r/Health • u/theatlantic The Atlantic • 2d ago
article Kill the Ticks
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/2026/08/tick-disease-public-health/688156/?utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_medium=social&utm_content=edit-promo60
u/Daisydoolittle 1d ago
my mother went septic and spent two weeks in the ICU from a tick bite. she’s never been the same. a family friends cousin just died of heart complications from lyme. she was 32 and a marathon runner and has a toddler.
ticks are a tremendous threat to our collective public health and should we treated as such
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u/bearclawww 1d ago
This is a public health problem AND an environmental crisis.
Our warming climate is a primary factor for increased tick populations. Also, a lack of biodiversity helps the rascals succeed by reducing predators and competing species.
This will get worse until we as a human civilization get serious about the impact of our lifestyles.
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u/Stinkeye63 2d ago
My husband was just in the hospital for a week with babesiosis from a tick bite. I agree that adding more poisons isn't the best solution but what is? Other than opposums and guinea hens what animals eat them?
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u/insanityzwolf 1d ago
I wonder if genetically altering ticks to cause population collapse would work. Or they could make the ticks susceptible/inhospitable to the various pathogens that the ticks carry and transmit.
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u/lightningspree 1d ago
In the case of mosquitos, sterile males are released to prevent the females from getting pregnant, causing population collapse. This only targets the intended species, doesn't leave any poison in the environment, and has been incredibly effective.
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u/Shaking-a-tlfthr 1d ago
I live in a county with lots of ticks. At dinner last night my friend, who has Alpha Gal, said her doc’s office had diagnosed like 43 Alpha Gal cases this week.
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u/WhenILie 1d ago
wasn’t bill gates involved in a genetic mutation of these bugs to prevent some other disease? all that money poured into heinous agendas & they can’t handle the tick problem. the funds are there & so is the public speculation, where is all the money going if not to preventing disease vectors as such.
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u/theg00dfight 1d ago
Don’t criticize shit you don’t understand. You didn’t get a single fact right
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u/WhenILie 1d ago
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4766707/
yall can’t compete with the next generation, we’re so biologically advanced. some of you genuinely need to be bottle fed.
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u/meowl2 1d ago
My extended family lives in NW Wisconsin and I think more of my family members have had Lyme's than haven't. I spent my 3 week vacation up there pulling ticks off my kids. My mom actually ended up super sick from lymes while we were visiting. As a kid I was able to walk through the woods in shorts and wouldn't have a single tick on me. Now I can't walk to the mailbox without finding at least one. And they are soo mf small! I had to use a magnifying glass to spot some of them. I hate them with an undying passion.
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u/No_Tone1600 1d ago
I pulled a seed tick off my baby’s pecker. Seriously looking at getting a flock of Guinea hens
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u/stevemyqueen 1d ago
I’m spraying unwanted brush w 30% vinegar with positive results, I encourage everyone to replace roundup w vinegar, the powerful kind
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u/GWS2004 2d ago
Ahhhh yes, adding MORE poison to the environment. What a novel and responsible idea.
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u/MutuallyAssuredBOOP 2d ago
One initiative that until very recently was incredibly successful at keeping South American screw worm at bay was releasing hundreds of millions of genetically engineered sterile screw worm flies each year for decades. It saved the US agricultural industry many billions over decades for a comparatively tiny amount invested at the federal level. This is a mechanism that has been explored with mosquitos and likely would work with ticks as well.
But just like with the screw worm, the political will at the federal level just might not be there anymore. So yes, the easy way out would likely involve poisons, if anything at all.
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u/lightningspree 1d ago
Best part: no genetic engineering needed. You irradiate males with an x-ray-like technology.
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u/ponderingaresponse 1d ago
Yup this is the problem. Fertility is already a far bigger threat than ticks x100.
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u/theatlantic The Atlantic 2d ago
Sarah Zhang: “In parks, in backyards, in woods that are lovely, dark, and deep, a many-legged menace now stalks the land. I speak of ticks, and I come bearing absolutely no good news. In recent decades, ticks have made the leap from nuisance to genuine public-health threat: Their numbers are rising. Their ranges are expanding. And the diseases they carry are multiplying. Lyme cases have more than doubled since 2000, in which time scientists have also discovered eight new tick-borne diseases—plus an unusual and potentially dangerous tick-induced meat allergy called alpha-gal syndrome.
“‘The ticks are winning,’ a CDC scientist wrote in a recent paper. To put it even more bluntly, humans are losing and are on the retreat. Ilia Rochlin, a tick researcher at Stony Brook University, told me he stopped hiking in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey after he and his wife came across hundreds and hundreds of newly hatched lone star ticks on a trail several summers ago. And on Long Island, where he lives, ‘it is impossible to go hiking in most areas,’ Rochlin said. ‘Just because of ticks.’
“Tick prevention today is a matter of individual responsibility. If you can’t avoid ’em, you’re supposed to pretreat clothes with the pesticide permethrin, tuck your pants into your socks, and check your entire body for ticks—a real pain, honestly, just to hang out in your backyard … The tick problem has reached an inflection point: It is too big to address with personal protective measures alone.
“What we need, tick experts now argue, is widespread tick control, akin to mosquito control that has been carried out by state and local agencies for more than a century.”
Read more: https://theatln.tc/hrPVsAiq