Collection Used to Study Diseases : 1 Million Ticks Hunt for a Home

The world’s largest tick collection could be headed for a climate-controlled pod in a museum because no one in the government wants to give the 1 million little blood-suckers a home.

The Smithsonian Institution and the National Institutes of Health can’t agree on which one should pay the $200,000 necessary in fiscal 1989 to keep the government’s acarology unit in business.

The unit is home to 1 million tick specimens--deceased, in case you were wondering or worrying--that have been painstakingly collected by researchers over decades.

Will Go Into Cold Storage

If no agreement is reached by Sept. 30, the ticks will go into the museum equivalent of cold storage and the lab will be no more.

It’s not your typical tale of government cutbacks, but a potential tragedy nonetheless, according to entomologists and health officials who note the tick’s role in carrying disease and the importance of research on the tiny, blood-sucking arachnids.

“The unit and the collection are unique, and are the backbone of tick research in the United States and abroad,” George Eickwort, president of the Acarological Society, said in a letter seeking help from Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

The funding dispute threatens a unique research program overseen by NIH taxonomist Jim Keirans, who presides over the unit at the Smithsonian’s Museum Support Center in the Washington suburb of Suitland.

Public health officials, veterinarians, armed forces physicians and zookeepers the world over know when they find a tick they can’t identify, Jim Keirans is their man.

Critical Disease Link

The unit’s supporters describe it as the only place on the planet where researchers can send ticks for identification, critical to scientists trying to track the more than 20 tick-borne diseases that plague humans:

Common diseases such as Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever. More exotic diseases such as Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever and Kyasanur forest disease. Other diseases that infect livestock and wild animals.

Scientists and a group of congressmen have rallied to the unit’s support, urging the NIH to save the lab for the good of the public health.

“The collection and Dr. Keirans have been instrumental in the accurate identification of tick species which serve as vectors of disease, including the identification of a new species, Ixodes dammini , as the principal vector for transmitting Lyme disease,” Eickwort wrote in his letter to Kennedy.

The Suitland laboratory was created in 1983 when NIH moved its tick collection from the Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Hamilton, Mont., to the Smithsonian.

Thousands of Specimens

From 1984 to 1987, Keirans and his assistant, Richard Robbins, received 14,113 tick specimens, most from agricultural and veterinary researchers.

“We have received them pinned, we have received them Scotch-taped, we have received them just dropped in an envelope,” Keirans said during a tour of the spacious and orderly lab.

The collection became the world’s largest with the addition of the specimens, papers and books of Harry Hoogstraal, head of the zoology department at a Navy research unit in Egypt for more than 35 years. Hoogstraal was the world’s pre-eminent tick expert until his death in 1986.

Keirans said the 1983 move came when NIH decided to get out of medical entomology, the study of insect-borne disease, and focus on AIDS research. NIH agreed to pay the salaries of Keirans and a technician for two years; when the agreement expired, it was extended to September, 1988.

But the NIH is no longer interested in having a medical entomologist housed at the Smithsonian, Keirans said.

Smithsonian spokesman William Schulz said the museum tried to raise funds for the tick unit, but never said it would pay for the facility and never felt there was “some deadline where we would take over the staff salaries.”

NIH officials appointed 11 researchers familiar with the lab to consider the issue. In March, they concluded that the unit should be funded by NIH, with the Smithsonian continuing to provide space and equipment.

Twenty-two congressmen, led by Rep. George Hochbrueckner (D-N.Y.), recently wrote Health and Human Services Secretary Otis R. Bowen, urging the NIH to continue funding the lab.