Cure Unknown by Pamela Weintraub
Topic: Book Reviews
“Cure Unknown: Inside the Lyme Epidemic” by Pamela Weintraub, St. Martin's Press; New York, New York;  2008. 

“Cure Unknown” is another must read book about the real science, real required medical care for patients, and the ongoing research behind Lyme Disease and its related tick-born co-infections and how it all has been greatly obscured and even buried due to politics, conflicts of interest, and narrow-minded thinking on the part of some well-connected doctors and medical researches who sadly have too much clout within the medical establishment and the government. This has been done at the expense of Lyme patients, their families and the devoted doctors and researchers on the front lines of Lyme patient care who know some uncomfortable truths about this not fully understood and very stubborn bacterial disease.

Ms. Weintraub is another on the list of journalist-patients to research and write about her and her family's illness after suffering for years with inadequate care due to the fact efforts are being made to stifle the true number of Lyme cases in this country and thus deny sufferers full and proper medical treatment. Lyme is the only disease in this country where it is deemed fully acceptable to deny patients much-needed medical treatment to make them well, or to at least slow down the progression of the more stubborn cases of the disease. It is the only disease where governmental bodies have placed limits on the duration of antibiotic therapy and where state medical boards actually attempted to revoke, or did revoke, the medical licenses of doctors who did their jobs- treating their Lyme patients for as long as it took them to get well. 

This book is also important reading, and food for thought, for anyone involved in the current explosion in the diagnosis of “fibromyalgia”, whether they are working in the fields of medicine or social services, or they are a fibro patient or the friend or relative of someone diagnosed with fibro, especially if they have doubts or questions regarding the accuracy of the fibromyalgia diagnosis; as fibromyalgia, (formerly known as muscular rheumatism and later fibrositis) had its illness definition and symptoms list greatly expanded to include symptoms often found in late-stage and chronic Lyme (sometimes erroneously called Post Lyme Syndrome). Fibromyalgia has become such a fad diagnosis of late that it seems to be a catch-all label which covers a broad range of medical conditions- including Lyme disease- illnesses whose main symptoms include chronic fatigue, and widespread muscle and joint pain.  A somewhat similar occurrence has happened on lesser scale with late-stage and chronic Lyme being incorrectly labeled as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Multiple Sclerosis, or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS a.k.a Lou Gehrig's Disease).