We are extremely sad to have to report the death of Dr Neil L. Spector, USA, Oncologist, and premier tick-borne illness researcher.
Author, Gone in A Heartbeat, a physician’s search for true healing.
Neil was athletic, he ran marathons, but tick-borne diseases ravaged his body to such an extent that in 2009 he needed and received a heart transplant.
Neil, while working as a top Oncologist, decided to also turn his attention to tick-borne diseases, thereby implementing his oncology expertise to tick-borne infections.
With vital support and generosity from the Steven and Alexander Cohen Foundation, Neil and his colleagues have been able to develop and continue an intrinsic and fundamentally valuable future for tick-borne illness research.
Such is the nature of tick-borne diseases that sadly, 11 years following his heart transplant, they continued to wreak havoc on Neil’s severely compromised immune system, and evidenced further complications too difficult to overcome.
Neil was a personal and true friend to our small charity, so much so that in 2016 and unpaid, he made the 8,000 mile round trip to the UK from North Carolina to support us as a key note speaker at our symposium where he presented his valuable work and research.
“To me, Lyme is the infectious disease equivalent of cancer. We don’t talk about cancer as just one disease anymore, and we should stop talking about Lyme this way. There are so many strains and co-infections. When you are bitten by a tick, you can get five or ten different infections at the same time.
I also find it ludicrous to call all tick-borne disease, Lyme Disease. In breast cancer, we don’t just say, ‘You have breast cancer’,”because that simply doesn’t mean anything anymore. The language is important because it has a bearing on treatment.
With cancer, we know that administering one algorithmic form of treatment doesn’t work. You have to understand the wiring that drives those tumors, the nuances, the mutations–and target them specifically. I think we need to start thinking this way about tick-borne diseases“.
– Neil Spector, MD. Oncology/tick-borne illness research. Author, Gone in a Heartbeat, A physician’s search for true healing.
