As a small child I was raised largely in the woods at the family’s cabin in northern Ontario. The love of the outdoors has stuck with me, I cannot account the amount of time I have spent hiking, birdwatching, animal tracking, canoeing, camping or simply quietly reading outside. I suppose I’ve been lucky too, for aside from a scary encounters with a grizzly bear, a moose in rut, and a poacher, nothing untoward has happened.

Except now. Some small multi-legged critter got through my checks and double-checks and shared Lyme disease with me. We joke about it at home as “The Lyme”, but it really is a nasty condition that makes one feel like a zombie. High fevers, headaches, searing joint paint, overwhelming fatigue. I finally went to the doctor, and an Rx of doxycycline is slowly working its magic. I was late off the mark getting in to be seen, but it was caught in time, and I am confident of making a full recovery.

Not so others who are misdiagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, immune dysfunction, hypoglycemia, rheumatoid arthritis, Lupus, chronic mononucleosis and the like. Left too long, and Lyme can do permanent damage.

I have such a better understanding of the fear parents have for their children and loved ones, and the pain and distress of our cats and dogs, when any of them comes down with the disease.

Being a good academic, I started reading up on the disease itself, and that lead to various articles and websites on the public health and policy dimensions of the disease. What I found was fascinating.

First, there is a vaccine. There is?! Why wasn’t I vaccinated? Did I miss something? No, the basic reason is that it was not a profit center for big pharma, so they stopped producing it.

Now since when did individual and public health become beholden to corporate profits…oh wait…that is what counts as medical care in the United States isn’t it. I stand corrected. How could I be so self-absorbed and indifferent to the inerrant wisdom and efficiency of the free market. Bad on me.

Second, kill some animals. The current targets are deer (a host for adult ticks) and coyotes (blamed for interfering with mesopredation). It does not surprise me that some researchers and old-school conservationists would exploit the issue and seek to railroad communities into killing wildlife. And it should surprise none of us that this is a band-aid approach that has no hope of working absent a vaccine, proper landscape management, the restoration of natural predators to manage both the small mammals and larger hosts of the ticks that carry the disease.

And finally, what about the cats? A few conservation organizations and journalists are in a moral panic about cats ending biodiversity as we know it. That’s a debate I speak about elsewhere. But if we were to take their ultimate solution of eliminating all free roaming cats from the landscape, what would that mean for the incidence of mice, voles and other small mammals that are the primary vector of the disease? Would that drive an increase in the public health risk factors? That’s an interesting question that they never consider when trying to panic the public with claims about public health issues that are far less serious.

Here’s the point. Avoid simplistic interpretations of complex problems. Whether it is about biodiversity or public health, myopic analyses and “solutions” divert our attention from the underlying causations and effective interventions that will best grapple with such problems in the long run. And a key sign of this is dogmatic moral claims that ignore the complexity of the real world.

Protecting the health of our natural and social environment, is as key to our well being as protecting our individual health. With respect to lyme, checking for ticks, restoring predators and healthy landscapes, and ensure proper health care for all (e.g. that vaccine!) are mutually reinforcing and necessary. And this exemplifies the proper ethical approach to public policy.

Image: Tracking Ticks By Satellite. NASA.