Bed Bug Bites
Bed bug bites have become an everyday occurrence. The pest control industry is awash in calls for help. The concern has been voiced that bed bugs may not carry a specific disease, but they could transmit AIDS, for example, from one human to another.
With bed bugs infesting nearly every state in the union, people are beginning to ask, "Do bed bugs carry diseases?" The answer from various disease control centers is, "We don't know for sure, but no one has reported anything yet." That's not a particularly comforting response, but it could be a lot worse.
When asked if bed bug bites transmit diseases, Jerome Goddard, State Medical Entomologist for the State of Mississippi said, "It's a big controversy as to whether or not bed bugs
transmit diseases. It's intuitive that they do. They suck blood from one organism and later find another one. But, if you look at all the scientific papers as a whole, the consensus is that they do not transmit disease agents, or at least they are not significantly involved in disease transmission.”
Bed bug reports were unheard of for decades until 1999. Rarely would a pest control company receive a call about bed bugs. In fact, most U.S. pest control operators had never seen a bed bug. Now, just five short years later, it is not uncommon for pest control companies to receive numerous bed bug calls every week.