Article on Lyme disease misleading

You are to be congratulated for raising awareness of Lyme disease with your article, "Lyme disease is local," but it contains several misleading statements. 

Here's one: "Borrelia burgdorferi sensu stricto is the scientific name of that bacteria, the bitten person would, and it seems to only infect humans to whom it is introduced by a deer tick, and usually in northern climes."

There are several strains of the Borrelia bacteria that are identified as "Lyme disease," and it also can infect other animals, including your dog. Also, Lyme, along with half a dozen or so other bacterial infections are transmitted by the black-legged deer tick.

And, most importantly, you are perpetuating the myth that tick diseases are rare anywhere except in the Northeastern United States. Not true!

They're all over the U.S. and now are in many other parts of the world as well.

The European strains are not even the same as ours, which sometimes confounds diagnoses. Here in Georgia a couple of years ago I contracted both Lyme and Ehrlichiosis, the latter of which often is deadly, as one of my good friends, a retired medical doctor, learned from his own near-death experience with that bug.

The irony of the offer to mount a deer head to raise money for a Lyme victim also was worthy of mention.

If governmental DNR agencies had not propagated these huge animals that now number in the tens of millions in the United States simply for the entertainment of would-be Daniel Boones who often dump the deer carcass in a ditch after parading it around on their Jeep hood, we would not now be having tens of thousands of lives being lost or at least negatively impacted each year by more than a million car-deer collisions and another million cases of deer-related diseases. 

Simple fact: Huge, free-ranging carriers of deadly diseases that freeze in car headlights are not compatible with modern civilizations where their human competitors, for the most part, also do not behave very wisely either. What's next?

Lions and tigers and bears?

As I endure persistent back and leg pain, along with other debilitating residuals of my chronic tick diseases, I wish Kami, along with the millions of other victims of this very short-sighted government meddling with nature, a speedy recovery and a long, happy, productive life.