Phony Studies Will Not Rid Us of Lyme Disease!

By Rich Kozlovich

This morning I received my e-newletter from the National Pest Management Association which linked an article titled, Lyme activist questions federal study of pesticides in private yards, quoting: 

" A leading local advocate in the fight against Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases is calling a recent study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “junk research” and a waste of taxpayer money.

Auerbach is absolutely correct in her assessment.  That money spent on this study was wasted research.  It is also clear to me that this study must been conducted by those who really didn't understand how important widespread pesticide use is in order to impact pests, or more likely didn't care, or as a case of "Pre-conceptual Science".  That's where you reach a conclusion before doing the research and then dismiss anything that disagrees with that conclusion.  Ergo, since you never see or hear anything that demonstrates your pre-conceived conclusion is wrong, it must be right.  However - in the real world - making isolated pesticide applications will not resolve any pest problem if the surrounding areas are still filled with the target pest.

Case scenario: You are responsible for treating a twenty suite apartment building for roaches. Two of the apartment’s tenants refuse to allow you to treat their apartment and they both are filled with roaches.

What happens?

The other eighteen will still have a number of roaches each month when you return. Now, what if the numbers were reversed and only two suites were treated and the other eighteen left untreated. The migratory habits of roaches would bring them right back into the untreated suites in large numbers.  

Here's the numerical dynamics of German cockroaches.  If you have 1000 roaches in a structure and you only kill 90%, that leaves 100.  Half of them are female and half of them are pregnant.  At the end of 30 days you now have a numerical potential of 1010.  Obviously, There would be a whole lot more than just a few cockroaches in the treated suites in following month.

Now, let’s apply this real world situation and the problem of disease transmission. Let’s suppose that that roaches carried Lyme disease. What would give anyone reason to believe that the rate of disease would be reduced since the overall pest pressure from the surrounding environment would overwhelm any individual efforts, no matter how effective.

I think this statement is important to understanding what is going on behind the scenes: 

"Testing whether spraying reduces the risk of tick-borne disease is critical because people spend lots of money spraying their yards,” “These sprays can be toxic to wildlife, pets and people, and people expect a strong health benefit from doing so. The study’s finding … is very important in evaluating what works and what doesn’t. This was money well spent, in my opinion. "

That was a quote from Rick Ostfeld, disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, who also said he didn’t think the study was poorly designed, which is what I would you expect from “independent” activists.

Well it was poorly designed! That is, if you really wanted to know what the real impact pesticides have on ticks and the transmission of Lyme disease. However, if your goal was to give the impression that making pesticide applications are valueless for the control of Lyme disease – this piece of junk science was an anti-pesticide activist’s dream.

One more thing! Bifenthrin is a synthetic pyrethroid. All pests are starting to show serious resistance to this chemical class. When we lost organophosphates, due to EPA’s manipulation of the rules as outlined in the Food Quality Protection Act, this problem with ticks, Lyme disease and bed bugs became far more serious.   

Here is the reality of this article and what these grant chasers will not tell you. If you design a study that uses less effective chemistry in small areas that are isolated and surrounded by areas where no pesticide applications are made, but have large tick infestations, the conclusion will be forgone. They will kill some pests in the treated areas but those areas will quickly re-infest, and if that pest is a disease carrier the rate of transmission will remain the same as if no pesticides were applied. I could have told them that for free and saved the taxpayers a half a million dollars.

Now, picture this. 

It's you're hired by the government, to control mosquitoes you absolutely know can carrying any number of deadly afflictions such as, malaria, dengue, West Nile virus, chikungunya, yellow fever, filariasis, tularemia, dirofilariasis, Japanese encephalitis, Saint Louis encephalitis, Western equine encephalitis, Eastern equine encephalitis, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, Ross River fever, Barmah Forest fever, La Crosse encephalitis,  Zika fever, Keystone virus or Rift Valley fever, all of which can be amazingly deadly to large numbers of people, especially children.  

But the government decides that pesticides are so dangerous, you're only going to be allowed to make pesticide applications on one street and miss the next six blocks. Would any rational person really expect to see positive results in thwarting disease transmission?  The answer is a resounding NO!

In my opinion, any honest person who is familiar with pest control and reads this can only come to one conclusion. This study is a case of conclusions in search of data!

The reality is this. The answer to all these pest problems was effective, easy to use, inexpensive chemistry that was available to everyone. If that isn’t part of the answer there will be no answer and no amount research that leaves that component out will ever be anything by junk science.