An adult deer tick, Ixodes scapularis, right, next to one of the common wood ticks found in Montana, Dermacentor andersoni. The Ixodes ticks are quite small in comparison and can carry Lyme disease. Photo courtesy Tom Schwan
by Robert Chaney
Like a tick bite, small things can indicate destructive inflammation.
A Montana State University press release published on Monday stated that researchers at its Extension Schutter Lab had confirmed the presence of deer ticks — the kind that carry Lyme disease — in Montana. It sounded like a repeat of an MSU notice from March 7 and covered here at Mountain Journal.
A MoJo inquiry to see if the Lyme story needed updating produced a disturbing response: There has not been any follow-up research to confirm the prevalence of deer ticks in Montana because the National Institutes of Health scientists who would have done that work have their federal budgets frozen. They have no money to buy gas and travel to the edge of eastern Montana where one tick was detected on one hunting dog.
Requests for further explanation were met with “no comment” responses on Tuesday. The reason for that wasn’t too hard to guess: Tuesday was also the day U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy activated a plan to eliminate about 20,000 federal HHS employees. That included at least 18 — and possibly 38 — at Montana’s Rocky Mountain Labs biomedical research facility in Hamilton, where the deer tick had been positively identified.
“Right now it’s people scurrying around trying to figure it out,” retired RML scientist Kim Hasenkrug said on Tuesday. “[Supervisors] are hiding the information about who’s getting fired. People are just disappearing. They tell them they’re terminated and have to leave. They’re not allowed to access their lab, their computers — they lose all communications.”
Many of those current and former employees plan to speak out this Saturday, when a nationwide “Hands Off” rally against federal job and spending cuts is scheduled. Local gatherings in Bozeman, Missoula, Helena, Hamilton, Cody, and Lander are expected.
"People are just disappearing. They tell them they’re terminated and have to leave. They’re not allowed to access their lab, their computers — they lose all communications.” – Kim Hasenkrug, retired scientist, Rocky Mountain Labs
Hasenkrug, who worked at RML for more than 30 years, said the reduction-in-force notices affected positions from purchasing agents to biosafety lab specialists to staff scientists. But the reduction-in-force impacts go far beyond the loss of individual jobs.
For example, Hasenkrug was a principle investigator in charge of one of the roughly 20 project labs at RML, researching ways to fight the virus that causes AIDS. After he retired in 2022, it took nearly a year to find another scientist specializing in infections and neurology to carry on the work of Hasenkrug’s lab. Hasenkrug’s replacement was on probationary status in February when President Donald Trump’s DOGE office started eliminating all “non-essential” federal workers.
“That person was put on administrative leave because they were on probation,” Hasenkrug said. “They were allowed to come back, but I don’t know if they will or not. [RML] also recently hired an immunologist to study Lyme disease. That person was put on administrative leave.”
Former Rocky Mountain Labs scientist Kim Hasenkrug spoke to Mountain Journal about how federal job cuts at U.S. Health and Human Services are affecting RML and science in the GYE. Photo courtesy KPAX TV Missoula
The Rocky Mountain Laboratories’ Montana campus employed about 500 people before Tuesday. They collaborated with researchers across Greater Yellowstone, including MSU’s microbiology lab working on Lyme disease, Montana and Wyoming state biologists tracking chronic wasting disease in deer and elk, and a devil’s cauldron of highly infectious viruses such as Ebola, Marburg, bird flu, West Nile and coronavirus.
The federal turmoil has still further effects. A budget freeze has prevented RML from hiring its usual spring cohort of student interns, post-baccalaureate scientists and other trainees. A communications lockdown has paralyzed collaborative research work with other NIH, university and private colleagues.
Hasenkrug had recently attempted to help his old lab hire a new scientist specializing in mouse tissue. He contacted a colleague in Canada who knew the perfect person.
“But he’s from India,” he said. “He wouldn’t come to the U.S. with this situation.”
And then there’s the actual science. In checking on the MSU press release, Mountain Journal spoke with RML Associate Director for Science Management Marshall Bloom. He said he was not allowed to talk about the personnel situation at the facility. But he did discuss the tick research.
"We would like to try [to collect ticks] again this spring, but because of the current restrictions on NIH employees, we haven’t been able to plan a trip.” – Marshall Bloom, Associate Director for Science Management, Rocky Mountain Labs
“As of the moment, this is the only Ixodes scapularis tick identified in the state of Montana that can’t be ascribed to come from some other part of the country,” Bloom said on Tuesday. Deer ticks typically prefer wetter habitats than Dawson County, Montana. To confirm their expansion, biologists would want to find either a lot more mature ticks, or a range of different age groups.
“What we would like to do here is go back over to that area and do some more surveillance,” Bloom continued. “You take a big piece of flannel, drag it through the brush, and see what ticks stick to it. [An RML researcher] went over there last fall and tried to collect additional ticks, but it was so dry, he didn’t collect any. We would like to try again this spring, but because of the current restrictions on NIH employees, we haven’t been able to plan a trip.”
NIH reportedly lost 1,200 workers through firings, resignations, early retirements and similar reductions through Kennedy’s action, according to the Washington Post. That included Jeanne Marrazzo, who led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, overseeing much of RML’s work. That was the post formerly held by Anthony Fauci.
“Losing her [Marrazzo] is a big loss,” Hasenkrug said. “Those kinds of people are not political appointees. They’re career scientists. There’s a brain-drain already occurring. Scientists are already leaving. And the continuing research and investment in that research is being lost. When you hamstring that kind of research, you’re putting the health of the American public in danger.”
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About Robert Chaney
Robert Chaney grew up in western Montana and has spent most of his journalism career writing about the Rocky Mountain West, its people, and their environment. His book The Grizzly in the Driveway earned a 2021 Society of Environmental Journalists Rachel Carson Award. In Montana, Chaney has written, photographed, edited and managed for the Hungry Horse News, Bozeman Daily Chronicle, Missoulian and Montana Free Press. He studied political science at Macalester College and has won numerous awards for his writing and photography, including fellowships at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University and the National Evolutionary Science Center at Duke University.
