Hi all . . . 1) One more message from me:
 
I went to the library to find info on ECE and found nothing.  I did,
however, find one of the articles Dr. Steele referred to in his response to
the list.  What Dr. Steele *didn't* say is perhaps more interesting than
what he did say.  The article I found was "Severe Facial Injuries to Infants
due to Unprovoked Attacks by Pet Ferrets" by Paisely and Lauer, JAMA, April
1,1988.  All three cases cited that the ferrets either had not had rabies
vaccinations, or the owners didn't know if they'd had rabies vaccinations.
Our first indication of irresponsible owners.
 
In case 1, a babysitter left the baby unattended on the floor with a ferret
loose in the room.  Cases 2 & 3 both happened in the crib, and involved
ferrets that (obviousely) were either able or allowed to get into the crib.
More examples of owner irresponsibility.  In case 2, the child's father had
found the ferret on the street 2 weeks before, and decided to keep it.
There were some really nasty photos of these children included in the
article.  My guess is that the authors dug around and chose the worst-case
situations out of who knows how many less severe cases.  Hence the
eye-catching, parent-concerning title.  The article also says: "During an 11
month period in Arizona, the ratio of reported bites to the estimated pet
population was 0.3% for ferrets, 0.4% for cats, and 2.2% for dogs." (That's
not many ferret bites is it?) It is possible that ferret bites are
underreported compared with bites of other animals." (Why would these
specific incidents be underreported?  Because they probably AREN'T severe!)
Quoted stuff from Paisley and Lauer, bracketed stuff from me.
 
Paisely and Lauer claim 7 rabid ferrets reported in US since 1958 (as of
1988).  One of their sources, "Principles of Rabies Control" MWWR, 1987
reports 170 cases of rabid dogs in 1987 alone, and 95 in 1986!  Screw 1958,
that's 265 rabid dogs in two years, when there's a vaccine everyone agrees
works for dogs.  Compare 265 rabid dogs in 2 years to 7 rabid ferrets in 30
years.
 
Ferrets don't have a bad track record at all.
 
Another quote from Paisely, etc.  "Thus, killing the ferret and examining
the brain for rabies virus antigen is recommended after any human ferret
bite." (My boyfriend said humans shouldn't be biting ferrets, anyway <grin>)
The source reference for this comment, according to this article is the MMWR
report for 1987 again, but I didn't see that the MMWR backed it .  .  .  .
Interesting how they manipulate the data, mentioning the 7 cases of rabies
in ferrets, but not the hundreds of cases of rabies in dogs that were
mentioned in one of their sources!  <grin--I'd say there's a bit of bias
here!>
 
Finally, Paisley etc.  says, "The question of whether ferrets are more
dangerous pets than cats or dogs is controversial but not answerable based
on available data" And then he still goes on to recommend that people keep
their children away from ferrets anyway, w/o a warning about leaving youn
children unsupervised in the presence of cats and dogs!  Hmm .  .  .  if
this is Dr. Steele's main reference, he apparently didn't look up any of the
sources or notice any bias here, which makes whatever he says biased, too.
 
If anyone wants the other sources for the JAMA article, let me know and I'll
post the source list.  I could only find the MMWR source at my old college,
where I'm familiar with the library.  I'll try Univ of MN next, they might
have some of the veterinary journals.
 
--Sherri
[Posted in FML issue 1734]