Allen Steere
Dr. Allen Steere is a professor of rheumatology, a medical researcher, and the discoverer of Lyme disease. Steere discovered Lyme disease in 1976 when he noticed a cluster of people with similar unexplained symptoms, which other doctors initially believed were juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, in a heavily wooded Connecticut town called Lyme (and the next town over, which is conveniently named Old Lyme),[1] though the bacteria responsible were not discovered until 1982.[2] Steere was also a leader of the research for the Lyme vaccine,[3] though it was taken off the market in 2002.
Chronic Lyme disease
Steere is an outspoken critic of so-called "chronic Lyme disease" - the belief that Lyme's infection of the body is persistent and not treatable with the two-to-five week antibiotic courses[4] recommended by the people who actually do science and research and that kind of stuff.[5] Steere believes that those who do suffer from Lyme-related symptoms after treatment do so because of autoimmune effects of the Lyme-causing bacteria,[6] not because of persistent infection. He believes others never had Lyme in the first place, instead having either chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia.[1] Despite the agreement of most medical experts that chronic Lyme disease is not real,[5][7][8] a substantial number of patient "advocacy" groups and individual "advocates" arose to promote chronic Lyme diagnosis and treatment. Unfortunately for Steere, a major form of advocacy is intimidating, harassing, stalking, and writing death threats toward him.[1]