Dear Ferret Folks-
 
I talked to my Mom the person doctor about the horrible animal disease
reported in yesterday's FML and she has several interesting things to
say about it.  One being that there are so many untested assertions in
the statement that the lady gave (Not calling anyone a liar, saying that
there are a lot of variables floating around in that statement, only one
of which can be tested at any given time.That is how a true hypothesis is
nailed down.) that it is not really a case hsitory.  A large amount of it
may simply be anecdotal, information passed down the grapevine, and not
true eye-witness testimony..She would *never* take this unexamined as a
person's disease history, she says.  For example, she sees no evidence at
all that what the people are getting and what the animals are getting is
the same at all.  The people are getting a G.I.  upset, which is pretty
common for us, and easily spread around, especially this time of year.
That's the simpledst explanation, and those are usually the best.
 
The animals appear to be getting something hemmoragic (the people
aren't), and the easiest way to test for that would be to do a
coagulation battery and platelent count on them on day one, follow it up
on days two and three, see if it changes.  Have they lost their clotting
factor?  Is their liver gone?  Bone marrow gone?  Did they eat Warfarin
baits, etc.?  All those things need to be looked at.
 
If nobody has been able to determine what is killing the animals, what
agent (bacteria, virus, toxin, etc.), then you can't truly say that the
"disease" is 100% fatal.  If the disease can't be found, how can you be
sure that it is uniformly fatal?  You can't *find* it yet to rule this
out one way or the other.  You do know that the animals who show certain
symptoms (days 1-3) are doomed.  That doesn't mean that their cagemates
don't shrug "it" off, and never show the first day 1 symptoms.
 
Antibiotics, of course, that may have been given to these animals won't
touch a virus except under the strangest of conditions.  (Antibiotics
kill bacteria, not virus.  Doctors know this, but dispense them anyway
to human patients like candy because patients expect to be 'given'
something.).  So far there is no evidence that this is a virus, that's
just how the poster concieves of the problem.  Obviously, she's got to
call it *something*, but calling it so doesn't make it so.
 
Obviously, Mom is not a Vet, but she does have more than 30 years of
clinical experience in having people come to her with odd stories, and
having to sort the "wheat" facts from among the "chaff" to decide what
is relevant in their story of "what went wrong when", what is coincidence
in that story, and what is just plain noise to be ignored.  Vets do the
same thing, good ones, anyway.
 
Alexandra in MA
[Posted in FML issue 4745]