Kathleen and BIG,
    I hope I stated well enough in my post yesterday that Tribrissen seems
to affect animals that have a problem with bone marrow the hardest.  One of
my ferrets was also on Tribrissen for 1 week and she seems to be ok.  But
what scares me is the fact that Halie had been on the medicine for two
weeks and off of the medicine for 1 week before she died.  And I did say in
my post to ask your vet if anything else would work, to use that instead.
In some small mammals, such as gerbils I believe, it is apparently one of
the drugs that has to be used.  Dr.  Williams said that the is an "immune
mediated disorder" that occurs in rare cases.  He also told us that he too
has seen the drugs used in many, many cases without indicident but knows of
problems in dogs.  This is apparently the first ferret case.
    When taking any drug, injection, or other "poison" to the body, there
is a chance of a fatal reaction.  Heck, I almost died from a Vitamin K
injection - totally unheard of.  But the sad thing here is that the
manufacturer would not cooperate when a vet at Dove Lewis tried to get
reaction information when she starting seeing problems.  The manufacturer,
in fact, backed the drug soundly.  The vet also said that she didn't think
too much about the reaction she saw awhile back until she started talking
to the other vets at the emergency clinic.  Then she found out that three
other doctors had also seen reactions but as a group they did not know each
other had seen problems.  That's why I pleaded for information from other
areas.
    This drug was originally developed for humans and apparently no longer
used.  Starla will continue her investigation.  She is a law student and
the head of a student animal group.  She won't let this drop until she gets
some answers.
    Dr.  Burgess completed the autopsy yesterday.  He said little Halie
appeared totally normal inside - except her bone marrow system was "totally
trashed." The tissue reports should be back in a few days.
 
        -Carla Almaraz
[Posted in FML issue 1272]