The medical journal JAMA contains an article that describes a disturbing collision of medical science and the US legal system. Written by a pair of lawyers, the article describes how a national medical organization's attempts at formulating treatment standards for Lyme disease has been run off the rails by an alliance between an organization that advocates a minority medical viewpoint and a state Attorney General. Over two years later, the standards are being revised, and the organization that produced them has spent a quarter of a million dollars on legal fees.

Lyme disease, named after a town in Connecticut where it first rose to prominence, was initially difficult to diagnose and treat. The identification of the causative agent, however, has allowed the development of sophisticated tests for its presence and successful treatment with antibiotics. A subset of patients, however, report the persistence of a poorly-defined set of symptoms that persist after all signs of the bacteria's presence have been eliminated. These persistent symptoms in the absence of any evidence of infection are the source of all the trouble.