!) and that the infatuation with this term reflects the current ignorance about many disease mechanisms. This misunderstanding of the origin of many diseases is a breeding ground for a number of conspiracy theories, the most fashionable today being to attribute the origin of diseases to vaccines. Unfortunately, there is abundant evidence that the diseases in question existed a long time before the vaccines.

The ‘planned disappearance of infectious diseases’

After the Second World War, the eradication of infectious diseases was planned at the highest political levels in many countries. They were to quickly disappear in the face of the omnipotence of Man and modern science. Advances in hygiene and nutrition, vaccination and antibiotics would quickly sweep away microbes, those intruders worthy only of the Middle Ages. The only small oversight was that our planet is full of microbes and that our very own organism contains more microbial cells than human cells. It’s a tiny little detail, but life is either infectious or it does not exist at all.

The main research institutes have consequently abandoned entire areas of exploration in microbiology and infectious diseases in favour of more ‘noble’ sciences, such as immunology and genetics. It is clear that the mechanisms studied by the latter two fields play a major part in the processes that generate many diseases, but these would not occur without the third indisputable component, the microbes that wreak havoc by bringing foreign genetic material into the organism – our bodies. 20

Yet a famous follower of Pasteur, and Nobel Prize winner, Charles Nicolle, had, in the 1920s, brilliantly shown that chronic diseases could be linked to what he called ‘les infections inapparentes’, or ‘silent infections’, a term which was translated into English at that time as ‘occult infections’. Many of the processes responsible for the development of poorly understood diseases could be due to these unseen...

Table of contents

• Praise
• Title Page
• Dedications
• Contents
• A translator’s note
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• About the translators
• About the author
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1: The problem of Lyme and other crypto-infections
• 2: The need for accurate diagnosis
• 3: The certainties of a handful of experts in a world of uncertainties
• 4: The history of ticks and spiral-shaped bacteria
• 5: The history of Lyme disease
• 6: Recent research developments
• 7: The persecution of those at the forefront of Lyme disease research
• 8: My experience with Lyme disease and other crypto-infections as a physician and researcher
• 9: Crypto-infections
• 10: When medical methodology replaces medicine
• 11: Hope
• 12: Towards a global recognition of chronic Lyme disease
• References
• Index
• Also from Hammersmith Health Books
• Copyright