Cure Unknown: Inside the Lyme Epidemic

Cure Unknown: Inside the Lyme Epidemic
by Pamela Weintraub

Cure Unknown: Inside the Lyme Epidemic
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Book Summary Information

Author: Pamela Weintraub
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-06-17
ISBN: 0312378122
Number of pages: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Book Reviews of Cure Unknown: Inside the Lyme Epidemic

Book Review: A Frustrating Account
Summary: 3 Stars

I was prepared to have this book confirm my sense that in the course of becoming big business, medical practice has become increasingly unresponsive, uncoordinated, and impersonal. However, this is one of the few books that actually nudged me towards siding with establishment doctors, despite the reputation that many of them have for being egotistical and abrupt. That's because I was exhausted and confounded just reading here about the prolonged symptoms attributed to Lyme disease. I could imagine doctors being similarly eager to turn their backs on the problem.

Weintraub's family seems to have had an unusually high degree of sensitivity to one or another of the spirochetes charged with causing Lyme disease. She and a large percentage of the fellow sufferers with whom she's ultimately been able to network have endured years of crippling pain, enervation, and disorientation. Many of these people had trouble getting their family physicians to reach an initial diagnosis of Lyme disease, due to the equivocal nature of the test blots used. Then once they had been at least tentatively diagnosed, they had even more trouble getting their doctors to continue prescribing the massive doses of antibiotics over the months and years it took to make any difference in their condition. As a result, many of these patients have turned to the handful of doctors who surreptitiously continue to prescribe the antibiotics for them, risking their medical licenses in the process.

It might be difficult for the average reader lucky enough to enjoy relatively good health to relate to this sort of on-going medical extremity. It becomes even more difficult to relate after Weintraub tells how her family members' actions might have occasionally contributed to re-activating the disease. For example, she tells how one of her children, after being virtually bedridden for years, finally rallied under his regimen of antibiotics and became strong enough to attend an area University. Knowing her family members' ultra adverse reaction to whatever was injected into them by those deer ticks endemic to the northeastern region, she had always had the sorry task of keeping them away from any exposure by keeping them away from nature. No gardening, no walks in the woods, no jumping into piles of autumn leaves. All these delights were forever foreclosed to them. She hoped her children would continue to take the same precautions as they became well enough to once more go out into the world.

But when she first visited this son on campus, she was horrified to see him running BAREFOOT across a lawn. And sure enough, soon afterwards, his symptoms returned with a vengeance and laid him low again. In effect - back to square one.

So I could sympathize with even the most callous doctor's dismissal of these cases. I finished the book feeling similarly helpless and frustrated - and still very far from any answers.

Summary of Cure Unknown: Inside the Lyme Epidemic

A?groundbreaking and controversial narrative investigation into the science, history, medical politics, and patient experience of Lyme disease told by a science journalist whose entire family contracted the disease.Pamela Weintraub paints a nuanced picture of the intense controversy and crippling uncertainty surrounding Lyme disease and sheds light on one of the angriest medical disputes raging today.? She also reveals her personal odyssey through the land of Lyme after she, her husband and their two sons became seriously ill with the disease beginning in the 1990s.?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. With a CDC-estimated 200,000-plus new cases of Lyme disease a year, it has surpassed both AIDS and TB as the fastest-spreading infectious disease in the U.S. Yet alarmingly, in?many cases, because the disease often eludes blood tests and not all patients exhibit the classic "bulls-eye" rash and swollen joints, doctors are woefully?unable or unwilling to diagnose Lyme. When that happens,?once-treatable infections become chronic, inexorably disseminating to cause disabling conditions that may never be cured.?Weintraub?reveals why the Lyme epidemic has been allowed to explode, why patients are dismissed, and what can be done to raise awareness in the medical community and find a cure.?The?most comprehensive book ever written about the past, present and future of Lyme disease, this exposes the ticking clock of a raging epidemic.?

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