Lyme disease can usually be treated by antibiotics, especially in the early stages: http://www.cdc.gov/lyme/treatment/ This isn't mentioned by the article anywhere and must be part of the cost-benefit analysis for deploying a vaccine, especially one which is to be only 80% effective and requires booster shots.
Yeah, I was lucky to develop a spectacular bullseye rash the day after I was bitten and go on antibiotics the day after. For me Lyme was just a few days of fevers in the afternoon then not being able to donate blood for a few years. Many people don't have such obvious symptoms, though.
My younger sister had lyme and was nearly paralyzed before it was discovered. Both of my parents are GPs . My aunt caught Lyme when visiting us in Europe (note that the European and American versions are different), and had to visit 5 different doctors before she got her treatment. The first two thought she was just overworked. By the third time my uncle (neurosurgeon, living in Europe) suggested she had Lyme. The th…
My son was on an island at a retreat, and his neck and head started hurting like crazy. He was instantly diagnosed by his peers, the counselors and the resident nurse. He was ferried/driven 200 miles to a hospital the same day for antibiotics! So it varies to be sure.
It's probably also true that, in part because of sharply increased infection rates, there's a much greater awareness of Lyme disease in the states where it is prevalent than there would have been even just 10 years ago. When I came down with a high fever and various other symptoms, it was the first thing my doctor thought of. (Turned out to be something else I caught while traveling but Lyme and other tick-borne diseases were definitely on his radar.)
>> People who had irrational fears of vaccines claimed harms from the Lyme vaccine that probably were not caused by the vaccine. No, people who actually got the vaccine claimed they got arthritis from it. Weather those claims are true or not remains unverified. Of course the clinical trials showed no such side effects, but I doubt they were even looking for that (if I'm really cynical, do you even trust them not to h…
Curios on the subject. How would a vaccine cause arthritis? I assume they are injecting you with a protein so the body produces antibodies. Could the antibodies/immune response cause arthritis?
> Could the antibodies/immune response cause arthritis?
Lyme disease can usually be treated by antibiotics, especially in the early stages: http://www.cdc.gov/lyme/treatment/ This isn't mentioned by the article anywhere and must be part of the cost-benefit analysis for deploying a vaccine, especially one which is to be only 80% effective and requires booster shots.
I know around 10 family members and friends who have had it. Over half of them have lasting damage as often people don't realize they have it until they have had it a while. One of them almost died.
If my dog can get it, I should be able to choose to get it, even if its not standard. I pick small ticks off my after every hike, its just a matter of time before I get it.
tl;dr: People who had irrational fears of vaccines claimed harms from the Lyme vaccine that probably were not caused by the vaccine. Sales dropped so much that vaccine manufacturers became reluctant to market the vaccine to humans. Similar irrational fears prompted the development of the "acellular" version of the pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine, which is less effective than the previously used version of the vacc…
>> People who had irrational fears of vaccines claimed harms from the Lyme vaccine that probably were not caused by the vaccine. No, people who actually got the vaccine claimed they got arthritis from it. Weather those claims are true or not remains unverified. Of course the clinical trials showed no such side effects, but I doubt they were even looking for that (if I'm really cynical, do you even trust them not to h…
So if the trial was not corrupt then it must have been incompetent? The FDA and CDC investigated and did not find reason to believe that the vaccine caused arthritis, but the unnamed people who reported the arthritis are more believable than all those public servants?
>> People who had irrational fears of vaccines claimed harms from the Lyme vaccine that probably were not caused by the vaccine. No, people who actually got the vaccine claimed they got arthritis from it. Weather those claims are true or not remains unverified. Of course the clinical trials showed no such side effects, but I doubt they were even looking for that (if I'm really cynical, do you even trust them not to h…
Curios on the subject. How would a vaccine cause arthritis? I assume they are injecting you with a protein so the body produces antibodies. Could the antibodies/immune response cause arthritis?
Lyme disease can cause a type of arthritis and it was hypothesized that the vaccine might result in a similar autoimmune response in certain genetically-disposed individuals. There are many more details about Lymerix and what happened here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/
[EDIT: Just to be clear though, there was no evidence in the numbers that the vaccine in fact caused arthritis.]
tl;dr: People who had irrational fears of vaccines claimed harms from the Lyme vaccine that probably were not caused by the vaccine. Sales dropped so much that vaccine manufacturers became reluctant to market the vaccine to humans. Similar irrational fears prompted the development of the "acellular" version of the pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine, which is less effective than the previously used version of the vacc…
>> People who had irrational fears of vaccines claimed harms from the Lyme vaccine that probably were not caused by the vaccine. No, people who actually got the vaccine claimed they got arthritis from it. Weather those claims are true or not remains unverified. Of course the clinical trials showed no such side effects, but I doubt they were even looking for that (if I'm really cynical, do you even trust them not to h…
> I doubt they were even looking for that (if I'm really cynical, do you even trust them not to hide that?).
The drug companies do not do the data for their clinical trials - a third party supervised by the FDA does. The penalty for hiding data is pretty high.
There have been Phase 1/2 clinical trials of a new Lyme vaccine by Baxter (which I believe is now owned by Pfizer) http://www.bnl.gov/newsroom/news.php?a=11537 . The trials seemed to go well but I don't know the status of further trials that could lead to this coming to market. Lyme's a real problem though with sharp increases in infection rates in New England in particular.
>> People who had irrational fears of vaccines claimed harms from the Lyme vaccine that probably were not caused by the vaccine. No, people who actually got the vaccine claimed they got arthritis from it. Weather those claims are true or not remains unverified. Of course the clinical trials showed no such side effects, but I doubt they were even looking for that (if I'm really cynical, do you even trust them not to h…
> I doubt they were even looking for that (if I'm really cynical, do you even trust them not to hide that?). The drug companies do not do the data for their clinical trials - a third party supervised by the FDA does. The penalty for hiding data is pretty high.
Why should I expect the FDA to be more reliable than the drug companies?