>[Moderator's note: But please read other posts on the subject today --
>the evidence turns out to be pretty poor!  BIG]
 
I disgreee! I think the denial is pretty strong!
 
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/
1067453388769_62862588/?hub=CTVNewsAt11
which has a better explaination of the experiment makes for a strong
case, and not one of 'mistaken identity'!  This is a relevent quote of
the experement and the results:
"Osterhaus and his colleagues inoculated six cats and six ferrets with
the virus cultured from a person who died of SARS.  The animals began to
show their infections two days later.
 
The cats did not appear to be much affected by the virus.  However, the
ferrets became lethargic and died four days later.
 
Two healthy cats and two healthy ferrets were also placed with infected
animals.  The ferrets eventually became emaciated and died two weeks
later."
 
Again, this is not surprising, because SARS is not unlike the viruses
ferrets are already known to catch from humans, and it's a very serious
one indeed, nessesitating sometimes months of hospital recovery for
humans.
 
There have been mix-ups in the media about ferrets and ferret badgers,
but these are domestic ferrets in a lab setting, not a journalistic
mix-up.  It's a preliminary study and only one, but with results that I
think can't be denied as just a coincedence.  I don't doubt repeating
this will just show the same results, ferrets are very vulnerable to
resperatory illness and one that kills some humans could certainly be
deadly for ferrets.
 
It's a new study, just published, and even the researchers say the
animals are not a vector in the spread of the desease, and are just an
example of how 'prolific' it is, how easily it's caught by many species.
It's not really relevent to the CDC or WHO, it's just one of the many
pieces of research done on the virus.  People were doing the same with
chickens and pigs here as well.
 
I was in a SARS hotspot and I think that ferret owners in any area where
there's an outbreak in the future can't afford to 'poo poo' the results.
I think the most important thing is that if you have symptoms and you're
in a SARS outbreak area, and quarentined, to treat your ferrets as
quarentened from you, and take the same precautions you would with a
non-infected human.  This won't be relevent to most people, but who knows
when the next outbreak will be?  I think it's important, to ferret
owners, to have a good anwer if any of us are faced with the question "I
think I have SARS, will it hurt my ferret?" even if the answer is "It
might, so don't risk it!".
[Posted in FML issue 4317]