To Suki:
Yes, I WILL argue that rabies shedding period studies are inessential.
I have been involved in working to make ferrets legal and healthy everywhere
for nine years now, and I have worked with every major American ferret
group (of which only one is worth the time of day as far as track record
goes).
To understand why the rabies shedding period is inessential, you need to
fully understand the actual politics behind rabies. When ferrets were
originally banned, they were banned because gun hunters complained that
ferreters were taking "too many" of "their" rabbits (i.e., hunters pay
license fees, ferreters don't). Having these laws on the books made it
incumbant upon certain authorities to keep the laws there or lose face.
So when nobody did any ferreting anmore, the hew and cry became "oh, there
are feral populations everywhere.'
Well, Bill Phillips and I polled every state in the union, fish and
game and agriculture departments both. Once we got documented evidence
that there are NO wild ferrets ANYWHERE in the US, the hew and cry turned
to rabies. Despite every effort, there it has stayed.
I have been involved in the rabies fight from the begining. It was
myself and Rita Yaroush who went to the Morris Foundation's scientific
committee hearing and convinced them to fund the vaccine. Fine. Now we
have the vaccine. This has with one exception made no major difference
in anything.
The reason for this is because rabies is a POLITICAL issue and not a
medical one. Most places will not even accept the rabies vaccine. I have
had health departments in Colorado and Florida tell me, "Look, we're just
looking for antibodies. We can't tell if they're there because the
ferret is rabid or because it's reacting the vaccine. All we care about
is that they're there." Think about this statement. It has NOTHING what-
soever to do with the disease, the method of testing, or anything. It is
not even true. But this is the kind of thing they tell you. When I am
finally able to CORNER these people and get them to tell me WHY they
will not change the rules, even in the face of the vaccine, first they
tell me "Well, we don't know the shedding period."
Fine, I say. "How is it possible for an animal to contract rabies if
it has never been in contact with another rabid animal.
And every time, the answer is the same. Health departments are funded
on how many animals are killed and tested. If you don't kill as many as
you did last year, you don't get the money. So if you're in a state or
county health department, you kill and test your quota of animals every
year NO MATTER WHAT.
Getting the shedding period is not going to make a WHIT of difference
in this case. What WILL make a difference is making the public aware of
the abuses being promolgated on them by their health departments. I dare
anyone to try to get away with that, since people in this country are
trained from early childhood to be hysterical where rabies is concerned.
Even when the shedding period is defined, there are people who will STILL
not accept it because they believe the ferret is wild. I have worked
TIRELESSLY -- and with the exception of one or two individuals,
essentially alone -- against this idea for years.
The part to remember here is that the ferret is now a very common and
cheap and "safe" laboratory animal. Have you noticed that it is precisely
those people who most favor the ferret as a lab-only animal who are so
hot for it being wild, "regardless of generations of cage reared breeding"
(Old Vermont law, widely quoted). Take a look at the journal articles
in toxicology every so often: you'll find quotes like "We chose the ferret
for these experiments because, since it is not a companion animal, it
does not have the "social complications" of other species." This is
really there! Even though we have the rabies vaccine, which makes the
rabies shedding time a moot point, the AVMA is STILL pushing the ferret
as a wild animal -- and still pushing it as an animal "suitable for work
[in the lab] but not for pets."
So now what we're seeing is that insteat of this money that's sitting
at morris being used to do research that could save the lives of thousands
of ferrets everywhere, we have a little bunch of vocal people trying to
tell everyone else that their money should be held to wait for research
people DON'T want to do, that won't make much difference anyway (those
who want ferrets banned and killable and experimentable will just find
ANOTHER excuse), and then maybe we'll have something that MIGHT save
five or ten ferrets a year anyway. That is selfish, cruel,
ego-agrandizing and lazy. Anyone who'd like to see my data for these
arguments may write or see the 1990 California Public Information manual,
which contains the whole schmeer. It really burns me up that the people
who are now trying to tell Morris what to do with everybody else's money
never bothered to rebutt California (or most anyone else) themselves.
I also call to question the idea of convenience kits living to seven or
eight, as they have only been available since 1986 (according to Marshall
Farm's marketting fliers.) I am led to believe that a few "experimental"
ones were marketted elsewhere. But still, I have known, personally, over
300 ferrets, and what I say is true in my experience. All the convenience
kits here are from Marshall Farms, formerly Marshall Rsearch
animals. Their laboratory oriented ads proudly proclaim that their
colony has been closed (i.e., their stock are inbred) for 45 YEARS.
So inbreeding is an inevitable problem. I now have several marshalls
kits who have come to me from the Boulder County Humane Society, which I
am keeping specifically to see what happens to them as they age. I also
know the current owners of all the othes that have come through the
shelter. In fact, we've only had ONE non-Marshall's kit come through
the shelter in the last YEAR. Out of over 70 ferrets...
As to age, four and a half to five seems to be the going rate, and
kidney failure and insulinoma the going diseases. One of my vets
thinks the kidney failure is due to overuse of ketamine, a cheap aneas-
thetic which is can be nephrotoxic.
The material I put up an Aleutians is as up to date as it gets, unless
something changed within the last three weeks. I have, with one exception,
all the scientific papers on Aleutians available to date. Anyone who'd
like them can E-MAIL me and I'll send you the references. They are avail-
able at any vet school library or through IQUEST.
The California Department of Health's 1988 report is 75 pages long, and
was mailed at the taxpayer's expense to every health department in the
country -- state, county and city. So, the cost of mailing being about
$3.00 each, and 2 cents a page for copying, plus $5 an hour to the people
who copied it, plus however much Constantine and Kizer were paid while
they were writing it...
Bill Phillips and I prepared a full rebuttal to the thing, which
PIJAC was supposed to mail to everyone who got the original CDH report.
I don't believe they did, as nobody I talked to since PIJAC put the thing
out claims ever to have seen it.
I talked to the ferret Aikido guy too. He seemed basicly to be looking
for free ad space. I never give it.
[Posted in FML 0157]
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