Did you know that Lyme Disease affects Americans at a rate possibly as high as 10 times that of AIDS? Did you know that the test recommended by the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) to diagnose Lyme misses it 3/4ths of the time? Or that in areas of the country where infectious deer ticks are closest to the population — like nearby Loudoun County — entire households are often afflicted? Or that it can and does result in death? All of these facts are covered in Andy Abrahams Wilson’s new documentary, Under Our Skin. But simply raising awareness of these and other facts isn’t the point of the film — what concerns Wilson more greatly is why there is so little public discussion of the most common vector-borne disease in the country, and why the disease has become so politicized and controversial.

The existence of Lyme itself isn’t in question. Exactly what the bacteria — a kissing cousin to syphilis that exhibits many of the same traits — is capable of is what brings some of the most prominent minds in the medical community to the point of bickering and insults. One one side of the debate are a group of doctors who believe that Lyme can have severe and shifting effects that can last for the lifetime of the patient, and that the only effective treatment is aggressive, long-term intravenous antibiotic therapies. On the other side are the doctors of the IDSA and the CDC, who maintain that Lyme is limited to a short term infection that is easily treated and overcome. Stuck in the middle? The majority of the medical community, who are often woefully mis- or uninformed about the disease; some even misunderstand the position of the IDSA to the point where they tell patients that the disease is entirely mythical. All but forgotten in all this furor? Thousands and thousands of sick people, some profoundly debilitated by a mysterious malady that many IDSA doctors dismiss as a widespread psychosomatic disorder.