The influenza shots are dead virus and not contagious but the nasal
immunization is mildly contagious short term according to the CDC site
so use lots of hand washing, etc.  with that one.  See the site for more
info and to see if this applies to this year's vaccines.  Please, be
aware, though, that there is a shortage of influenza shots this year and
as a result there is a serious request from the CDC that ONLY those who
truly need it badly get it.  This includes: those with a serious chronic
health problem (asthma, malignancy, etc.), those older than 65, and so
on...
 
See:
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/
and
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/whoshouldget.htm
 
It IS possible to have influenza and not pass it along.  These days I
am among those who need the vaccine for health reasons; Steve is not.
We've had influenza in the household many years and only ONCE have we
had a ferret catch it.  The most important thing is loads of thorough
hand washing, followed by using a face mask around the ferrets when sick
or feeling a bit just case illness might break in the next few days.
The influenza variety they get is Influenza A.
 
----
 
Looking at multiple articles on MEN it appears that some variants can act
as suppressors and some as pre-disposers.
 
Look at the last sentence below.  Is it possible that in selecting for
neural crest related genetic markings and thereby vastly increasing
their representation in the population that perhaps at the same time as
possibly increasing the percentage of alleles like the KIT oncogene that
the percentage of MEN also increased?  I really AM asking, because if the
genetic shift toward more ferrets with neural crest related markings has
two ways it might increase malignancies those in countries where breeders
and buyers have NOT yet made this mistake can be warned.
 
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?
cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11050843&dopt=Abstract
 
>Multiple endocrine neoplasias (MEN) are syndromes inherited as
>autosomal dominant.  The application of the techniques of molecular
>biology has made possible the identification of the genes causing MEN
>1 and 2.  The gene responsible for MEN 1 belongs to the family of
>tumor suppressor genes and encodes for a protein named MENIN whose
>function remains to be elucidated.  The identification of mutant MEN 1
>gene carriers who are at risk of developing this syndrome requires
>frequent biochemical screening for the development of endocrine
>tumors.  MEN 2 is a consequence of mutations in the Ret proto-oncogene
>(c-Ret).  This gene encodes for a tyrosine kinase receptor thought to
>play a role in the development of neural crest-derived tissue.
 
Wow!  Try searching under
 
Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia + neural crest
 
in a search engine like Google.  There is enough to keep a person busy
for ages!  I hope that this can be studied properly in veterinary
genetics research to see what is going on with ferrets!  Let's face it,
before all those fancies we just didn't see these things so often and
certainly not so early.  I remember form internet reports that the start
of the rate increase and the appearance of more cases in young ferrets
happened in two discrete clumps several years apart, and we were NOT the
only ones to notice that by a long shot.  There also are multiple people
who suspect that we are dealing at least in part with multiple genetic
whammies, and degree of expression in disease might be dependent on how
many are inherited in combination or which variants are inherited.
Remember that there can be multiple routes for getting certain markings
but that when you mess with something as basic as the neural crest (which
is a set of early fetal cells that develop into multiple later tissue
types) you mess with a lot more than just markings.  If you mess with the
cardiac neural crest (which is bit earlier before the neural crest and
cardiac neural crest tissues separate) you can mess up even more.
Breeding for appearance that is NOT like the original appearances seen
for centuries is not something which should be done without first reading
extensively about medical disorders which are related to genetics --
something which pretty well no one breeding for appearance has done.
Those people should know a lot more than I do before they start rather
than following when folks like me find info.  Marked heads beyond the
original masks, and/or spots/splotches that are not cleanly margined
complete and bilateral mitts and bibs without spotting say, "Get me check
ups more often because I may be more vulnerable to malignancies, and be
extra careful to follow a lot of the preventative measures at home and in
care." The "production" of such fancies with non-standard head markings
and non-standard splotches/spots -- which happened first for a long while
with one of the large farms (not with the largest at first) and with a
number of private breeders, and then began being done by many is driven
by buying demand.  Fancy markings should not be among the high criteria
when buying a ferret; many of those markings should actually make you
wary and set you to requesting more standard markings.  As long as demand
exists there won't be real tackling of this prevalence in the population.
Sadly, money must trump health with a number of breeders of all sizes
given the vast increase in the fur markings associated with neural crest
related medical disorders -- which sadly might have two (or more?) routes
(KIT, MEN) for increasing malignancy and neoplasia rates.
[Posted in FML issue 4659]