Linda (et al.)
 
I'm not a virologist but am fortunate enough to have some (just enough...)
training in the area.  First off the comment about the vaccines causing
illness: Many 'old style' vaccines are made from attinuated virii which are
shown not to be harmful in lab tests.  These still have enough 'stuff' to
cause an immune response however.  So what happens is that in vivo or in
vitro the vaccine changes in to a virulent form.  This is somewhat easy to
do under the old system of making vaccines.  So when you or your ferret gets
sick from a vaccine it is my believe that the virus became virulent again.
Luckly this is usually a lower shock to your/his/her system that your immune
system is able to cope and recover.
 
Second about the new form of ECE.  THe sytmptoms you describe seem to be
common with ECE although differing slighly.  Either the virus has changed
(likely) or your ferrets are different; this all has to do with genetics and
the ability of genes to change over time.  It's pretty common for viruses to
change over time, it's how they make their living.  HIV is known to change
many times in one person's body, a phenominal rate of change.
 
Third about severity.  Think on this; if a virus was so severe (ie Ebola),
it wouldn't survive too long b/c its host or victim will be dead before it
has a chance to spread.  On the other hand if the virus is mild ie.
influenza, (flu) it can spread very well in a population because it's host
survives.
 
My eventual hope is that we can use the new biotechnology discoverys to
change how vaccines are made for ferrets.  What is commonly done now is to
take a bit of the DNA code of a virus and insert it somehow into the animal.
This causes a immune response which gives immunity to the animal.  NO live
anything is used; its just a bit of DNA.  There is no way it can become
virulent again, the genes that are necessary are totally deleted, not just
mutated.  ANyways I'd like to do this one day for all ferret kind.  At this
point I don't even know what the ECE vaccines use; I assume its the old
method described first.
 
Hope this makes sense.
 
OH PS.  Thank you everyone who emailed me about Houston and ferrets.  From
3 people, ferrets are OKAY to have in Houston!  Yippee.  I am very happy to
hear that.
 
-Rob
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   Robert Dejournett   [log in to unmask]   [log in to unmask]  ICQ: 607091
   www2.hawaii.edu/~dejourne   www.rtd.com/~hermes   last update: 5/4/97
                 Editor & QA Liason, Project Armageddon
   Armageddon is Coming!         http://projecta.simplenet.com/site.html
[Posted in FML issue 1953]