The key moment in the original article: Lyme and other tick-borne diseases have yet to receive anything like that sort of attention. In 1998, the Food and Drug

The key moment in the original article: Lyme and other tick-borne diseases have yet to receive anything like that sort of attention. In 1998, the Food and Drug Administration approved a Lyme disease vaccine called Lymerix, administered in a three-injection cycle, that reduced infections in adults by nearly 80%. But it was discontinued three years later after sales bottomed out, due in large part to public fears driven by negative news reports over its side effects (most notably arthritis) and a class-action lawsuit whose claims were debunked. It was an early victory for the anti-vaccine movement, which gained momentum thanks to a now-retracted study linking autism to the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine that was released the same year as Lymerix. “That actually scared me,” says Joyce Sakamoto, an entomologist at the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics at Pennsylvania State University who has researched public engagement strategies to improve tick-borne disease literacy. “That was a case where the anti-vax community was able to effectively kill something entirely without a lot of scientific evidence.” Damned depressing.