The Island’s mounting tick-borne illness epidemic was highlighted by U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last week, as he announced new federal initiatives to combat Lyme disease and alpha-gal syndrome.
At a New Hampshire press conference Friday, Secretary Kennedy invoked the Vineyard’s soaring rates of alpha-gal when rolling out new funding and research projects targeting tick-borne illnesses under the “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.
Secretary Kennedy, who has been controversial for his stance on vaccines, referred to the rise of both Lyme and alpha-gal as a “science fiction nightmare” that threatens Americans’ health and safety. He said the Trump administration is pursuing a 25 per cent national reduction in Lyme disease cases by 2035, compared to the number of cases recorded in 2022.
“We’re launching one of the most ambitious federal efforts ever to undertake and combat Lyme disease, accelerate research and improve care for parents and families,” Secretary Kennedy said.
Here on the Vineyard, Lyme disease rates are 11 times higher than the state average. Alpha-gal, the tick-borne allergy to mammalian food products such as red meat and dairy, is also on the rise, but only became reportable to the state in April.
Lea Hamner, the Island’s tick epidemiologist, told the Gazette that she hopes the federal attention will tangibly improve the way these illnesses are prevented and managed.
“It feels somewhat surreal to hear our community highlighted at the federal level,” Ms. Hamner wrote in an email. “Still, if the lemonade out of lemons is increased awareness, visibility, resources, and action nationally around alpha-gal syndrome and Lyme disease — and a greater commitment to developing better tools to prevent, diagnose, and treat these conditions — then I welcome that attention.”
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is offering $2.5 million in cash incentives for public awareness campaigns, advances in Lyme treatment with new or existing drugs and harnessing artificial intelligence to seek new ways of diagnosing and treating the disease.
Jeff Levy, CEO of Martha’s Vineyard Medical and its new Tick Center, said the new funds could be a boon to Island organizations like his, which are involved in the research side of tackling tick-borne illnesses and allergies.
“I received a call from a very, very high-ranking person last week about having us potentially participate in a trial for use of a drug treating alpha-gal that would be funded by the dollars that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was talking about,” he told the Gazette.
Secretary Kennedy also said HHS plans to partner with tick control researchers to reduce the tick population and the transmissibility of disease by making deer, which support ticks’ breeding cycle, less attractive to the arachnids. He also mentioned targeting mice, which carry Lyme, with feeding stations that can kill ticks or immunize against Lyme.
“We’re going after the disease at its source,” the secretary said. “By reducing tick population and disrupting their breeding cycles, we aim to slow the spread of lyme disease and protect more Americans from infection.”
Secretary Kennedy’s stated focus on tackling tick-borne illness by reducing the total tick population echoes the efforts of Tick Free MV, the young Island nonprofit hoping that deer population management will help accomplish the task.
“The Island has been calling for action and we are now seeing mobilization at the community, state, and federal level,” Tick Free MV executive director Virginia Barbatti wrote to the Gazette. “Having some of the highest levels of government and some of the best researchers in the country working towards possible breakthroughs in tick control is a very positive development.”
It’s an effort Secretary Kennedy said he hopes to undertake in collaboration with Wampanoag communities across the commonwealth, including the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah). In September, he met with members of the tribe on Island to discuss critical health priorities, including the rise in tick-borne illnesses and allergies.
Paul Jeffers-Mayhew, health and human services director for the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), told the Gazette that the tribe is interested in meeting with Secretary Kennedy again.
“We have nothing on the books currently, but we are looking forward to scheduling a meeting with Secretary Kennedy that will ideally include our tribe, any federal partners, and local Island agencies, such as Tick Free MV and the Aquinnah board of health,” he said.
“We want to have everyone’s heads on this, because it’s something that we take very seriously,” he added.
Though Lyme is central to the initiatives discussed Friday, Secretary Kennedy also spoke on the administration’s ambition to conquer alpha-gal syndrome.
“We intend to bring the same urgency, innovation and scientific rigor to alpha-gal syndrome that we are bringing to Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses,” he said.
He said the administration is collaborating with private companies to fast-track the development of medications to prevent and cure alpha-gal, and that the NIH is prepared to help fund clinical trials.
“One of those medicines is almost ready, we’re fast-tracking it,” he said.
It was in the context of the rise of alpha-gal that Secretary Kennedy brought up the Vineyard, at which point he claimed that half of Islanders suffer from the condition.
“I was surprised to learn … this fall that 50 per cent of the population of Martha’s Vineyard now has alpha-gal, including most members of the tribe,” he said.
According to Ms. Hamner, Secretary Kennedy’s claim is unsupported by the available data on alpha-gal on the Vineyard.
“While alpha-gal syndrome is a major topic of conversation on Martha’s Vineyard and can sometimes feel like it is all around us, it is nowhere near 50 per cent of our community living with the allergy,” she wrote. “That figure appears to stem from a common misunderstanding of what the available testing data can and cannot tell us.”
Ms. Hamner said that in 2025, the lab at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital performed 1,689 alpha-gal tests, 742 of which came back positive, or 44 per cent. She pointed out that these tests are only administered to patients whose symptoms already indicate they may have the syndrome.
“These data definitively tell us that awareness, concern, testing, and positive results have increased dramatically among patients and providers. They do not tell us that 44 per cent of Islanders — or 50 per cent of Islanders — have the condition,” she wrote.
Mr. Jeffers-Mayhew said he’s unsure where Secretary Kennedy got the statistic that “most” of the tribe has alpha-gal, but it is true that both alpha-gal and Lyme are increasingly present in Aquinnah. He said getting up-to-date statistics on these conditions is a priority for the tribe.
“I will say, just from personal experience, there are a staggering number of people that have contracted it at one point or currently have it,” he said.
Previously, Secretary Kennedy has asserted that Lyme disease originated as a military bioweapon devised by the U.S. Military — a popular conspiracy theory that many experts say has no backing.
Island tick biologist Patrick Roden-Reynolds said he’s familiar with the theory, but that scientific evidence suggests against it. He pointed out that a mummy found in the Alps, estimated to be at least 5,000 years old, was found by researchers to be carrying Lyme.
“If you start looking into the literature, Lyme disease has a natural history of tens of thousands of years,” he said.
Mr. Roden-Reynolds is ultimately optimistic about the federal attention and its potential to propel tick solutions forward.
“That is going to be critical for the future of the health of the United States, not just Martha’s Vineyard,” he said.
This article appears in June 5, 2026.
Say it’s not so! A Democrat from an iconic Democrat family is now working for a Republican President and is now working to help islanders with their Lyme disease problem?? No, No. This will not please the five corners crowd. Can’t have it.
Our deer are being scapegoated, the ticks are coming from Plum Island.
Roughly 35 years ago Burton Engley began raising the alarm about the spread of tick-born Lyme, a disease that many of us had barely even heard of at the time. He told me that his initial attempts to put public information posters on the ferries to inform the public about ticks and Lyme disease was initially met with stoney looks and refusals by the Steamship Authority because they didn’t want to scare the public. Sounds right out of the script for Jaws but actually, in retrospect, far worse.
My first interaction with Lyme occurred not long after. I knew I had been bitten and started to feel unwell, so I took myself to see Dr. Jacobs at the Walk-In clinic. He was off-Island that day and had a woman doctor covering for him. I explained the situation and her answer was a rather curt and equally cavalier, “Well, I don’t know anything about Lyme, so let’s just rule that out”.
Thanks to Burton Engley’s early efforts on the matter, I told her to open the Physicians’ Desk Reference sitting there and write me a prescription for the proper dose of Doxycycline.
Thankfully, we’ve come a long way since then (and one more incidence of Lyme for me) but the surging outbreak of Alph-Gal poses similar challenges as well as decisions. Will the powers that be choose to shield the general public in an effort to minimize the economic backlash that once threatened the fictional town of Amity? I certainly hope not.
Searching for an effective treatment protocol to this surging threat is crucial, but in the meantime an equal effort needs to be made to launch a campaign to educate people in the various precautions to avoid being infected.
The data from the last four years regarding Alpha-Gal roughly show a doubling of confirmed cases year over year. Thirty-five years ago, Burton Engley’s efforts were initially stonewalled by those in power, some saw him as a crackpot. If he were still around today, I know exactly what he’d be up to.
Summer is just around the corner.
Hi Bob, thanks for the history lesson. The most effective thing we can do is severely thin the deer herd. They got rid of deer on Monhegan Island and Lyme plummeted to near zero.
Deer are not the source of the Lyme bacteria. The primary reservoirs that infect ticks are small mammals like the white-footed mouse.
According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) supported study on deer management published in the journal ScienceDirect, while deer removal can reduce the number of young (nymphal) ticks in an area, managing deer density alone has a variable and often insignificant impact on the actual infection rate of the ticks.
Thinning the herd is important here as we have far too great a population, but it is not the fool proof solution.
Lea Hamner’s “making lemonade out of lemons” comment highlights an important reality that seems to be getting lost amid the politics surrounding Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s recent visit and remarks.
Regardless of one’s opinion of RFK Jr., the underlying issue deserves serious attention. Tick populations are expanding across the country, bringing with them a growing number of cases of Lyme disease, alpha-gal syndrome, and other tick-borne illnesses that affect thousands of Americans every year. This is not simply a Martha’s Vineyard problem; it is a national public health challenge that continues to grow in scope and complexity.
While there may be legitimate debate about specific statistics or statements made during the visit, the larger point remains: the federal government is now directing increased attention, resources, research, and funding toward understanding and combating tick-borne diseases. For years, patients, researchers, and communities affected by these illnesses have argued that the problem was not receiving the level of recognition it deserved.
If the result of this renewed focus is greater public awareness, expanded research efforts, improved prevention strategies, better diagnostics, and more effective treatments, then that should be welcomed regardless of political affiliation. Public health challenges do not discriminate by party, and neither should our willingness to address them.
The spread of ticks and the diseases they carry represents a growing threat to communities across the country. Any effort that brings meaningful federal resources and scientific attention to that challenge should be evaluated on its merits rather than through a purely political lens.
Sometimes the most productive outcome is not agreement on every detail, but recognition that a serious problem exists and that more must be done to confront it. On that point, there appears to be considerable common ground.
The deer and the turkeys carry the tickets . Let’s get rid of them. Can’t be sentimental.
No mention of the far and away most obvious solution – vaccines, confusion on basic facts that anyone with a basic sense of logic would know are wrong, and promise of “scientific rigor” from the NIH – an institution where he personally has instituted mechanisms by which political ideology supersedes scientific rigor. When will the clown show end?
Is Secretary Kennedy aware that they are working on a Lyme Disease vaccine and once this is available will he tell us lies and contribute to morbidity and mortalities.
There is a vaccine that has been available for years that I give my dog. I suspect that might someday that would be refined for use in humans. Apparently you have an issue with the Secretary instead of seeking a solution
Kill every single deer and then some. Those who oppose can have some penned in their yards.