I’m not fully vaccinated for Lyme disease because there is no vaccine available and I have no choice in the matter. I remember the vaccine being available, but recently I was discussing this with a friend who looked at me as though I had grown two heads when I mentioned it. Anyway, this Slate article explains what happened:

We had one, once. The Food and Drug Administration approved LYMErix, manufactured by SmithKline Beecham (now GlaxoSmithKline), for use in 1998. LYMErix worked by inducing antibodies into human blood, which would then go into any ticks that attached to your body. There, they would neutralize the bacteria that cause Lyme, Borrelia burgdorferi, before the bacteria could go from the tick into you. In clinical trials, the shot showed about 78 percent effectiveness after the required three doses (hey, I’d take it). But some patients who got the shot after it went on the market testified that they developed arthritis after vaccination. The FDA investigated, but decided the evidence that the vaccine was linked to patients’ arthritis wasn’t strong enough to withdraw its approval for LYMErix. Sales fell nonetheless, and the company pulled the vaccine in 2002.

Slate

So if the vaccine was approved, isn’t it still approved? This would lead me to believe there is a working, approved vaccine, but it is not commercially available because there is not enough of a market for it for companies to make a profit. But to have a market, wouldn’t it be helpful if the general public were aware of its existence?

The article reaches some ridiculous conclusions about a Lyme vaccine mostly benefitting the affluent, and this sounds like nonsense to me. They don’t offer any evidence for this claim. Which sounds ridiculous to me, because the hunting/hiking/camping crowd most at risk is going to be a decidedly working- to middle-class one. Maybe the working class is more familiar with and therefore less afraid of this disease than the more affluent? There could be a grain of truth here.

I think everyone knows someone who has had a brush with this disease. I can think of a work colleague who was incorrectly diagnosed with early-onset arthritis and lived in pain for some time before Lyme disease was correctly diagnosed and appropriately treated. Second, a cousin who was rushed to the hospital with a racing heart and difficulty breathing during the height of the Covid crisis in 2020 – in this case, it was correctly diagnosed and appropriately treated, and he is fine after going through a somewhat harrowing episode. So this is a serious disease. But beyond the pain and suffering it causes directly, it just really takes away a lot of peoples’ desire and excitement to be in the woods. And it keeps children of some risk-averse parents out of the woods, which is a shame but understandable. It’s also a shame if you’re a gardener in a tick infested area who wants to grow anything other than neatly-trimmed grass. Your neighbors can complain you are putting them at risk of Lyme disease, and they may have a point. So really, it would be nice to have a vaccine for this disease available so we can all weigh the evidence and make up our minds.

Incidentally, a Lyme disease vaccine for dogs is approved and commercially available. And the public charity and savior of humanity known as Pfizer is working on a new vaccine and hoping to have it on the market by 2025 (but really, if there is a 100% approved vaccine out there and Pfizer believes there is now a market, can’t somebody just buy the recipe and start making it right now?)