ABSTRACT
Within the biomedical community, Lyme disease is considered a “welldefined, distinct clinical entity” (Baker 2009) with a widely accepted etiology and protocol for diagnosis and treatment (CDC 2013). Yet the disease remains one of the most contentious in recent history (Tonks 2007; Whelan 2007, 2010). On the one hand is an “establishment” group of credentialed doctors and researchers whose authority arises from their positions on the editorial boards of major medical journals and from the institutional backing of the powerful medical policy and advocacy group, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and from the federal agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Challenging this mainstream axis of medical-scientific expertise is a more loosely organized “alternative” network of patients, their friends and family members, and sympathetic doctors and scientists whose credibility is bolstered by professional organizations such as the Lyme Disease Association (Cohen 2004, 2007) and the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS 2014). This latter group has had some success challenging the “expert” science in scientific, legal, policy making, and more populist arenas. Several writers (for examples, see Stricker and Johnson 2014; Tonks 2007; Weintraub 2008), reflecting on the contentiousness between the two groups, have used the military metaphor the “Lyme Wars” to characterize the depth of the rancor and the fierce battles to sway scientists, patients, doctors, and policy makers to take sides.
