With One Month To Go, Candidates Eke Out Votes Wherever They Can

October 8th, 2012

With One Month To Go, Candidates Eke Out Votes Wherever They Can

From the Department of Opportunistic Expediency, we have this brazen pitch from one of our two presidential hopefuls:

Romney and Ryan will do more to fight the spread of Lyme Disease … As president, Mitt Romney will ensure that real action is taken to get control of this epidemic that is wreaking havoc on Northern Virginia.

Suffice to say this bit of “microtargeting” — note I did not write “microbe targeting” — has various political motives, nicely outlined here and here and here.

But politics aside, the fact remains that we don’t have much data on the optimal approach to persistent symptoms after treatment for Lyme disease. It remains a very tough problem.

So if this silliness (or similar) can generate funding for some new legitimate research on the problem — free of politics and rancor and paranoia, and focused instead on trying to find strategies that actually help people — I’m all for it.

HIV and ID Observations

An ongoing dialogue on HIV/AIDS, infectious diseases,
all matters medical, and some not so medical.

October 8th, 2012