Wrap Up Report: Congressional Bed Bug Forum

Bed Bugs go to Washington! And no, they weren't getting cozy in the White House...But my, can you just imagine?

Yesterday, conversations about bed bugs were swirling around the United States Capital Visitor Center in Washington DC during the Congressional Bed Bug Forum. M&M decided to hop on the Amtrak to observe and takes notes on the conversation taking place.


Congressmen G.K. Butterfield (North Carolina) and Don Young (Alaska) formerly worked together on H.R. 22484 AKA the "Don't Let the Bed Bugs Bite" act of 2009 and were the ones sponsoring yesterday's event. Their welcome memo read,

"Today's forum will feature panelists from the inter-agency Bed Bug Task Force, professional associations that have been heavily impacted by the bed bug resurgence, victims of bed bug infestations, and experts from Virginia Tech and the University of Kentucky."

Dr. Dini Miller opened the discussion with a presentation aptly titled, "Can we move beyond the 'Bed Bug Crisis'?" Describing her first encounter with a bed bug in the late '90s, Dr. Miller outlined many of the challenges of this dilemma, highlighting the fact that treating one infestation at a time clearly does not seem to be working. Dr. Miller explained that insecticide resistance and a lack of new active ingredients are two of the main challenges for bed bugs, and she did not mess around when it came to numbers, predicting that it could potentially require $200 million and 10 years of data gathering before new active ingredients could be submitted for approval and availability.


Now that's a lot of time and money! So is that what solving this problem is going to take? And where is this time and money going to come from? Both Dr. Miller and Dr. Michael Potter, the next specialist who spoke, explained that neither one of them had ever received funding from the federal or state government to conduct their bed bug research, and any relevant research they had completed up until this point had been funded by the chemical companies. Without bed bugs having been proven to be related to the spread of infectious disease, The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases hadn't exactly been scrambling to empty out their pockets for bed bug research either.

So a large purpose of yesterday's forum was to list the reasons why money should be allocated towards finding a solution for this problem. Which, if granted, raises another problem: What would be the smartest way to spend that money? Should it be spent on research and development so that a new active ingredient may hopefully be developed within our lifetime? Or should it be spent on education, to help teach people how to make better decisions in their every day lives so that they can decrease their chances of running into bed bugs?

Dr. Miller urged the idea that eventually everyone was going to have to become an inspector and concluded her discussion by asking all of us in the audience:

Do you know where your purse, jacket, and computer bag are right now?

Insinuating that there are smart places to keep your personal belongings where they will be less likely to run into bed bugs. Dr. Potter who spoke next and urged that, "We are not going to solve this problem with public education alone," stressing the need for more bed bug research to enable creation of chemicals that bed bugs will not be able to become resistant to.

These first two speakers offered the most in terms of hard, cold bed bug facts. Their perspectives outlined ideas on ways to find solutions for all of the missing pieces in the current bed bug puzzle.

Next up was the Industry Panel, where representatives from affected private sector organizations spoke. Speakers included Joe McInerny of the American Hotel and Lodging Association and Missy Henrikson, VP of Public Affairs for the National Pest Management Association who started off the discussion by calling bed bugs a "global pandemic" (Scary moniker!), describing bed bugs as the, "single most difficult pest to treat," according to the NPMA, and cited ants as the biggest nuisance. Henrikson listed her suggestions for what the federal government should do:

1. Examine current materials - look at the types of products that are currently on the market and those which have been taken off the market
2. Consumer protection - there must be regulation for truth in advertising for both products and services
3. Research - for both bed bugs and the possible treatment options
4. Coordination of education and outreach
5. Environmental Justice

Next we heard from a residential victim who had organized an on-going building-wide defense of bed bugs as Co-President of her tenants' association, and the final panel of the day, called the Government Panel, included representatives from the Federal Interagency Bed Bug Taskforce.

The day's overall message really boldly stressed the importance of putting pressure on the attention button of this issue. Five years ago, the thought of a Congressional Bed Bug Forum seemed far more fiction than fact, and there we were listening to the panelists, taking ardent notes, and learning about ways that M&M can continue to remain involved in this battle....