Pamela Weintraub

When Pamela Weintraub and her husband moved their family to idyllic, pastoral Chappaqua, New York, in the early 1990s, they thought they were doing the best thing for their two young sons: open space, fresh air, lawns and woods to play in. When all four family members began to feel unwell, they ascribed their vague headaches, joint pains, and weariness to the normal wear and tear of busy suburban life. But as years passed, their symptoms multiplied and intensified, burgeoning into gross signs of disease: swollen knees, limbs that buzzed as though wired to a power grid, mood swings, extreme fatigue, and disabling pain. Eventually their oldest son, Jason, tested positive for Lyme disease, and Weintraub, a science journalist, thought she had found the answer for all of them--but her nightmare had just begun.
As with her quest for a diagnosis, almost everything about Lyme disease turned out to be controversial. From the microbe causing the infection and the definition of the disease, to the length and type of treatment and the kind of practitioner needed, Lyme is a hotbed of contention.
On one side of the fight are the scientists who first studied it, initially writing it up in medical journals as a circular rash and an infection of the joints. The disease they describe, transmitted by the bite of a deer tick, is hard to catch and easy to cure no matter how advanced the case when first diagnosed. On the other side of the fight, rebel doctors and their desperately sick patients insist that Lyme and a soup of “coinfections” cause a spectrum of illness dramatically different from the one the scientists describe. Instead of just swollen knees and a rash, patients can experience exhaustion, chronic pain, and a “Lyme fog” that leaves them dazed and confused. Because their illness differs from the disease described in textbooks and often eludes blood tests, they go undiagnosed and untreated for years. As these patients struggle for answers, once-treatable infections become chronic, inexorably disseminating to cause disabling conditions that may never be cured. Complicating matters, a host of other pathogens inhabit the same ticks, causing similar or parallel forms of disease.
In this nuanced picture of the intense controversy and crippling uncertainty surrounding Lyme disease, Pamela Weintraub sheds light on one of the angriest medical disputes raging today. The most comprehensive book ever written about the past, present, and future of Lyme disease, Cure Unknown exposes the ticking clock of a raging epidemic and the vulnerability we all share.… (meer)