Lyme Epidemic

The night sweats, the fever, the bullseye rash: the symptoms of Lyme disease are all too familiar to people on Martha’s Vineyard, where the disease is epidemic. Many Islanders are ready with prophylactic antibiotics when they find a pinhead-sized black arachnid clinging on their skin. What was not even recognized a generation ago has become the most common vector-borne (that is, spread by a host such as a mosquito, or in this case, a tick) disease in America.

Still little understood are Lyme’s long-term effects, with patients suffering ongoing pains, depression and cognitive problems, also suffering financial strains as well as they tangle with skeptical doctors and insurance companies.

What is clear, though, is that dealing with this critical health concern will involve further study, and it will involve dealing with deer.

Island boards of health are urging that community health funds provided through construction of the new hospital be aimed at investigating Lyme. We hope this will happen and without delay.

The deer may be more controversial, but as Tufts tick researcher Sam Telford has told the Gazette, “The number of deer we have is not natural.” And the inexorable rise in the Vineyard’s population and the accompanying development mean that people are living closer to tick habitats. We should also give serious consideration to ways of culling the Island deer, each of which carries a dozen or more ticks and possibly thousands of tick nymphs.