Boy, did I express myself badly.  I've been much too rushed recently.
There were three vaccines which the companies decided to have the first
round of testing (the one for long-term safety which came before the
tests to see if effective).  I was thinking there were three of these but
it might have been four.  It went down to one eventually and I remember
that two got dumped in this phase.  Could not recall why one of the others
were deemed unsuccessful but remembered that one caused some neurological
damage.
 
Today I recollected that one was later dropped because to provide
protection ferrets would have had to have been vaccinated every six months.
The protection didn't last a year which is what they were testing for at
that later time.  The testing of that vaccine was stopped early for that
reason.  Can't recall which one Judi said that it was but that doesn't
matter since it never got USDA approval for use in ferrets and rabies
vaccines must have that.
 
An additional pre-Compendium horror story involved a woman's ex-boyfriend
insisting that the ferret had bitten him (though he had not been bitten and
had no wound to show) and having her ferret destroyed as a punishment to
her for dumping him since he was a (^&$#%&(&.
 
Do get your ferrets their rabies vaccinations!  The human "victim" gets
preferential treatment even if the person is completely the story and no
bite happened.
 
Oh, you will notice the pet store kit mention.  That still can happen.
It's why many pet stores go with those huge plastic "aquaria" which are
actually pens about four feet around that vent at top where there is a wire
cover, and it's why pet stores which use cages so often put on screening on
the outside to keep little fingers out.  *******It is entirely possible --
if kids can stick fingers in pet store cages -- that a child might once
again get a cut which could be a bite, and that yet another parent might
insist that all the kits be destroyed and tested "just in case".
 
******* Pet store kits are too young usually to have already had their
rabies shots.  (This is also a reminder to private breeders and shelters
which wind up with young kits.  I recall a case one county over (Morris
County, N.J.) in which the state health department advised that a breeder's
(shelter's?) kit NOT be destroyed and the judge advised that it not be
destroyed, but the person who got a nip insisted that it be destroyed and
took it to an appeals court which agreed with the totally &^%&*)*$ jerk.
In that case it was an adult male human nipped and keen on the destruction;
then he put icing on the cake by saying he was going to go elsewhere and
get himself a ferret.  (You can read about it in back issues of the FML, I
think, since I seem to recall that it was recent enough to be here.)
PRECAUTIONS MUST BE TAKEN AND REMEMBERED!
[Posted in FML issue 3095]