Hi Everbody..
 
to say inferior ferrets and superior ferrets is about as logical as saying
Mr.Lipski's ferrets and all the other ferrets..  And the math that arrives
at 90% of MF ferrets having adrenal disease is about as faulty as it can
be..  when 90% of 60% of 150 ferrets is involved one hadly comes up with 90
% of the ferrets sold in pet shops as an answer!  Will a REAL mathmetician
please stand up..  particularly one very well based in statistical analysis
of limited numerical bases!
 
Of my ferret family that NONE ever had cancer of any kind..  15 of the 17
were Marshall Farms ferrets and that blows that 90% right out of the water!
Of the over two hundred ferrets it was my sad duty to see to their final
resting place in the Meadow in California in over 18 years of
rescue/sheltering there a vast majority were Marshall Farms ferrets and they
died of human stupidity, carelessness or downright maliciousness.
 
I venture to say if any lab had the secret of building a genetic time bomb
like terminal cancer into any creature the 'defense department' would long
since have appropriated it and this country would never have an enemy again!
However there are thousands of cancer causeing agents in our environment
placed there by humans and more every year.  Is it any surprise we are
seeing more and more cancer in all creatures as the years go by?  One look
at the cancer statistics over the last century should make the answer to
that crystal clear.  Using Marshall Farms as a convenient scapegoat is a
very dangerous thing to do..  Because in doing so the search for the actual
cause of these many types of cancer [of which adrenal disease is only one]
is neglected.  As are the active pursuits of appropriate methods of
arresting and/or curing these cancers.
 
A 150 ferret study of 140,000 ferrets is insignificant in the extreme.  Only
when we can accurately track all the 140,000 ferrets through their lifetimes
can we arrive at a statistically accurate conclusion.  When every ferret
owner we can locate can and does submit an accurate and continuously updated
biofile to a central data base for analysis of every ferret they own and
keeps those ferrets from as close to birth as possible to the deaths of
those ferrets will we have a data base that will give accurate statistics
for a trained statistician to analyse.  To do otherwise results in
inaccurate conclusions from insufficient data.
 
FWIW.. IMHO..
dayna and the woozles of the MMOMM rescue/shelter
[Posted in FML issue 2142]