In a message dated 12/08/07 5:19:31 AM Eastern Standard Time,
Dr. Karen Purcell, DVM writes:

Just my 0.02 on this subject. Millions of chips have been implanted in
dogs, cats, ferrets, livestock, etc in the past 10 years +. I have seen
3 documented cases of cancer at the injection site of the chip in dogs
in my various veterinary journals. Until I see evidence that is more
condemning, I see no medical reason to stop placing chips. BTW, all my
pets are chipped for identification purposes (crazy gate-opening dogs!)


and Dr. Ruth Heller, DVM writes:

**I agree with Dr. Purcell 100% on this matter. Microchips are safe,
effective, easy to implant, and have gotten millions of animals home
safely. In the three [dog] cases reported, there are possible
associations with the chip, but not definitive, and the risk is so
low that I consider it essentially nonexistent. I do not hesitate
to microchip, and the majority of our personal animals (dogs, cats,
ferrets) have been done.

If you read the actual text of the journal articles reporting the
cancers in rodents, by the way, you can see that there was no control
group of unchipped rodents. What that means is that they can't even say
that the chipped animals had a higher percentage of tumor development
than unchipped animals. A lot of alarmism, IMO.**

Dr. Ruth

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Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html
http://www.miamiferret.org/fhc/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html

[Posted in FML 5815]