Itching for a Bite of the Lice Business

Last October, Melanie Greifer’s two daughters came home with head lice. The Manhattan pediatrician spent two weeks buying over-the-counter treatments and diligently combing out the girls’ hair, but she could never completely rid them of the infestation. Greifer finally turned to a business called Lice Treatment Center that sent someone to pick the lice and eggs, or nits, from the girls’ scalps and treat them with special shampoos. Greifer didn’t blink at the $100-an-hour fee. “At that moment, I’d have given my left arm to have someone come and take care of this,” she says.

As lice in some areas have become resistant to conventional remedies, desperate parents are turning to newfangled shampoos and pricey delousing house calls. Aside from a handful of treatments vetted by the Food and Drug Administration, the lice business is unregulated. There’s little to stop anyone from setting up shop to sell homegrown anti-lice formulas or comb critters out of kids’ hair. “The louse servicing businesses seem to be spreading faster than the lice themselves,” says Richard Pollack, an entomologist who teaches at the Harvard School of Public Health.