No, people don't get Canine Distemper. It's just that the way that folks who become violent change with brain damage from OTHER causes. (The two I saw personally were a young friend in his 30s with a smoking-related lung malignancy that metastasized to his brain, and another with stroke related damage, and we also heard the stories when that happened to a relative by marriage in the last days of his Alzheimers and strokes.) I think my wording was pretty clear, but not as clear as it should have been. What I was saying was that the behavioral changes that poor dog had from canine distemper affecting her brain were heart-breaking and similar to those I have personally seen in some people with brain damage from other causes. Canine Distemper is a truly horrid disease, one of the very worst. Mary wrote: >There's no voodoo. It's no scheme. The reason certain diseases are not >rampant is *because of* vaccinations. If you stop vaccinating, you give >the disease an "in." Exactly! Once enough of the vulnerable population is vaccinated the disease doesn't have the inroads it needs to proliferate. Some vaccines need boosters, of course, but still they work. Consider lock jaw (for which a booster after bad injury or a ten year booster is advised). When is the last time you heard of someone dying in agony from that? The chances are that you simply haven't. Consider smallpox and polio. Smallpox was once rampant, and I remember kids with polio so I'm glad that ones my age were around the right age to get vaccinated in time (though I sure hated getting the shots as a kid). People my age in my area used to have friends in school with braces and a few older ones in the neighborhood with shrunken limbs from polio. My girl scout troop used to put on skits in a ward with a good number of polio patients when I was a child, and visit with the boy in the iron lung, and many of us would make gifts of homemade toys for them. It can harder to notice what is NOT around, esp. if you are lucky enough to not be in an age group where a disease was not pretty often seen. What diseases HAD been common are now, in many locations, barely encountered, so things like child death and disfigurement are more rare these days. That's why folks don't notice that vaccines WORK; they simply don't know what it is like to be without them. It's the same with ferrets and other animal companions as with humans. If you haven't seen the tragedies you don't know what you are so lucky to be missing. Lisa wrote: >You are much more likely to hear of someone having a reaction to the >CDV shot than not having a problem. Most won't post "I had all my >ferrets into the vet this year and did not have any reactions!" I >know that since 1993, I have vaccinated over 1,000 ferrets (most with >the series of 2 shots) and I average about 2 reactions a year to the >vaccine. And yes, I use Fervac-D. LOL! Boy, is that exactly right! And a few people repeatedly talk about the same reaction for years as if it just happened instead of letting folks know it's the same case. We haven't had a reaction in our crew in at least 7 years Steve and I guess. You know, there are probably very much over 15,000 ferrets represented on the FML; does that also help bring the rate into perspective? Take precautions, but unless there is health reason to not vaccinate do think about how terrible and avoidable these illnesses are. [Posted in FML issue 4619]