finally, some reason to the local ferret issue......
 
Washington Post 24 June (Style section unfortunately
  by Henry Mitchell
 
FEAR, FOLLY, AND THE FERRET CASE
 
  Fear-struck decisions in American courts, American families, and American
medicine can result in misery and danger for a small boy, as in the ferret
case recently decided by a judge in Virginia.
  Having come to the wrong conclusion through an understandable terror of
rabies, the judge then volunteered this message to the unfortunate woman
who owned a pet ferret suspected of biting the boy:
  "If it were in this court's power, I would put you through the same thing
this child is going through."  (Note-i have a sticky "o" key, please ignore
invalid "oo"s)
  And what is the child going through?  He is having a series of rabies shots
so painful (his grandmother said) that three people had to hold him down.
Besides, doctors have said, the shots can have serious side effects.
  An interesting display of judicial temperment, and revealing something
of the heated circumstances in which the decision was rendered.  There were
three ferrets together in a pet store.  A boy reached in and was bitten.
Since ferrets can transmit rabies, the question rose whether the ferret
that bit the boy had rabies.  The definitive way to tell is to cut the
animal's head off and examine the tissue.  This was done to two of the
ferrets.  They did not have rabies.
  The young woman clerk at the pet store owned the third ferret.  She
witnessed the biting and said her ferret did not bite the boy.
  She also said the ferrets had been in confinement long enough that,
if any of them had had rabies, it would have dide of the disease before
the boy ever saw the animals.
  It is fairly clear, you would think, that this owner of the third
ferret would not wish to keep a pet with rabies.  In any case, if her
ferret did not bite the boy you would think there was no further question.
And what conceivable advantage would there be in lying about it?
  The trouble, of course, is that rabies is fatal, and exceptional care
has to be taken.  Exceptional care does not mean panic or a flight from
reason, however.  If the ferret that did not bite should be killed,
then why not kill all animals in the pet shop, since it is conceivable
(if imagination is to run wild) the boy could have been bitten by some
animal he said nothing about.  Since rabies is so dangerous, why not kill
all animals the child had seen for the past two months?
  The Judge declared that if the owner of the ferret did not surrender it
to be killed (the owner had given it to someone else and did not know
where it was), the owner should be put in jail.
  The boy's family got medical advvice.  Doctors have visions of trillion
dollar malpractice suits and are great believers in being safe rather that
sorry, which is understandable.  Like the rest of us, doctors find it
easier to do the first dumb thing that occurs to them rather than to think
what the facts are, so they naturally recommend shots.
  The grandmother said she could not comprehend how the ferret owner
would put the animal before the welfare of a child.
  It could be better said that it is hard to comprehend a judge, a
doctor and a family who among them subject a child to dangerous and painful
shots for no good reason.
  The unspoken but true argument was this:
  "We have no good reason for thinking the woman's ferret bit the boy.  We
have no reason to believe any of the ferrets had rabies.  We have no reason
to doubt the young woman when she swears she saw the accident and testifies
her ferret did not bite the boy.
  "All the same, even if our fear is totally unfounded we cannot see why
she will not allow her pet to be killed, just to make us feel better and
ease our fears, groundless though they may be."  Does anybody doubt the
woman would have would have surrendered the animal if there were any
possibility the animal could
could have given the boy rabies?  But she did resist killing her pet just for
the hell of it.
  Many peoople say ferrets should not be kept as pets.  But ferrets have been
kept as pets since time immemorial, and whether we think they make suitable
pets is beside the point that the woman in fact kept one and loved it.  The
fact that a ferret can cause damage does not mean the woman's ferret caused
damage.  There has to be some reasonable basis for thinking this particular
ferret (despite testimony to the contrary) bit the boy, and from everything
you could read of the case there was no reason to doubt the woman when
she swore it was not her ferret.
  How much of this decision and its results come from disapproval of
ferrets in general, or from the view that an animal's life cannot possibly
be worth considering?  If some humans feel anxiety, then any animal should
be killed to allay it.
  But that is wrong.  If the ferret bit, I say kill the ferret and examine
it.  If it did not bite, then do not kill it, and call in therapists too
deal with anxiety that comes not from reasonable fear but from irrational
images of horror in the mind.
  Women, I notice, love animals and often one wonders why.  Men, dogs, ferrets
-women often make absurd choices.  Still, I believe their love (However
ill-placed we may see it to be) is a matter of consequence.
  Love for a ferret must yield when even greater values are threatened.  That
love need not yield, and should not, to vindictive or irrational whim.
As I see it, the little boy's pain and danger spring not from the third
ferret or its owner, but from unwise decisions of the court, doctors
and family.  END OF ARTICLE
 
CHRIS, I KNOW THIS IS A LITTLE MESSED UP BUT I WOULD LIKE YOU TO POST
IT ANYWAY.
 
[I fixed a couple of things in it to make sure that no lines were longer
than 80 characters and tried to clean up some of the double-o's.]
                                                                          
[Posted in FML 0030]