Lyme Disease Vaccine’s Safety is Questioned. The possibility that there have been more than a hundred dire reactions to the Lyme vaccine since its FDA approval two years ago “have renewed a debate on the risks and benefits of vaccines for illnesses, such as Lyme disease, that are treatable or avoidable by other means.” Critics claim that the vaccine is being “grossly overpromoted” in parts of the country without a significant incidence of the illness, and that it is less than acceptably effective, requiring frequent booster shots to maintain at best imperfect immunity. Members of the preapproval FDA advistory committee expressed concerns about the vaccine’s potential to provoke arthritic reactions in some recipients, but what they did with these misgivings was to ask for post-approval followup by the vaccine’s manufacturer. Washington Post There is a raging debate, however, about whether Lyme disease is underdiagnosed, whether it may be responsible itself for a broader range of symptoms than generally accepted, including serious neuropsychiatric complications; and whether these serious complications really do readily respond to treatment, as is accepted in the infectious disease mainstream. I keep up on the literature about this partly because a former high school classmate of mine got in touch with me several years ago to describe how he is at the thick of the controversy because he claims he’s been debilitated by effects of Lyme disease that the medical establishment will not acknowledge. Several of the specialists by whom he’s been treated have been discredited, including, coincidentally, someone with whom I was in graduate school before either of us became a psychiatrist. The possibility that the long-term effects of Lyme infection are more dire, more common, and less-treatment-responsive than acknowledged, of course, would tip the risk-benefit calculations in favor of the vaccine.