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Suffolk Closeup: The Lyme disease conspiracy

“We were just totally overwhelmed by it” so “we didn’t want to wait for the full festival to show it,” Jacqui Lofaro, founder and executive director of the Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival, told a full audience at LTV Studio 3 Cinema in Wainscott last month.

They were there to see “Under Our Skin.”

The documentary is about Lyme disease. “It peels away the layers of what is an epidemic,” said Ms. Lofaro. It’s powerful, the winner of 20 film festival awards. The New York Times called it “heartrending” and said it “takes aim at the medical establishment.” It not only takes aim; it scores a bull’s-eye.

“Under Our Skin” is a kind of health counterpart of “Inside Job,” the 2011 Academy Award-winner for best documentary. “Inside Job” depicts the economic crisis we’ve undergone as a colossal crime perpetuated by greedy Wall Street corporations linked to and protected by figures in the federal government.

“Under Our Skin” depicts a similarly colossal crime involving health care. It documents how desperately needed treatment for long-term Lyme disease sufferers is being discouraged by health insurance companies linked to people in the medical establishment — including physicians with whom they are connected financially.

Not only do they take the position that extended care of Lyme disease victims is unnecessary, and that a few weeks of treatment with antibiotics is all that’s needed, they have punished dedicated doctors who have provided needed long-term care, the film shows.

It shows how the health insurers don’t want to pay for long-term care of Lyme sufferers. Our medical system has been twisted to consider such care unnecessary. Doctors who provide it have been losing their medical licenses. A huge scandal is exposed.

If Lyme disease is detected early, several weeks of treatment with antibiotics will, in most instances, take care of it. But as the documentary indicates, early detection is not always easy. About half of the people bitten by a tick carrying Lyme don’t develop the tell-tale bull’s-eye rash at the site of the bite. And tests for the disease are often unreliable.

Many people end up with chronic Lyme disease.

“Under Our Skin” presents a number of long-term sufferers and follows the history of these victims, from their excruciating physical circumstances — “Pain, pain, pain, relentless pain!” exclaims one — to their care by the brave doctors who treat them. And, most importantly, it shows how they beat this hellish disease through long-term care.

The documentary, produced and directed by Andy Abrahams Wilson, includes interviews with many of the courageous doctors and presents footage of medical board proceedings at which their medical licenses were threatened or revoked.

It examines what is behind this outrage, including a panel of the Infectious Diseases Society of America which issued a key report calling for no long-term antibiotic therapy for Lyme. The report has been used by medical boards and other entities of the medical establishment to penalize doctors who provide care for chronic Lyme sufferers. The documentary notes the fiscal connections of six members of the 14-member panel to health insurance companies.

After the 86-minute film was screened, there was a panel discussion at the LTV Studio on September 16 that included Dr. Joseph J. Burrascano, Jr. of Water Mill. He had been a top Lyme disease physician on Long Island providing treatment to chronic sufferers at his office in East Hampton; he is featured in the documentary. New York State health authorities took action — unsuccessfully — against Dr. Burrascano for his caring for long-term Lyme victims. His office is now closed but he has gone on to be a major figure nationally and internationally in Lyme disease research.

Dr. Burrascano commented that Lyme is not only a medical malady but also a “political disease,” considering the “corruption” in the push against proper treatment for its chronic form.

For more information about “Under Our Skin” — including obtaining an inexpensive DVD copy for yourself — visit underourskin.com.