County Council Presentation July 2008

Friends and members of the Council

On May 20^th of this year, after working in my yard, I found a deer tick embedded in my scalp. On June 5^th I developed symptoms of the disease and have been taking antibiotics and alternative treatments since that date.

In 2006, Maryland had 1248 CDC reported cases of lyme, which put it number 7 in the country. http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/lyme/ld_rptdLymeCasesbyState.htm

This is an incidence of 22 per 100,000, but a recent Harvard study puts that actual rate at 10 times that number. Lyme disease is the fastest growing vector borne disease in the country and is growing faster than the aids epidemic.

Anne Arundel County has the second highest rate of reported lyme cases in the state, with and increase of 44% from 2005 to 2006, according to the county public health website and 183 confirmed cases in 2007. I will be an unreported case for 2008. I would have to pay $250 out of pocket for testing, because as a Home and Hospital teacher for the county for the past 12 years, I receive no health insurance.

Ticks of all types have been described as cesspools of disease. Borrelliosis, babesiosis, are among the many diseases that ticks cause. Lyme is the most serious, a terrible disease which if misdiagnosed or untreated has ruined thousands of lives. It causes muscle and joint pain, depression and brain fog, fatigue, and a host of other symptoms and has put thousands of people on disability country-wide. The organism is a spirochete which worms its way into tissues in the body, does not behave like ordinary bacteria, and which is suppressed much much more slowly by antiobiotic treatment.

Did you know that Lyme ticks are spread by mice as well as deer, and that there may be other vectors as well, and that they can be greatly reduced in population by relatively inexpensive means. I have given you each a “tick tube” which is filled with cotton which has the insect repellant permethrin in it. When the mice take the cotton and build their nests with it , the ticks don’t bite them. This might run about $75 per ½ acre.

BUT…

Last Monday morning, I learned from the Lyme-Aid Yahoo support group that soybeans or corn laced with Ivermectin, which is a wormer for livestock, can virtually eliminate ticks on deer. I spent the entire day communicating with the person who posted that information, about dosage and other details, and the deer in the woods behind my house have now, I hope, had a little meal of corn and ivermectin. After I found the tick in my scalp, I was finding 1 or 2 ticks per week on me or in my house. Since I put out the Damminix tubes and the deer corn, and sprayed my yard with garlic, not permethrin, I have not found any ticks.

Lyme is a preventable and controllable disease. It’s just a matter of who is going to do the preventing. I can prevent the disease in my back yard, You, the county council can prevent the disease in the entire county. The person who posted the information about the ivermectin owns 200 acres of woods populated by deer. He estimates he spends $25 per year on corn and ivermectin to inoculate the deer. Extrapolating to Anne Arundel County, I figure that at that rate, the County would spend about $150,000 a year to inoculate it’s deer and virtually eliminate lyme disease as well as a host of other tick borne diseases in the state.

There are many issues to consider and this is just a start, but if lyme and its associated diseases could be knocked down and out in this county, I believe it is worth the price. Why? Because of the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. Because of our law enforcement officers, military personnel and others who work and train outdoors. Because of all the families in state and out of state who use state parks. To protect property values.