Thank Anti-Vaxxers for Lyme Disease [View all]

[DonViejo]

Kent Sepkowitz

LYMErix, a promising vaccine for Lyme disease introduced in the ‘90s, was taken off the market due to pushback from anti-vaxxers (among other groups). Is it time to bring the drug back?

Well it’s springtime once again. Flowers are blooming, love is in the air, and hopefulness abounds for one and all.

Except infectious disease specialists: for us, spring signals the start of Lyme season, a months-long slog through patient doubt and acrimony that makes us root for the bitter bite of winter to still the hopping, blood-sucking advance of the tick. April is indeed the cruelest month, not only breeding lilacs from the dead but awakening countless nymph ticks from a months-long slumber, each desperate to find a leg or hairy back to set up shop and take a vampiric meal.

First described almost 40 years ago, little has changed about Lyme diagnostics or treatment in the last few decades. What has happened however is the birth and continued growth of a group of patients who have chased the concept of the condition called “chronic Lyme disease” to the ends of science and beyond. Chronic Lyme is a protean disease said to affect primarily neurologic function; the remedy, according to believers in the syndrome, is long-term, if not indefinite, courses of intravenous antibiotics.

The group has substantial influence. In 2002 an FDA-approved Lyme vaccine was an unexpected victim of the ongoing struggle between chronic Lyme advocates and those who ascribe to the orthodoxies of allopathic medicine, a semi-derogatory term used to refer to those who went the boring route to medical school and who read conventional textbooks and ascribe to the accumulated wisdom and evidence of generations of traditional boring physicians (like me).

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/13/thank-anti-vaxxers-for-lyme-disease.html