"(Btw, Trav, I know the first Lyme baby written up in medical journals, living in the NY Hamptoms. She was born in the 70's)"
Not to start a whole conversation on this alone (LOL!) - but I was already deep into my health issues by the year 1970. I had had pink eye and tonsillitis so much that I had nearly not been able to move on to the next grade 3 years in a row (2nd, 3rd, & 4th grades) because I missed so much school. My Mom was a school teacher back then too, so you know I went to school any time I was capable!
Anyway, my point is that it could not have crossed the country in that amount of time. It was already in California in 1970.
According to these sites, these are the years that they say the first cases were found:
"1975" (5 years after I had been deathly ill)
www.ct.gov/dph/cwp/view.asp?a=3136&q=388506"Early 1970's" "
www.bayarealyme.org/about-lyme/history-lyme-disease/"In 1975, Lyme disease was first recognized in the United States in children from Lyme, Connecticut."
www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,4570,7-153-10370_12150_12220-26945--,00.html Now this from Wikipedia is interesting, and it has lots of references to help back it up:
/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease#History - but I most like is what Dr. Masters (who was once my LLMD!!!) is quoted saying:
"Masters points out that the "track record" of the "conventional wisdom" regarding Lyme disease is not very good: "First off, they said it was a new disease, which it wasn't. Then it was thought to be viral, but it isn't. Then it was thought that sero-negativity didn't exist, which it does. They thought it was easily treated by short courses of antibiotics, which sometimes it isn't. Then it was only the Ixodes dammini tick, which we now know is not even a separate valid tick species. If you look throughout the history, almost every time a major dogmatic statement has been made about
what we 'know' about
this disease, it was subsequently proven wrong or underwent major modifications."
So, so true. Every time we think we know Lyme, we find out that it's changed - what we thought was true, isn't. This is emerging medicine though and that's what should be expected!!