April 29, 2007

Connecticut's activist attorney general Richard Blumenthal is running into increasing criticism for the legal hardball he's been playing on behalf of advocates who favor the aggressive long-term use of antibiotics against persistent Lyme disease. The Centers for Disease Control, as well as professional groups, have endorsed Lyme treatment guidelines which discourage such therapy, but Blumenthal has deployed the threat of antitrust action against the Infectious Diseases Society of America over this supposed infringement of patients' rights -- the nub being that if the treatment guidelines stand, many health insurers will go on denying coverage for the antibiotic therapy as needless or dangerous. The Hartford Courant covered the story last month (reprinted at LymeNet); Cliff Hutchinson also comments on the controversy.