“If you have Lyme disease and your treatment is stalled out or not moving or you’re not progressing the way you should, please check for mold. It’s almost certain that’s what you need to be working on next.”
– Neil Nathan, MD
Our Ticktective host, Dana Parish, interviews Dr. Neil Nathan, renowned physician and best-selling author. Dr. Nathan specializes in treating chronic illnesses, particularly those related to environmental toxins, vector-borne infections, and complex systemic disorders. With decades of experience in clinical practice, he focuses on understanding the impact of toxins on health and is dedicated to helping patients recover from illnesses that conventional medicine often struggles to address. His bestselling book, Toxic: Heal Your Body from Mold Toxicity, Lyme Disease, Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, and Other Chronic Environmental Illnesses, provides a comprehensive guide to recognizing, diagnosing, and treating various chronic conditions linked to environmental factors.
In Puerto Rico, Donating Your Body to Science is Almost Impossible
Working in the lab at Cornell in 1997
Luisette Mauras Rodriguez is lying in bed at home in Guyana, Puerto Rico, waiting to die. She’s 46 years old, her body ravaged by Lyme, numerous tick-borne coinfections, and a multitude of other hits caused by environmental exposure to toxins like black mold, fungus, mycoplasma, and chikungunya virus. Family members do not understand her illness and laugh at her ‘exaggerations.’ Her husband left her because he fears getting sick and his religious convictions cause him to question the validity of her condition. Her mother, formerly a registered nurse, has abandoned her to her fate. Whenever Luisette gets desperate for help and goes to the ER, they refer her to the psych ward saying her illness is fabricated.
Cornell University and the surrounding woods where she was bitten
A former professional lab technician who worked in pharmaceutical development with US companies like Wyeth, SmithKline Beecham, and IPR Pharmaceuticals, Luisette has one dying wish: to donate her body to the Lyme Disease Biobank (LDB) so that samples from her brain, joints, organs, and tissues will be used to fuel much-needed research into Lyme and tick-borne diseases. She has registered with the National Disease Research Interchange (NDRI) in Philadelphia to have her body collected after her death, but as of writing this article, staff there are unable to find any medical professional on the island willing to partner with them to ensure this happens.
“We have been unsuccessful in securing anyone for recovery for the donor located in Puerto Rico. It has been very difficult getting anyone to follow up with us on top of the language barrier. We were trying to give the pathology department at the University time to get back to us but they seem to be very busy. The complexity of the recovery also makes it more difficult as well.” — Wauchita Green, Manager, Organ & Tissue Source Sites, NDRI, The National Disease Research Interchange
Our Ticktective host, Dana Parish, interviews Dr. Neil Nathan, renowned physician and best-selling author. Dr. Nathan specializes in treating chronic illnesses, particularly those related to environmental toxins, vector-borne infections, and complex systemic disorders. With decades of experience in clinical practice, he focuses on understanding the impact of toxins on health and is dedicated to helping patients recover from illnesses that conventional medicine often struggles to address. His bestselling book, Toxic: Heal Your Body from Mold Toxicity, Lyme Disease, Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, and Other Chronic Environmental Illnesses, provides a comprehensive guide to recognizing, diagnosing, and treating various chronic conditions linked to environmental factors.
