In case this shows that some searching can often answer any question, here is something that a dear friend who wants to stay out of this forwarded to me: http://ferrethealth.org/archive/SG7897 "A word about the "ultimate sacrifice" - ten years ago, I had the opportunity to work on ECE - before we know what it was - I had the unwelcome opportunity to infect and euthanize a dozen aniimals as part of the investigation. To this day, I keep the photo of one of these animals on the wall of my office so that I never forget the sacrifice that these dozen animals have made." So, now all or Edward's questions should be answered, including the one whether purposeful infection to be sure of cause has occurred. And, gee, Edward didn't have to look up any of those even though he is obviously pretty danged good at looking things up (and anyone can be good at it with just practice and search tool experimentation online because doing those things won't break anything and is a grand arm chair adventure with interesting points as well as search techniques learned over time), so Edward can look up all of his next ECE questions because now he's got the full kit for further investigation. Many, many thanks to my friend who forwarded that! Folks, I've got extreme myopia, presbyopia, astigmatism, bilateral glaucoma (meds and one round of surgery so far), a tiny macular hole in one eye, and a lot of debris from 3 vitreous tears and one complete vitreous separation. Luckily, I can use computer tricks to see things better and to hear some things. The points of saying this are: 1. There are limits to how much time I can spend looking things up for people these days because my eyes tire. 2. Despite that I still CAN look things up on-line because before a person needs to go to the next level, the one where librarians can use all sorts of special resources, there really is a LOT that people can find for themselves. It is just a matter of using what is out there, knowing a bit about the forms possible by trying each, and using words that narrow searches. Examples: if you search for ferret +adrenal or ferret and adrenal you are going to get a LOT of returns but let's say that you want to know about using Propecia for that Okay, just narrow the search with ferret +adrenal +Propecia or the form with "and" depending on the search engine and then even just using Google will get you a lot of info or if you don't know the med try ferret +adrenal +prostate and one of the really cool first things that comes up even just using Google is <http://www.cliniciansbrief.com/?p=supplements&cat=Articles&pnum=6&newsid=130> as well as others. Another trick you can use is to put a term into quote marks to get that exact term. For instance, "ferret adrenal" put into http://www.google.com brings up a lot of great things including http://www.miamiferret.org/fhc/adrenal.htm among the early things Sometimes using ' instead of " can be useful. Try that, too. AND or + just means that what is found should contain both words (though that doesn't always happen at the large search engines) OR just means the results can have either word or term NOT or - just means that the results should not contain the word after the minus sign or after the word NOT. Some search engines like the one used for the FML Archives let you decide if you want to also narrow down by date range. A person can use one box in such search engines, or use any combination. If you have Mac and want to find things more easily (important for my eyes) many places allow you to press the clover key (the one that looks a bit like a four leaf clover with teensy leaves) at the same time that you press the "f" key and then at the upper right of your screen you will see a box were you can enter a word, find out how often that work appears and highlight it. Easy. There is probably some similar function in the Windows World but if there isn't then people should press for having one. See how easy it is? You can even narrow searches by going to places that concentrate of specific needs. Here are some examples of three that I have bookmarked in my bookmarks bar: http://listserv.ferretmailinglist.org/archives/ferret-search.html http://ferrethealth.org/archive/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez Oh, and at Google and some other search engines you can choose if you want to search news, images, "scholar" (journal articles and texts), and other specific categories! Yes, there are tricks that a person with bad eyesight develops to use in everyday life and in searches, but any of those tricks can also be used by people with good eyes, and learning to search is to a very large extent merely a willingness to practice and to surf the internet a bit. Sukie (not a vet) 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 6208]