Kill chiggers. Behead chiggers. Roundhouse kick a chigger into the concrete. Slam dunk a chigger baby into the trash can. Crucify filthy chiggers. Launch chiggers into the sun. Stir-fry chiggers in a wok. Toss chiggers into active volcanoes. Zap chiggers with a Moonraker laser. Pilot a kamikaze FPV drone into a chigger’s bedroom while he’s sleeping…
At last, the time has come. President Trump has declared TOTAL CHIGGER DEATH (TCD).
Well, not quite. In an Executive Order released last Tuesday (No. 14433: “Eliminating Disease-Carrying Pests and Restoring Enjoyment of the Great Outdoors”), President Trump authorized various parties, including the Secretaries of the Interior and of Health and Human Services, to eliminate ticks and mosquitoes in the District of Columbia, using “safe and effective, non-chemical, and technology-enabled methods,” and to “invest in pioneering approaches to eliminate these pests throughout the country.”
What this actually means is that the District of Columbia will now serve as a testing ground—a pilot study, if you will—for a whole new range of methods to kill mosquitoes and ticks; methods that won’t, hopefully, increase the substantial burden of toxic chemicals the environment, and by extension Americans’ bodies, already have to bear.
The goal is to reduce populations of mosquitoes by 90% and ticks by 50%, in under two years. Agencies will develop a framework to regulate new technologies and approaches, and call for new research and also private innovation to produce them. We already have an idea of what to expect. With regard to mosquitoes, we’ve seen the introduction of bacteria species into wild populations to make them sterile, the use of CRISPR gene-editing for the same purpose and even the creation of tiny killer drones to intercept and vaporize them in mid-air. Pretty cool, huh? For ticks, there’s ongoing research into vaccines against Lyme disease and also vaccines that make ticks dismount or block the release of the Lyme pathogen. There are also attempts to target reservoirs for ticks, like white-footed mice, and to genetically modify ticks to stop them from reproducing, again using CRISPR. No doubt we’ll see more cool stuff in the months and years ahead.
If those new technologies and approaches succeed in the DC swamp, they can be rolled out nationwide—and then we really can declare a state of TCD.
Honestly: this is wonderful news, and not a moment too soon.
I’ve warned for years about the threat to Americans’ health from tick-borne diseases, including Lyme disease, anaplasmosis, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and my personal nightmare, alpha-gal syndrome, a.k.a. the red-meat allergy.
Imagine never being able to eat red meat again!
Imagine dying after eating a hamburger at a barbecue!
That’s actually happened, by the way. Two years ago, there was the first recorded case of a death from alpha-gal syndrome, caused by a bite from the lone-star tick. The tick injects a compound that resembles alpha-gal, a sugar molecule found in red meat. The resemblance is close enough to sensitize the immune system to alpha-gal, and that leads to an allergic reaction every time the person eats red meat. The reaction can range from very mild—a bit of gastric discomfort, maybe some farts—to vomiting, severe diarrhea and even death.
The first recorded fatality, a 47-year-old man from New Jersey, ate a burger and was dead within hours. After an autopsy proved inconclusive, his wife went to experts at the University of Virginia’s medical school, who tested blood samples. They found the victim had been sensitized to alpha-gal, and that he died from an extreme allergic reaction. The wife then revealed her husband had suffered a dozen or so bites on his ankles from ticks that summer. Mystery solved.
A second death from alpha-gal syndrome has also been confirmed in Australia. Truth is, there are probably many more who’ve died from it and simply gone undetected, because nobody was looking for the allergy. So it goes.
Even if only a small number of people have actually died from alpha-gal syndrome, it’s making the lives of tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of Americans a misery. The CDC estimates as many as 500,000 Americans could be affected. The vast majority, of course, won’t have a diagnosis, but they will experience symptoms, from mild to severe, every time they eat red meat. At the mild end, most will have little reason to suspect, and even when people experience worse symptoms, their first thought is unlikely to be, “Do I have a meat allergy?” They’re more likely to blame their wife or mother-in-law’s cooking, or UberEats for delivering the takeout food cold and riddled with thick black hairs.
