252 Robert A. Aronowitz chronic form of Lyme disease requires long-term, often repeated, courses of antibiotics. In contrast, the orthodox position held by most scientific experts is that LD is typically a straightforward acute infectious disease, readily diagnosed on the basis of rash and other clinical findings, with a supporting role played by laboratory tests, and treated by short courses of oral antibiotics. Late symptoms and syndromes can occur (rarely), but there is no need for a repeated course of intravenous antibiotics. Stricker, Lautin, and Burrascano called the controversies over the defi- nition, diagnostic criteria, and treatment of LD the Lyme wars and noted that “suffering patients seek out ‘Lyme-literate’ providers because the ‘academic’ researchers have failed them” (2005, 5). The stakes in these controversies are high. The question of whether a protean condition called chronic Lyme disease with many different subjective and objective manifestations exists and should be treated with one or more courses of intravenous antibiotics remains the central issue. In a prominent consensus statement endorsed by the Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA) in 2006, orthodox physicians stated that the evidence supported only three, narrowly defined, late manifestations of LD (Lyme arthritis, late neurological LD, and a rare skin condition called acrodermatitis chronica atrophicans), each characterized by objective diagnostic criteria in addition to subjective complaints and for which there were only limited indications for a single course of intravenous antibiotics (Wormser et al. 2006). Not only was this interpretation of the evidence contested by the heterodox community, but the IDSA was subsequently subjected to antitrust action by the Connecticut attorney general (for a discussion of what appears to be at stake in these long- lasting controversies, see Aronowitz 1991). The heterodox position on Lyme disease could be said to have started with its first patient, Polly Murray, who believed that investigators and doctors, with whom she collaborated and whom she respected, were “playing down the severity of the illness” (Murray 1996, 121), as well as focusing too narrowly on arthritis and other objective complaints. Local support groups were started in the 1980s to provide patient and physician education, practical support for patients, and fund-raising (Murray was involved in each of these activities), often in tandem with the Arthritis Foundation, but were shortly superseded by national and local groups that positioned themselves in opposition to the leading Lyme disease physicians and scientists and their view of the disease. The most prominent among these opposition groups are the Lyme