On the intubation of ferrets, I am aware of this happening in Texas as well. A lady who used to shelter in the Beaumont, TX, area and who was herself a nurse began a program to secure more humane treatment for these ferrets and to place them rather than euthanizing them at the end of the training session. She stated that there were 3 hospitals within 10 miles of her location that were using ferrets like this. So yes, ferrets are used for intubation training. Are they asphixiated? In some cases the shelterer did describe some permanent damage, but I don't specifically recall if it resulted in death. Deaths were noted from poor shipping procedures and procedure induced infection and, of course, killing of the ferrets at the end of training classes. Do large numbers of ferrets meet this sort of fate? I don't know. I seem to recall the shelterer indicating that something like 6-10 ferrets every quarter were involved. Some of this information comes from my personal coorespondance with this woman. Some of it can be read in an article 1/3 - 1/2 way down the page at http://www.texasferret.org/news/olympics.shtml. Debra in Fort Worth [Posted in FML issue 3862]