People have trouble at times grasping the importance of doing studies. I think that you are doing a wonderful job not only of educating people about ADV but also of explaining the foundations needed for the work to have any meaning and to be of any help to ferrets and ferret people. We tend to be an impatient country. We so often want everything in an instant, disposable, microwavable, just-add-water form. To further complicate things, the basics -- such as how scientific inquiry happen and the basics of science itself -- are so often not taught in our schools that people have no concept of science, or even of what science is. It doesn't hit people that a term like "global warming" means not that people in any location will feel hotter but that the energy which drives storms is far more present in atmosphere and oceans. It doesn't strike folks that if there was a Spiderman that each time he webslung he would use about 4% of his body mass in the mass and energy expended. It doesn't cross people's minds that it is through study that a researcher avoids disastrous surprises. It doesn't even cross people's minds that surprises happen, that in science as much as infancy crawling must precede walking, nor that the best researchers are the ones who work hardest to find the holes in their own reasoning so that the final result is not a convincing sales job but is instead a proven body of work which has met many challenges and still proven out in experiment. So, the upshot of this lack of understanding on what science is, is that people tend to figure that if something is convincing that this is the same as being proven, when in reality nothing could be further away from reality. People confuse looking things up and building a convincing argument with actually knowing. That not only is a route to bad science (or no science) but it helps shape unwary and easily victimized consumers, too. The sad fact of the matter (Sorry.) is that there is absolutely no replacement for careful study. Steve's doctoral advisor used to say that if 75% of a person's hypotheses panned out that then the person wasn't trying hard enough. (If the number was under 25% then the person was exceeding that individual's abilities.) In the popular comic strip Non Sequitur this week one of the main characters right now wants to grow up to become a "preconceptualist" because then she can create theories and not listen to any challenges or do any testing. Of course, she has wanted to grow up to be a dictator at one point, and a White House reporter taking graft in the past comics. That character likes to avoid the kind of hard and careful work which are essential for medical research. Without doing research step by step and knowing that surprises can happen we will all wind up falling on our faces from placing faith into hypotheses which are fine works of art, but are not how things really work. Recently, an excellent example of that occurred*, You have all read of the claims for lifespan increase from caloric restriction. Can you believe that no one thought to consider if perhaps it was not the calories themselves but their source that mattered? No? Well, then you were expecting carefully and rigorously done research which is good for you because that means that you are not an intellectual push-over. Too many people just swallowed the premise and never asked. Guess what? Someone finally asked. In the first of such studies (and hopefully far from the last) it turned out that by restricting the source of protein and fat to half of the amounts normally eaten there was a 60% increase in lifespans of fruitflies, whereas restricting the sugar calories only added an insignificant 2% to their lifespan. That is NOT what people expected. Surprise! (BTW, I am NOT suggesting a protein or fat reduction for ferrets; members of Carnivora have a long history of adaptations which have restricted their dietary options. Besides, there isn't a verifying study, yet, let along research into sources for multiple species, or further break-downs of source components. Nor is added quantity of life necessarily the same as added quality of life; the two can at times have different requirements.) There is NO substitute for careful research. People like UGA's ADV researchers may not be as flashy as folks who create arguments and behave as if an argument is the equivalent of fact, or who try to argue against needed research. (I guess preferring guesswork?) But, face it -- those people who don't challenge and don't do actual careful experiments including into where they themselves may be going wrong have to use flash, fear, and sensationalism because the extremes of argument are all they have. They don't have proven facts. It is always important to keep hypotheses separate from facts in your mind. We are all always learning. If someone truly loves her or his ferrets and understands the need for careful research then that person will know to take precautions, too keep an open mind, and to know that given enough time and enough well-challenged experiment the results will be REAL RESULTS -- real infections avoided, real animals saved, even perhaps real vaccines eventually. Think where you will be 5 years from now if nothing is done. Now, think where you will be if the slow, hard research such as that of the ADV experts at UGA continue. That will be a BETTER place. Like Richard Feyman wrote: "It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong." Or to say it in the oh-so pleasing words of the wise man Yogi Berra: "In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." Now, I guess that I have strayed from my point to some extent that by talking about WHY people tend to not understand what science actually is -- not merely the introductions of possible answers which is the route toward the needed work -- but then the absolutely essential parts of ripping those same ideas apart, and testing, testing, and more testing under carefully controlled conditions. In today's world where most people have no idea how to challenge and test ideas, let along that there are all sorts of aspects which need accounting-for, people are easily swayed by the easy looking tv, movie, and sales talk images of science which pretty well don't resemble actual science in the least. So, the pathologists working with DIM need to be sure that certain pathogens are not the cause because it is not enough to suspect that they are not caused by a certain "bug" given that sometimes a disease will present with an an unusual appearance compared to its typical one -- like ages ago when there was that mutant strain of coccidia which would have simultaneous massive egg blooms that were fatal (a disease that died out due to very careful isolation and then treating all ferrets in the affected households). It is not enough to assume that certain animals won't be contagious at certain times -- there needs to be the carefully found proof. It is not enough to assume that animals who have the virus and are asymptomatic are not contagious. (Remember the recent news story about some asymptomatic people with herpes passing it along -- a story I have not looked into further but those with herpes may want to do so to see if there is a foundation for the statement.) When people forget that real science (as opposed to the fictional variety or the publicity garnering version) involves years of painstaking careful challenge, careful experiment design to avoid alternative causes (like avoiding the caloric restriction assumption study gaps), careful measurement, careful controls, etc. then they are looking for the sexy media image of "science", but are forgetting that concepts which are unproven could lead them down paths that might not help, or at worst could hurt ferrets and their people who love those ferrets. Research into dangerous ferret illnesses like DIM and ADV does take time and does take extreme levels of hands-on care to help those ferrets. The more complex the illness is, the harder the work. So, instead of expecting instant answers to such questions as how to best know when ADV is contagious, which animals can spread it, and can we have a vaccine, everyone should remember that it is essential to lay the foundation and to progress step by step. Hypotheses are great fun but as something to stake a conclusion upon they only are all air and light so they weigh nothing -- meaning that it isn't any surprise that the foundations of some turn out to be faulty. Once we get beyond dreams, assertions, concepts, arguments, sales jobs, PR, and hypotheses we enter the realm of reality where a strong foundation is ESSENTIAL to satisfy our needs and to save our ferrets. So, it is fine to discuss concepts as long as we recall that if we ever to actually KNOW then we need the careful research to see which hypotheses pan out and which ones don't, or what their nuances turn out to be. Our ferrets matter too much to figure that guesswork could ever take the place of actually studying. ADV is way too serious to not do this the right way! Support ADV research! --Sukie (who is looking forward to further reports on the carefully done ADV research) * http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050611/food.asp [Posted in FML issue 4908]