After years of living with mysterious symptoms, a young girl from Brooklyn and a Duke University scientist are diagnosed with a disease said to not exist: Chronic Lyme disease. The Quiet Epidemic follows their search for answers, which lands them in the middle of a vicious medical debate.

What begins as a patient story evolves into an investigation into the history of Lyme disease, dating back to its discovery in 1975. A paper trail of suppressed scientific research and buried documents reveals why tick-borne illnesses have quietly spread around the globe.

A Q&A with the filmmakers and a panel of experts follows the film.

A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Global Lyme Alliance and the Quiet Epidemic Social Impact Campaign.

Panelists:

ABOUT DIRECTOR/PRODUCER LINDSAY KEYS

Lindsay Keys is a director, producer, cinematographer, and photographer based outside of New York City. She has shot still and motion content for clients ranging from Bernie Sanders to The Whitney Museum. Her photography has been exhibited internationally, published in The New York Times, Time Out Magazine, Interview Magazine, and auctioned at Christie’s. While attending Wesleyan University (‘11), Lindsay’s health began deteriorating with no explanation. Upon getting a diagnosis of Lyme disease in 2015, she began working on The Quiet Epidemic and spent the next seven years dedicated to its completion. This is her first feature film.

ABOUT JOURNALIST MARY BETH PFEIFFER

Mary Beth Pfeiffer, author of Lyme: The First Epidemic of Climate Change, has been an award-winning investigative journalist for three decades. For her Lyme reporting, Pfeiffer was honored with a half-dozen awards, including the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi award in 2013 from the Society for Professional Journalists, one of her two Sigma Delta Chi awards.

For other reports, she has been honored by the Scripps Howard Foundation, National Headliner Awards, Inter America Press Association, Associated Press Managing Editors, the Gannett Company, New York City Deadline Club, Society of the Silurians, and National Council on Crime and Delinquency, among others.

ABOUT JULIA AND ENRICO BRUZZESE (FILM SUBJECTS)

Bull’s-eye missed:  When she was ten years old—then an active, softball-playing dancer and Girl Scout—Julia developed a radiating rash on her leg with two red concentric circles and a central red bull’s-eye. The photos her father took, date-stamped September 18, 2013, depict a textbook symptom of an infection that afflicts a half-million Americans a year: Lyme disease.

Nonetheless, at her pediatrician’s office three days later, Julia was not diagnosed or given what could have been a life-changing course of a simple and safe antibiotic. Instead, the advice suggested then, as inscribed in her chart, was “Dermatology consult.”

Over the next two years, that error was compounded repeatedly in a medical milieu that rejects Lyme as a late-stage disease, based on one—but not the only—set of treatment guidelines. Rather, doctors said Julia was faking or mentally ill.

When her father suggested tick-borne illness might be the problem—and offered science articles in support—he was treated with “disgust,” he wrote in a timeline of Julia’s declining health. “Like Lyme disease was a bad word, like I was using profanity.”

“They chose to ignore it,”

ABOUT GLOBAL LYME ALLIANCE (LAURA MACNEILL, CEO)

Global Lyme Alliance (“GLA”), a nonprofit organization committed to helping those affected by Lyme & other tick-borne diseases, with the mission of curing Lyme and other tick-borne diseases through innovative research, awareness, and empowering the patient voice.  GLA has raised and invested a substantial $19 million for research with a specific focus on diagnostics and treatments for tick-borne diseases.

SAM ROBERTS – PANEL MODERATOR, POUND RIDGE RESIDENT/ACTOR/DIRECTOR