FYI all:
My wife being an RN, she tends to read those medical thrillers (fiction
and NON!) and recently opened up a new one titled "FLU...The Story of the
Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused
It", by Gina Kolata, a science reporter for the NY Times.  It is out in
softcover by Touchstone Books published by Simon and Schuster, NY.  ISBN is
0-7432-0398-4.  The book is fascinating and a good read, but...the author
goes out of her way to make some rather unkind comments about our fuzzy
friends, many of whom gave their lives to the ground breaking flu research
in the early 1900's, after the infamous 1918 flu klled an estimated 40
MILLION people almost "overnight".
 
For instance on pages 73, she states that "Ferrets are small and sometimes
VICIOUS MAMMALS (my caps...P), relatives of weasels, and not the usual
laboratory animal..." and then goes on to elaborate on their use for
flu research.  In 1933, one of the researchers, Wilson Smith, actually
contracted the flu from a ferret that sneezed in his face, and that
strain of flu (WS...named for Dr. Smith) still exists to this day!
 
The story develops further, when the researchers found out that ferrets
developed active flu from swine flu filtrate when innoculated by dripping
it into their noses.  Grisly business here but the author, on page 76,
goes on to say that the experiments were not easy to do.  "The SNARLY
((my caps..P) animals with SHARP (again, my caps..P) teeth did not want
to sit still while Shope dripped flu-containing liquid into their noses"
 
But it gets a bit better later on in the book, and don't get me wrong this
is a GOOD book about disease...but about the ferret???  On page 286 she
goes on with "Stuart-Harris was the one who had had to check the ferrets
each day after the British team discovered those FIERCE RODENTS (my caps
here, P) were almost uniquely susceptible to human influenza viruses..."
OK, I draw the line there folks!
 
I suppose that the authors research team were not communicating clearly,
when passing along info to the writer, and the oversight made it into
print...but the point here is that this is just another swipe to the face
of what we know to be a wonderful, loving companion animal.  Maybe Mayor
Guliani read this book before issuing his ban on domestic ferrets in NYC?
Ya gotta wonder!  Anyway, hug a fuzzy and don't sneeze in their face if
youre sick!
 
putorius
[Posted in FML issue 3332]