>Some start off as a vet tech and become a vet through years of training
>and experience.  (Can anyone verify this for me?) [Umm... no.  BIG]
 
Definitely NO.  I have known some vet techs who later went to vet school
and put in all fo their years of hard study and got their doctorates to
become vets, though.  Maybe someone has known or heard of such
individuals and didn't realize the route used.  Our current vet used to
be a vet tech; then he returned to school and worked his tail off.
 
>to mention they preserve with BHA and BHT which is proven to
>potetionally cause cancer
 
Sorry, but this also is not correct.  There were rodent studies in which
exceedingly large amounts (imagine your ferrets eating bowls of nothing
but these) caused some problems with specific forms of malignancies, but
ironically there were reductions in some other forms of malignancies if
memory serves (there are compounds which either can do either/or, or the
studies just had abberations and aren't reliable and I think that at
least one of these may have been among them).  NO ONE has any hard data
on this in either direction for ferrets.  It's another case in which
there are hypotheses in relation to ferrets.  There is nothing wrong with
folks personally favoring certain hypotheses and behaving accordingly
when they aren't harmful ones, but it is important to not confuse any
hypotheses (not been proven by well designed studies) as if they were
fact, and it's wrong to panic about hypotheses.  Honestly, it's just
plain wrong to put much emotional energy into hypotheses because many
don't pan out which causes confusion and because it risks skewing
perceptions and therefore reducing open-mindedness needed for best
assessment, so folks need to read, learn, choose, BUT also simply
remember that any hypothesis may not pan out.  I can understand how your
confusion on this arose; it's one of a number of hypotheses that multiple
people have way too often treated as if they were fact and that has
needlessly created confusion and panic for many as a result.
 
It is always good to look for actual proof: large enough numbers that
indicate actual statistically different differences in disease rates,
longevity or both, to look at the study design.  For example: what
species was used, what was the level of exposure, what was the nature of
exposure, were there other variables that could explain what was seen,
etc.  It is always possible to have something sound good and yet not be
valid.  That isn't reason to not try something safe when you choose to,
just reason to not treat it as if it were a fact while waiting for more
info.
 
Ashling and Scooter definitely have mottos:
"Whatever Ashling wants, Ashling gets"
"Kiss me, just a little bit longer..."
I have too much of a headache to know the ones for the others right now
 
>The reason their life expectancy is higher, is because of a man's theory.
>his name was Charles Darwin...He stated the NATURAL SELECTION THEORY that
>stated something about the (wild ferret) having predators, like eagles,
>wolves, etc...
 
Actually, what the Theory of Natural Selection says is that as the
proportion of an allele (a genetic variant) in a population changes in
response to pressures and to differences in reproduction rates the
expression of that trait will be seen in smaller or larger numbers.
(These factors tell of history, BTW, not of the future or even to a very
large extent not of current factors.)
 
>A statistical correlation just shows that there is a relationship, it
>does not determine cause and effect.
 
Yep.  Exactly.  Very often it is essential to know a missing piece of
puzzle that has been left out, not known, ignored, etc.  (For example,
I have been surprised that no diet-controlled diabetics here stepped up
with some info... I'm staying out of it myself and mostly waiting for
hard data from studies for major changes, partly because we don't appear
to personally have any major differences in health or longevity from
those using a raw whole animal diet (exception being MC), so I don't know
yet if there may be no difference in practise with other factors being
more important or if we balance it out in some other way and could
therefore possibly see some other improvements with changes (a possible
thing that may be happening with MC), or if it's more of an either/or
until a certain age at which point physiological limiting factors step
in.  Until there is hard data to each his or her own...)
[Posted in FML issue 3945]