"Lyme Disease and the Epistemic Tensions of "Medically Unexplained Illnesses

Bibliographic Data

ID2151507
AuthorsAbigail A Dumes (0000-0001-6839-6468, University of Michigan, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume39
Issue6
Pages441-456
Publication date2020-08-17
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMedical Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0145-9740 • E-ISSN: 1545-5882
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/01459740.2019.1670175
OpenAlexW2995064245
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited53

In the US, disagreement over the biological basis of “chronic Lyme disease” has resulted in the institutionalization of two standards of care: “mainstream” and “Lyme-literate.” For mainstream physicians, chronic Lyme disease is a “medically unexplained illness” that presents with an abundance of “symptoms” in the absence of diagnostic “signs.” For Lyme-literate physicians, and complementary and alternative medicine practitioners more generally, symptoms alone provide sufficient evidence for medical explanation. Drawing upon ethnographic research among mainstream and Lyme-literate physicians, I suggest that medically unexplained illness is not a biomedical anomaly but an intrinsic feature of biomedicine

Bioinformatics · Biomedicine · Borrelia burgdorferi · Disease · Family medicine · LYME · Lyme disease · Mainstream · Pathology · Political science · Psychiatry · Complementary and Alternative Medicine Studies · Immunology · Medicine · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment · Vector-borne infectious diseases