Let's get one thing straight to start off; there's an important way lice are NOT like terrorists. Terrorists are genuinely dangerous. They kill people. Head lice are not dangerous. They are icky and annoying, and it ends there. They carry no diseases and they don't drink enough blood to injure the frailest person. (There are other kinds of lice that live on people; some of those carry disease. Head lice don't.)

But that aside, they have a lot of similarities.

  1. They inspire a strong negative emotional reaction.
  2. They are hard to study scientifically. Terrorists are secretive; head lice live only on human scalps and are very hard to raise or study in other environments.
  3. Effective treatments are draconian, full of unpleasant side-effects, and/or implausibly difficult to implement. For instance, there's a sure way to prevent your kid from getting lice. Just make certain your kid's hair never touches anybody else's. Don't want to oversee every second of every interaction? Just shave off the hair. All of it. Buzz cuts don't count. Similarly, if everybody had to be naked and empty-handed to get on an airplane, a simple body-cavity search would get rid of the explosives risk. It's not technically difficult to devise methods of prevention. It's just not worth it.
Because of the previous factors, most of the tactics espoused for getting rid of them fall into one of the following categories (the terrorist examples are left as an exercise for the reader).

  1. Unproven if plausible.
    • "At Stanford, we use regular shampoo mixed with three tablespoons of olive oil, one teaspoon of tea tree oil, and one teaspoon of rosemary or eucalyptus oil. (These oils can be found at a health food store.) We mix it all together, work it into the hair, and leave it on for 30 to 60 minutes under a tight-fitting shower cap. We seem to get good results with this, though unlike Nix, there are no controlled studies to provide statistics on success. Also, eucalyptus oil is very poisonous, so it's important to be careful when using this mixture on children. It must be kept out of the eyes, nose, and mouth of kids." Dr. Alan Green on Head Lice This is otherwise a perfectly sensible resource.
    • "Mix minced garlic and lime juice to make a paste. Apply to hair and leave for one hour. Rinse. Do this every day for four days, stop for four days, and repeat cycle three more times." The Truth About Head Lice There is a whole list of these here. "Truth" does not seem an appropriate description to me.
  2. Pure theatrics. Lots of places suggest vast amounts of vacuuming and washing, or putting things in plastic bags for weeks, or vacuuming up lice and sealing them in plastic bags. Lice are small, and can't move well except on hair. They can only crawl. They starve with a day or two if deprived of blood. They can't breed unless they're on heads. Their eggs won't hatch except on heads. This advice will help your flea problem, and mitigate your dust-mite problem, but it's totally overkill for lice.
    • Here's the best advice on vacuuming: "Cleaning absolutely everything in your house is over rated, but you have to do it because when the lice come back a week later, everyone will ask you, "Did you change the sheets and put away the stuffed animals and vacuum the couch and the car seat?" If you can honestly answer "Yes" to these questions, people will have more sympathy for you." Itchy & Scratchy or Ten Things I've Learned About Head Lice
  3. Financial exploitation. For instance, Rid/Nix Lice Spray and other similar treatments for furniture and surfaces. Lice do not live on furniture. (Yes, fleas will live in your carpet, but lice won't.) Here's the US Center for Disease Control advice: "Head lice survive less than 1-2 days if they fall off a person and cannot feed; nits cannot hatch and usually die within a week if they are not kept at the same temperature as that found close to the human scalp. Spending much time and money on housecleaning activities is not necessary to avoid reinfestation by lice or nits that may have fallen off the head or crawled onto furniture or clothing. Do not use fumigant sprays; they can be toxic if inhaled or absorbed through the skin." Head Lice Treatment - CDC DPD
  4. Fear-mongering and counterproductivity.
    • "The life span of lice depends on how much food there is on the stuffed animal. They will procreate and new lice will hatch. The best solution is to put the toys in a plastic bag and replace them, because not to do this will keep the infestation in the room where the toys are. " http://www.blurtit.com/q969135.html Lice eat human blood. If your stuffed animals have warm liquid human blood in them, please, please do replace them. Otherwise, there is no food and no breeding involved.
    • "RID head lice shampoo does not just treat and kill head lice, it also serves to protect you from head lice. " http://www.ehow.com/how_5096509_prevent-children-getting-head-lice.html No, really, don't. This will do nothing but expose your child to pesticides and help create resistant lice.
    • " If you get the call from the school that your child has lice, don't waste any time to quarantine the child until you can get the problem isolated. Is it not too extreme to even put plastic cleaners bags or large trash bags down on the car seat and to require that your child do not rest his or her head on the seat back to assure lice do not get in the seats and upholstery of the car. When you get home, throw out the coverings in case any lice leapt off from the child in an attempt to spread." http://howtoridlice.com/Getting-Rid-Of-Lice.php Lice cannot leap. Furthermore, they have no interest in ever being anywhere except attached to human hair. This advice is merely going to traumatize your child. Feel free to vacuum the car after you bring the kid home. It will make you feel better. And it is not actually theoretically impossible for a louse to accidentally fall off your child, survive long enough for the child to come back, and find its way back. Highly implausible, yes, but not theoretically impossible.
On the other hand, one has to admire the same site's advice for dealing with sea lice which I regret to inform you is just as scientific as its head lice advice. Actually, you know what? Just use that advice for the head lice, too. There is nothing that cannot be cured by naked scuba-diving.

If you are dealing with lice, you have my sympathy. Here's my practical advice:

  1. DON'T PANIC
  2. Read this: Head Lice Information, Harvard Department of Entomology And then this: The Lice Program
  3. I wondered why louse combs were sold separately when every anti-louse shampoo comes with them, until I saw the free ones. Plastic and pointy; bad news. Invest in the ones sold separately. Note that they are often cheaper when labelled "flea combs" and sold as pet supplies.