“The notion that Lyme disease risk is closely tied to the abundance of deer arose from field studies that began shortly after the discoveries of the bacterial agent of Lyme disease and the involvement of ticks as vectors of these bacteria,” he wrote. Those studies were thorough and energetic, he noted, but perhaps driven too much by desire for a simple answer from which public health actions could be taken. Their context was “the hunt for the culprits—the critical species.”
