Warding Off Ticks Is Big Business. Inside the Alpha-gal Economy

Alpha-gal Syndrome is spiking as a once-regional pest gentrifies some of America’s wealthiest areas. Meet the businesses protecting you from Team Tick.

BY ALI DONALDSON, STAFF REPORTER @ALICDONALDSON

Illustration by Inc. Art

In the late 1980s, after more than 30 years of enjoying bacon and cheeseburgers, my mom developed a severe food allergy to pork and beef. Allergists couldn’t give her a diagnosis or a reason, just an EpiPen and a medical alert bracelet that explained her new reality in small block script on a silver oval disc.  

This mid-life allergy required more than a change in diet. It required near-constant vigilance. Seemingly safe foods, such as chicken or fish, could be easily tainted by careless cross-contamination: grilling on the same surface as a steak or chopping with the same knife that sliced through a pork chop. At restaurants, she avoided most of the menu out of caution, opting for a simple green salad, a baked potato, or a side vegetable; she would wait to eat a proper meal in the safety of our home kitchen. No appetizer was worth anaphylaxis. 

For nearly two decades, my mother didn’t have a name for what happened to her. Neither did her doctors. Then in 2007, Dr. Thomas Platts-Mills, an allergist and immunologist at the University of Virginia, coined a name for my mom’s condition: Alpha-gal syndrome. The researcher, who headed UVA Medical School’s Division of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, discovered this potentially life-threatening red meat allergy was caused by bites from lone star ticks, an aggressive species that is........

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