Of course, prevention of Lyme Disease should be as important to us as
drinking water. They say that insect repellants with more than 23%
DEET are whats needed to repel ticks--that's a pretty strong poison
for little kids to wear, and it should be showered off as soon as you
get home. Wear light-colored, full-coverage clothing so you can
see ticks when they get on your clothes. And if they do get to
your skin, getting ticks off fast, and doing so without crushing the
body, is very important.

I've had the Lyme vaccine, but Bruce opted not to get it because the
side effects include arthritis and other joint problems (he has enough
problems with joints being a carpenter). Still, the vaccine only
protects against less than 80% of the variants of Lyme anyway...Its
frequently misdiagnosed because sypmtoms mimic a number of maladies
(except that ring-rash which is not always present). Even early
diagnosis is not always effective as the spirokeet is a smart little
bugger which hides in tissues where antibiotics are less likely to
find it--like joint tissue and brain tissue. (ick)

Bottom line...be careful and good luck!

Aili

--- In letterbox-usa@y..., Debbie Varrell wrote:
>
> > From: "Linda and Jeff"
> > Subject: Letterboxing in Lyme territory
> >
> > at this point I don't feel
> > comfortable going into the woods to letterbox unless I step up our
> > tick prevention. I'd like to know what others do. >>
>

Hello John,
I have had Lyme 3 times and finally went for the vaccine, which was Lymerix, did all three boosters. Never picked a tick off me for the next 2 years but this year I have already picked ticks. Why did they pull Lymerix off the market? I was wondering as I hadn't heard that.
Thanks,
jurneez and Vinnie the dog.
Original Message:
-----------------
From: John De Wolf jdewolf@mail.icrsurvey.com
Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2002 07:36:08 -0500
To: letterbox-usa@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [LbNA] Re: CT - ticks


I've had the Lyme vaccine, but Bruce opted not to get it because the
side effects include arthritis and other joint problems (he has enough
problems with joints being a carpenter
[JDW] Lymerix has been pulled off the US market by its manufacturer a few
months ago.


--------------------------------------------------------------------
mail2web - Check your email from the web at
http://mail2web.com/ .

I had heard that the vaccine had been removed from the market because there
wasn't enough demand for it. That was from a friend who heard it on the
news. Can anybody verify that?

Megan


>From: John De Wolf
>Reply-To: letterbox-usa@yahoogroups.com
>To: "'letterbox-usa@yahoogroups.com'"
>Subject: RE: [LbNA] Re: CT - ticks
>Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2002 07:36:08 -0500
>
>I've had the Lyme vaccine, but Bruce opted not to get it because the
>side effects include arthritis and other joint problems (he has enough
>problems with joints being a carpenter
>[JDW] Lymerix has been pulled off the US market by its manufacturer a few
>months ago.
>


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Yes. I had read that Lymerix was pulled due to poor sales too.
Linda


----- Original Message -----
From: "Megan Thompson"
To:
Sent: Tuesday, April 02, 2002 9:40 AM
Subject: RE: [LbNA] Re: CT - ticks


> I had heard that the vaccine had been removed from the market because
there
> wasn't enough demand for it. That was from a friend who heard it on the
> news. Can anybody verify that?
>
> Megan
>
>
> >From: John De Wolf
> >Reply-To: letterbox-usa@yahoogroups.com
> >To: "'letterbox-usa@yahoogroups.com'"
> >Subject: RE: [LbNA] Re: CT - ticks
> >Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2002 07:36:08 -0500
> >
> >I've had the Lyme vaccine, but Bruce opted not to get it because the
> >side effects include arthritis and other joint problems (he has enough
> >problems with joints being a carpenter
> >[JDW] Lymerix has been pulled off the US market by its manufacturer a few
> >months ago.
> >
>
>
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> http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx
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>
>

Megan Thompson writes ("RE: [LbNA] Re: CT - ticks"):
>I had heard that the vaccine had been removed from the market because there
>wasn't enough demand for it. That was from a friend who heard it on the
>news. Can anybody verify that?

It was pulled off the market in February, and "poor sales" was indeed
given as the reason.

However, there were also allegations of Lymerix causing arthritis, and
a rather large number of lawsuits, but the FDA found no evidence
supporting a link. It probably contributed to it being pulled from
the market (because of litigation costs, if nothing else). Here's one
article:

http://www.sciam.com/explorations/2000/070500tick/

Also, sales were lagging since a lot of doctors were recommending
against it, either because of the above controversy, or because of a
CDC epidemiological study that said it wasn't economically effective
unless it was just given to very high risk individuals[1]


[1] Of which I know a few. Field biologists who spend most of the
year outside doing fieldwork in areas with a Lyme risk have a
substantial risk factor. At least now they are getting better at
recognizing the symptoms early.



--
Richard W Kaszeta
rich@kaszeta.org
http://www.kaszeta.org/rich