In one corner is a group of those predominantly university-based physicians who develop drugs, receive research grants from federal health agencies, and often advise insurance companies. They contend that Lyme is usually simple to diagnose and easily curable with two to four weeks of oral antibiotics. Chronic Lyme, they say, is extremely rare, not a disease but merely a group of symptoms remaining after the initial infection is treated that usually disperse. Burrowing rapidly into the tissues, joints, and central nervous system, borrelia slightly resembles the syphilis spirochete in the way it feeds, sleeps, and reproduces. Doctors are prescribing long-term oral antibiotics and IV therapy, which some administer in a hyperbaric chamber.
Critics say patients feel better after the chamber only because they're high on all that oxygen.
Detractors have accused the more aggressive camp of overdiagnosing and overtreating patients. Others may be about to. Insurance companies have taken to not covering the treatments, and doctors are thinking twice before accepting any patient with Lyme symptoms. By far the most renowned of the fourteen is Dr. Joseph Burrascano, of East Hampton, who for the past fifteen years has treated thousands of Lyme patients from all over the world. Having openly attacked the conservative academic coalition for what he sees as its failure to come to terms with the realities of the disease, Burrascano has made few friends within the Lyme Establishment.