Lyme: The First Epidemic of Climate Change

FEATURING MARY BETH PFEIFFER – There are many potential disasters on the horizon related to climate change. Most of us have probably not considered ticks and the diseases they carry to be chief among those problems. But a new book by investigative journalist Mary Beth Pfeiffer alerts us to the alarming rise in Lyme disease and what she calls “the First Epidemic of Climate Change.”

The book, called simply Lyme, traces how the growing incidence of ticks in our warming climate has resulted in the spread of a disease that doctors still struggle to understand and treat. Both the medical community and our government have yet to catch up to the dangers of this as-yet invisible epidemic.

For more information visit www.thefirstepidemic.com.

Mary Beth Pfeiffer is an award winning investigative journalist. She was a reporter for the Poughkeepsie Journal from 1982-2015 and is the author of Crazy in America: The Hidden Scandal of Our Criminalized Mentally Ill. Her new book is called Lyme: The First Epidemic of Climate Change.

**This interview was originally broadcast on April 24, 2018.