Kill Bambi to control tick-borne diseases?

Malaria was eliminated from the US by a concerted effort to eliminate Anopheles mosquito habitats and the application of DDT. Now, tick-borne diseases are replacing malaria as a public health menace.

“Whereas malaria progressed from disease understanding to elimination within 50 years, Lyme disease has expanded dramatically in incidence and geographic reach over a similar period. Moreover, other tick-borne diseases have emerged and expanded alongside Lyme: babesiosis, anaplasmosis, ehrlichiosis, and a growing number of other pathogens.

 

“The public health burden of the tick-borne disease epidemic has become substantial, with incidence rates exceeding 100 per 100,000 population in some endemic areas in the U.S. Allergic reactions to tick bites, specifically alpha-gal syndrome ("red meat" allergy), have also emerged as a major public health concern, with tens of thousands of suspected cases identified in the U.S. in recent years. Taken together, these trends make ticks and tick-borne diseases a major public health emergency across large swaths of the country.”

What is to be done?

“Burgeoning tick populations are a symptom of overabundance of a particular host species, white-tailed deer. A single deer harboring 100 female ticks can produce hundreds of thousands of tick larvae. Deer densities in many areas greatly exceed environmental carrying capacity, facilitating tick reproduction and driving tick population explosions. There will be no effective control of tick-borne diseases without significant changes in deer management. State agencies need to stop treating deer solely as valuable wildlife and start applying a "farm-to-table" approach similar to commercial fisheries management. Deer should be harvested at levels sufficient to maintain long-term, ecologically appropriate deer densities that do not support excessive tick populations.”

The optics of killing Bambi are more problematic than draining swamps and killing mosquitos. But it’s not clear to me how the problem of tick-borne diseases. Since the deer tick is a primary vector, perhaps a CRISPR-Cas9 gene drive could be used to reduce or eliminate deer ticks.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/122968?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2026-09-13&mh=eb71348a5ff6ae370cc6759bc5dc3300&zdee=gAAAAABm4u1YoCP4y5SBTJUyUyqo9KxZhft26L1xeGdP0BzzQQN1Pb_ifR6vFqhFh-3U6Q_nU7DbA-EawzzXKxSRhMOwjrOGuOKbf7OE641eN0HfnK6eObE%3D&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Headlines%20Evening%20-%20Randomized%202026-09-13&utm_term=NL_Daily_DHE_dual-gmail-definition

 

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