Bull's-Eye: Unraveling the Medical Mystery of Lyme Disease Review

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(More customer reviews)In his book "Bull's Eye", Dr. Jonathan Edlow takes the reader through the medical detective work leading to the discovery of the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi, the agent responsible for Lyme disease. It also deals with several other tick-borne illnesses such as Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Q fever, and babesiosis. Unlike most readers, I have a unique perspective on this work as a former suffer of Lyme disease due to a tick bite I got while hiking in the St. Croix River valley of Minnesota in 1998. Fortunately, my physician, a gifted diagnostician, promptly tested for Lyme disease, and after a treatment of antibiotics (and anti-inflammatory drugs for the migratory arthritic pain involved), I became Lyme free after a careful prescription and testing regimen. It is with that background that I read "Bull's Eye", and I heartily endorse it as the best historical treatment of Lyme disease I have yet seen. I also have the benefit of being a biologist by education, so I was already acquainted with most of the terminology involved. This book is excellent for Doctors and other medical professionals, and is totally suitable to the layman as well, although someone with limited background may end up re-reading sections and flipping to the Appendix and Glossary occasionally.
The book is really a medical detective story, and a gripping one at that. It begins with the symptoms of an unknown disease clustered around Lyme, Connecticut in the mid 1970s. Initially believed to be Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis (JRA), authorities began questioning that diagnosis after demographic patterns were not consistent with JRA, and the disease exhibited significant clustering (which JRA does not do.) Initially brought to the attention of authorities by two area mothers, Polly Murray and Judith Mensch, their initial concerns were rebuffed. Through their perseverance, ultimately several teams of doctors began investigating the illness, believed to be linked to an insect vector due to the geographic distribution of the illness and the seasonality of the illness. Navy Doctors William Mast and William Burrows were quick to realize the curative effect of antibiotics on the disease, though not all doctors agreed. Notably Dr. Allan Steere of the Yale rheumatology department believed that antibiotics were not indicated until four years worth of data were analyzed. Although in 20/20 hindsight this is an obvious gaffe, I am sympathetic to the conundrum faced by Dr. Steere, as obviously he didn't want to prescribe unnecessary antibiotics. Where I am not sympathetic to Dr. Steere is in his seemingly arrogant, quick dismissal of the Navy doctors and their corporate and medical knowledge, particularly in light of their ninety percent cure rate with antibiotic therapy. I am somewhat academically amused that Steere and the Yale 'experts' were generally incorrect in most of their initial assumptions. Although I am personally grateful for the work of all the researchers involved, including Dr. Steere, I was exceptionally impressed with Mast and Burrows in addition to noted tick expert Dr. Willy Burgdorfer (after whom the Lyme disease spirochete is named) and his efforts to find the agent responsible for the disease. Working with ticks is extremely difficult: they are small, hard, and contaminated with a gazillion things. Isolating the one agent being searched for, in this case an unknown spirochete, is extraordinarily difficult.
Dr. Edlow is an excellent writer and anyone with interest in the medical field would love this book. The doctor who treated my Lyme disease recently left practice. When he left I went to see him specifically to thank him for all his efforts on my behalf and to give him a copy of "Bull's Eye." It was the least I could do.

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