CNN : Why you should be afraid of Lyme disease
Editor’s note: Pamela Weintraub is the author of “Cure Unknown: Inside the Lyme Epidemic” (St. Martin’s Press), winner of the 2009 American Medical Writers Association book award, and executive editor of Discover magazine. Follow her on Twitter: @pam3001
(CNN) — Our nightmare began in 1993 after we moved from the city to a house down a winding country road abutting a spruce forest in Chappaqua, New York. Our little woods were home to mice, deer and ticks harboring the infectious agent of Lyme disease.
We weren’t especially concerned. As seasoned science journalists, my husband and I had researched the risk of tick-borne disease by reading medical journals, finding a raft of articles on a wave of “Lyme hysteria” sweeping the Northeast suburbs; the disease, some of the authors said, was mild and benign. Perhaps that’s why, as one of our sons and then the other got sick, our pediatrician resisted testing for Lyme disease.