We want to make this hearing as inclusive as possible, both for the scientific community and for laymen and patients and so forth.

Lyme disease is a serious public health issue that requires our immediate attention and action.

I think you have really summarized the urgency that so many of us feel about developing diagnostic and treatment tools and the pernicious and insidious effects of this disease, the suffering it causes, the destruction of lives.

To what extent do you think that climate disruption, the warming trends that have become more noticeable, contribute to the spread of the ticks and the disease?

The numbers are increasing.

The objective of bringing people together is also the goal of the legislation that Senator Gillibrand and I have introduced in the U.S. Senate.

Thank you Senator Blumenthal for being the voice of so many Lyme Sufferers throughout the country.

The advisory committee giving patients and victims a seat at the table, giving them a voice to be heard, I think will help to increase awareness in the medical community.

Well, we could go on with each of you, and, altogether, you have been enormously helpful.

We will make it part of the record.

Thanks to Senator Blumenthal's work in Connecticut while he was Attorney General, this doctor was more comfortable treating Lyme with long term antibiotics.

There are about 40,000 cases of Lyme disease reported nationally each year.

I want to thank Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa for giving me this opportunity.

We share a common concern with a disease that has really reached epidemic proportions.

I am thankful for the opportunity but wonder how many times we can document the pain of constituents without change.

They can't afford it because insurance won't cover it, or they've aged out of insurance.

I really congratulate you for opening it up to all tick-borne diseases.

These life stories, the changing lives as a result of this disease, I think, are really moving and inspiring.

I feel so honored to be chosen to testify today, as I was in 2004 when I joined Senator Blumenthal to testify at a hearing on Lyme disease in Hartford.

The insurance companies, from what I've understood and heard here today, continue to be a problem, a problem in the sense that they are still resistant to providing coverage in many instances.

So it is expanding across the country.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, Lyme disease remains the fastest growing vector-borne infectious disease in the United States.

Are we making progress? You know, are we making any strides in combating and fighting this disease?

I'm very hopeful that the measure that I proposed and that Senator Gillibrand has co-sponsored and others around the country--it is a bipartisan coalition.

I hope that many of my colleagues, in returning to their home States for the August recess, may have an opportunity to attend a citizenship ceremony. I do so regularly when I go home. During the July 4th break, I had the wonderful…