User talk:Shine a lite

The comments I made ARE factual and have been referenced by reliable sources.

I have not made any statements about living persons that contradict any policy that I am aware of. All the comments I made about Steere camp Lyme scientists being involved in biowarfare research wewre supported by references that meet the criteria listed in WP's reliable source policy.

Wikipedia was not set up for you to censor information which the public has the right to know. Shine a lite (talk) 23:15, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Edit-warring and WP:3RR
You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war. Note that the three-revert rule prohibits making more than three reversions on a single page within a 24 hour period. Additionally, users who perform a large number of reversions in content disputes may be blocked for edit warring, even if they do not technically violate the three-revert rule. If you continue, you may be blocked from editing. Please do not repeatedly revert edits, but use the talk page to work towards wording and content that gains a consensus among editors. If necessary, pursue dispute resolution. MastCell Talk 23:20, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

It takes two sides to conduct a "war". Have you warned those on the other side who revert every edit that I and others on my "side" of the war make?

Also, do you take into the account that those undoing my edits are deleting paragraphs presenting BOTH sides of a dispute in favour of material that presents only one?

The fanaticism displayed by those who continually remove the factual information on the conflicts of interest of the Steere camp, and the continual censorship of the biowarfare issues, speaks for itself.

Shine a lite (talk) 23:25, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Talk page misuse
I removed your talk page comment because Wikipedia is not for soapboxing, nor for making personal attacks against other editors. Please read WP:TALK and WP:CIVIL before continuing. Thank you. Jehochman Talk 08:38, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Below is the comment which you maliciously removed. It is not a question of "personal attack" but a simple statement of fact. As for "soapboxing", you seem to consider that anyone who expresses a view other than the Steere camp's view is "soapboxing". It's simply a measure of how intolerant you are, and how frightened you appear to be any time information other than the Steere camp view gets any public exposure, however small. - COMMENT REMOVED BY JEHOCHMAN: "Mast Cell", you deleted my version of the paragraph which was an attempt to remedy your violations of the Neutral Point of View policy by listing three different sources - the Steere camp's 80% figure, the ILADS figure, and a figure of 60% published by the US Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine, which falls somewhere in between the two. - -

My material which you deleted also raised the important points that the rash in people with dark skin is often confused with a bruise, and that people of any complexion may miss an existing rash because it is on a "hidden" area of their body, such as the scalp under the hairline, the axilla etc.. - -

You appear to want to censor all information that presents the non-Steere camp point of view, even whem the two sides' views are presented together you are not satisfied. - -

Your claim that you're not from the Steere camp, and had never heard of Allen Steere before, jars with your claim to be able to conduct a knowledgeable discussion about technical matters such as the prevalence of the erythema chronicum migrans rash. - -

The fact is, as you are anonymous, no one has any idea whatsoever who you are. I at least have left a name which people could google, if they wished to know more about my background. - - The debate about the rash is not JUST a technical matter, by the way. Let me give you all a vey realistic scenario so that you may understand the consequences of your random deletions of my and other people's material. - -

A member of the public, having been bitten by a tick and suffering vague flu-like symptoms, slightly anxious that he may have Lyme disease, but not unduly worried, as he has no serious symptoms yet, googles Lyme and lands on Wikipedia. - -

He reads that 80% of sufferers get this rash. Thanks to editing by users like Mast Cell, that is now the ONLY viewpoint on the question available to him. He sees, on the website, photos of a large and pretty unmistakeable target-shaped lesion. He is 100% sure he has nothing like that on his body so, re-assured, he puts the whole matter out of his mind and does not consult his GP about his post tick bite "summer flu". - -

Several months later, he awakens in terrible pain, feeling weak as a baby, suffering intermittent spasms of his muscles and shockingly, finds he cannot talk properly. He grabs his car keys and drags himself to his vehicle. This takes every ounce of energy he has. - - His GP is just a few minutes away. But to his horror he finds that he now has cognitive disturbances so severe that he cannot remember the way there, even though he has been there many many times before - in a neighbourhood he has lived in his entire life. - -

Can he be helped at this stage? Maybe. But he has missed that window of opportunity when his chances of cure were very very good - at the beginning. - -

That is the responsibility you bear when you randomly delete peer-reviewed material that testifies to the fact that the EM rash often DOES NOT occur. Had our man in the above scenario read that, things might have been different. As it is, he may end up disabled for life. - -

Of course you and the other Steere camp people here will say that is impossible, chronic Lyme does not exist etc.. The (literally) tens of thousands of members of the Lyme disease patient campaigns out there beg to disagree. - -

Elena Cook (Username "Shine a Lite" on Wikipedia) Shine a lite (talk) 08:34, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Jehochman, I have restored my comment above which you maliciously deleted.

It is very clear to me that a handful of Steere camp advocates are here using several accounts to create an illusion that there is consensus on these issues.

Far from consensus, a simple Google search of the internet will reveal to anyone that there is a vast patients' movement out there, with tens of thousands of members, ***all*** of whom are totally opposed to the sentiments expressed by the handful of Steerites here. They are supported by ILADS doctors who are actually involved in the day-to-day treatment of patients, as opposed to academicians who never see the human, or rather, inhuman, consequences of their misuse of science.

DGG mentioned earlier that "patient satisfaction" is of no concern here. I would say it is of the utmost concern in any medical debate. The iron test by which anyone can measure the achievements of medicine is this - is the patient happy? Is he improving? Is he cured? Does he feel that researchers are doing their utmost to make progress to alleviate his suffering?

Anyone who feels these issues are irrelevant should not work in healthcare, or try to edit a medical article on a public encyclopedia such as this.

Those of you here who are from the Steere camp, pleae note that I am aware that you have your "patients' organisation" too, the American Lyme Disease Foundation (ALDF). It is handsomely funded by all manner of corporate entities, and has the benevolent ear of CDC, but unfortunately there is one thing your puppet "patients' movement" lacks - patients. I have yet to meet one patient who is a member or supporter of the ALDF.

"Jehochman", "Mast Cell", and the others, please notice that I do not remove your comments, however offensive, from here. I want the reader to see exactly what has been said by both you and I. I am not afraid of the words you write. However it appears you are very afraid of mine.

Why so frightened?

The truth on these issues will come out, boys, regardless of the childish games you are playing on this discussion board. It ***will**** come out. On that you can rely.

Elena Cook Shine a lite (talk) 08:08, 29 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Elena, this is not a medical debate. We are not giving medical advice, we are not trying to decide what is correct medical advice, we are not trying to resolve medical controversies. It's not our role, it's not our purpose, it's totally contrary to the basic principle of WP:V and WP:NPOV. There are encyclopedic sources where it is the purpose, PubMedPlus, Merck, CDC, Mayo, etc. They have the qualifications and the editorial control and the acceptance. all we can do is report what the accepted secondary and tertitary sources say about the present state of things, giving appropriate weight to the different views, with the principle that we give highest weight tot the established majority view. If you want to do things on a more scientific level, this is not the place. If you want to argue that the accepted consensus is wrong, this is not the place. Our job is not to give advice to patients, but to report what it is hat the accepted authorities say, and, to a limited extent, what those challenging these authorities say. Personal testimony is irrelevant. Published reports of personal testimony, if published by reliable publishers and widely recognized as significant views, can be included, but that has to be demonstrated. We include links to major patient and professional lobbies, and indicate their points of view for informational purposes, not for evaluating them.
 * If you want to help us do this you are welcome here. If you wish to on the other hand engage in advocacy for what you thing the truth of the matter is, you are better off elewhere. Your choice. DGG (talk) 04:11, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

DGG, you say "we are not giving medical advice", but in fact, if people set out to create a vast project such as Wikipedia is, and to include articles on medical topics, then the authors and editors of those articles ***are*** indeed "giving medical advice" with every word they write, whether they are aware of it or not.

Because Wikipedia gets so much search engine exposure, and has become so well known to internet users, it WILL be used by members of the public who are seeking information on health conditions all the time, whether Wikipedians want that or not. Therefore all of us involved in this project bear a certain amount of responsibility.

Ordinary people who do not happen to work in a healthcare profession or academia probably have not even heard of PubMed, much less find themselves in a position to make use of it, and non-Americans do not know CDC etc.. People will make use of Wikipedia for medical information in the same way they make use of the information on health that is published in their ordinary daily newspaper. And if we publish wrong or dangerous information here, we DO bear responsibility for the consequences, morally, and possibly legally too.

As far as Wikipedia's job being to convey the "accepted" view, there is no accepted view on Lyme. There are two views, one espoused by a relatively small group of doctors and researchers who happen to have the backing of the US government, another view espoused by a small group of mainly clinicians and researchers with hands-on experience in treating patients. Quite a number of the latter suffer from Lyme themselves, which admittedly has influenced them to go the extra mile in trying to establish best practice in diagnosis and treatment of this crippling disease.

You should also be aware that there is a massive body of hundreds of thousands of patients internationally who do not accept what you are referring to as the "accepted view".

What we call the Steere camp, or the US federal government backed camp, therefore do not promote an "accepted view". It is only accepted insofar as it is a self-proclaimed "accepted view", an illusion created by numerous committees and "ad hoc" groupings set up by the same few academicians,most of whom have massive conflicts of interest with the US biological warfare research effort, and/or financial interests such as the insurance industry, who set up guidelines based on data analysis which excludes large portions of the peer-reviewed evidence that do not support their intended conclusions.

The fact that the Connecticut Attorney General has publicly stated this "accepted view" was formed by scientists with glaring conflict of interest, and demanded a scrapping of the Steere camp's 2006 IDSA panel (which set guidelines on Lyme promoted by public health agencies),a plan to which IDSA has reluctantly been forced to agree, is further confirmation of the huge cloud of doubt hanging over the so-called "accepted view".

In addition, some years ago a study of ordinary physicians in endemic areas found that many were ignoring the IDSA/CDC/NIH "accepted view" anyway and using their own clinical judgment. This key information, with its reference in the peer-reviewed literature, has been consistently deleted from the article by those who are now lobbying you to exclude me and any other editors who would show the other side of the coin.

You state that Wikipedia's job is to report what the "accepted authorities" say, and dissenting views "to a limited extent". This clashes with the vision of the founder, whose words are flashed up at me as part of a fund-raising advertisement as I visit various pages of Wikipedia. His view seems to have been much more to do with making available ALL knowledge to everyone, not some kind of obligation to promote the US government's view on everything.

If there is a Wikipedia policy that says the purpose of articles here are to promote the US government's view, please point me to it. There is no "accepted view" on Lyme. Lyme is a topic which has been massively and hotly disputed for years in the medical and patient communities, and if an article here does not reflect the two opposed viewpoints (which is what has now happened with the exclusion of people who agree with me and the "freezing" of the article after massive deletions by the Steere camp), then Wikipedia is doing the opposite of what its founder intended, ie censorship.

Shine a lite (talk) 07:45, 5 July 2008 (UTC) Elena Cook

Accusations
Let's be clear and explicit:


 * if you continue to engage in personal attacks on Mastcell, myself and others - you will be warned and then blocked. *who* some of are, suppose to be sockpuppets of, I'm not entirely sure? Consider this - many of the people you are accusing of people in some many of camp never edited the article, *until* your conduct and slanted edits were raised on one of our notice boards. I don't give a crap about Lyme disease, in the same way I don't give a crap about any of the other 100s of articles I edit, all I care about is that our article pages confirm to our guidelines, policies and procedures. --Allemandtando (talk) 10:19, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Also, do not place long screeds on my talk page. Wikipedia is not a chatroom, not a debate club, and not a platform for activism. Thanks! Jehochman Talk 12:20, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I have to echo Allemandtando to an extent here. You need to stop recruiting for this single purpose on external websites. You need to stop editing for a single purpose here. Consider editing other articles and learning about how WP works, then coming back and seeing if you can find good sources (i.e., not sources gleaned from advocacy groups, but sources on par with the best medical sources that we are currently using) to back your point. If you can do this, you will be successful here. If not, then it is unclear how long the community will allow you to continue to make harsh accusations, bold reversions, and POV edits. Also, accusing people of being in the Scheere camp is deleterious for two reasons. The first is that most of us don't know what that is, making you seem obsessive or fanatical about this topic. The second is that lumping together and labeling people that you consider to be your "opponents" makes them less likely to consider that your points could be valid. I hope to see you around these articles again after you have picked up some experience on topics about which you can be dispassionate. Antelan talk  13:12, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

I have already replied in detail above to some of what's said here. I don't have time to study the minutiae of the archive to know exactly which of your anonymous usernames is connected to a member of the Steere camp and which is just a naive member of Wikipedia drafted in by the efforts of the Steerites to create an artificial "consensus" by excluding the opposition in this massive debate.

To the person who says he "does not give a crap about Lyme disease" -This is a horrendous disease that cripples children and wipes out adults' quality of life so effectively that they commit suicide in droves. That's REAL LIFE, not the virtual world of pixels on a screen we are inhabiting here. If Lyme disease is a topic you "don't give a crap about", may I suggest you don't participate in editing an encyclopedia entry on it.

As for you, Antelan, you are right, I cannot be "dispassionate" about this issue. If the criteria for editing medical articles here is that a person must lack passion about the topic they are editing (to say nothing of knowledge), then that is too bad.

If the criteria for informing the public on Lyme here is that one must "not give a crap" about the disease and the millions of men, women and children worldwide who suffer from it, well, then yes, the Steere camp view is the only one that can be permitted.

Shine a lite (talk) 08:11, 5 July 2008 (UTC) Elena Cook

Blocked
My edit summary was meant as a light hearted way to say that we were aware of the off-site canvassing - no jeering was intended and I offer my apologies for that. I see that you are now canvassing the lymeNet forum members to join and petition our administrators to force change to the article. This is a pointless endeavour and is not going to have impact. I did register over at lymenet so I could explain on our policies and guidelines but was banned before I could make a single post. --Allemandtando (talk) 19:42, 6 July 2008 (UTC)