optometrist with something stuck in his eye. The doctor pulled out a tick.

Kentucky electrical worker Chris Prater douses himself in insect repellent every day to beat the bugs he encounters on the job.

But all his spraying couldn’t spare him from a pernicious tick that found in the one spot he couldn’t swat — his eyeball.

“You can’t spray your eyes,” he told CNN affiliate WYMT.

The teeny parasite fought its way into Prater’s eye some time during a July tree-cutting job in Johnson County, he explained.

Prater didn’t originally think anything of the irritation before the diagnosis. It must’ve been the sawdust that got caught in his eyeball, he thought, and he could easily flush it out later.

Flush he did, but the discomfort persisted. Prater begrudgingly saw an optometrist who broke the news — a deer tick had taken up residence in his cornea.

Before Prater could wrap his head around it, the physician numbed his eye and plucked the pest out with tweezers.

The tick made a “little popping sound” as it was pulled out, he said.

The doctor sent him off with antibiotics and a prescription for steroid eye drops. And Prater left with one less living thing sharing his body.

Forget why ticks are terrible? Let’s review

When it comes to finding new ways to freak people out, the bloodsucking disease-spreading parasite just won’t quit.

Prater’s tick-in-the-eye isn’t even the first reported: an eye doctor recounted yanking a live tick out of a man’s eye in a 2011 report from the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

And they’re not partial to eyeballs, either. A 9-year-old boy in Connecticut returned from a romp at the playground to find a tick embedded in his ear, feeding on the blood from his eardrum tissue. If it hadn’t been removed, doctors said the tick’s tissue-munching might’ve impaired his hearing.

Oh, and researchers recently discovered that a species that has learned to clone itself and is predicted to “soon occupy a large swath of eastern North America.”

In short: thank you, ticks, for absolutely nothing.





https://fox43.com/2019/07/17/a-man-...tuck-in-his-eye-the-doctor-pulled-out-a-tick/

That's crazy to find one in your eye......I know several people that have Lyme disease, its no joke.

House orders Pentagon to reveal if it turned ticks into biological weapons



The US House of Representatives ordered a probe into whether the Pentagon tried to use ticks and other bugs as biological weapons over a 25-year period.

Lawmakers passed an amendment last week that calls on the Department of Defense’s inspector general to investigate.

Text of the amendment, which was proposed by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), says the inspector general will “conduct a review of whether the Department of Defense experimented with ticks and other insects regarding use as a biological weapon between the years of 1950 and 1975.”

During a debate on Thursday, Smith said “for years, books and articles have been written suggesting that significant research had been done at US government facilities, including Fort Detrick and Plum Island, to turn ticks and other insects into bioweapons.”

He then cited a new book, “Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons,” that contains interviews with Dr. Willy Burgdorfer, who discovered the bacterium that causes Lyme disease.

“It turns out Dr. Burgdorfer was also a bioweapons specialist,” Smith said. “The interviews combined with access to Dr. Burgdorfer’s lab files reveal that he and other bioweapons specialists stuffed ticks with pathogens to cause severe disability, disease and even death to potential enemies.”

Smith added, “I believe Americans have a right to know whether any of this is true.”

Each year, roughly 30,000 cases of Lyme disease — which causes fatigue, flu-like symptoms and a red bull’s-eye mark — are reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC says about 300,000 Americans are diagnosed with Lyme disease annually.

Most cases can be cured with antibiotics, but if left untreated, the disease can cause facial paralysis, arthritis, fever and rash.

If the inspector general does find evidence that the government weaponized ticks or insects, Smith’s amendment orders a report on whether any bugs “used in such experiment were released outside of any laboratory by accident or experiment design.”

Earlier this year, Smith, a longtime Lyme disease advocate, introduced a bill that would authorize $180 million in funding for Lyme disease research, prevention and treatment programs.

He is also the founding co-chair of the House Lyme Disease Caucus.




https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost...-it-turned-ticks-into-biological-weapons/amp/