Hi everyone, I came across this article on rec.pets, and I found it quite interesting. I thought you folks might be interested in this too. If this research can be verified, it might be useful ammunition in ferret legalization battles too. I tried mailing the author of this post, (Allyn Weaks) to ask permission, but I didn't get a response, so I decided to post it anyway. The entire (unedited) article follows. Charlie Cook [log in to unmask] From: [log in to unmask] (Allyn Weaks) Newsgroups: rec.pets Subject: Ferret bite double standard (was: Re: Ferret gene pools, etc) Followup-To: rec.pets Date: Wed, 23 Mar 1994 18:32:24 -0800 Organization: University of Washington Message-ID: <[log in to unmask]> References: <[log in to unmask]> <[log in to unmask]> <[log in to unmask]> <[log in to unmask]> NNTP-Posting-Host: psaltery.chem.washington.edu In article <[log in to unmask]>, [log in to unmask] (Ash (K.A. Rice)) wrote: > I had said: > >>For an related article on pets injuring kids, you should read: > >> > >> Paisley, John W. and Lauer, Brian A. "Severe facial injuries to infants > >> due to unprovoked attacks by pet ferrets" . by John W. Paisley and > >> Brian A. Lauer. The Journal of the American Medical Association > >> April 1 1988, v259, n13, p2005(2). I don't dispute the truth of this; no animal is always perfectly behaved, especially if not properly trained and socialized, and not all parents are fit to be parents. So far read only the abstract (which seems reasonably explicit), but I find the double standards involved in the conclusion interesting: Three infants were attacked by pet ferrets and sustained severe facial injuries. Two of the children had their ears bitten off and required reconstructive surgery. The attacks were unprovoked. Two of the children were asleep in their cribs when they were bitten. Although ferrets are increasingly popular pets, we believe that they are not suitable pets for families with small children. Physicians should be aware that ferrets may unpredictably injure infants and that no effective rabies vaccine for ferrets is yet available. [No longer true, of course, not to mention that ferrets don't get rabies, which was known before 1988. aw] Paisley and Lauer are so highly concerned by three injured infants that they recommend that ferrets are unsuitable pets for people with small children. But in my search of Medline, this was one of only two articles I could find at all for FERRET .and. BITE in 1966-current. The other is a 1993 letter (no abstract) about a non-fatal 'Recurrent Mycobacterium bovis infection following a ferret bite' to a middle-aged man. In only the last 5 years (1988-current), CAT .and. BITE finds 43 articles, many of them going into the disease related complications which can result (cat-scratch fever, etc.) For DOG .and. BITE you get 103 articles, and if you narrow that down to DOG .and. BITE .and. INFANT, you get 14 articles, one of which from CDC shows 109 dog-bite _deaths_ of children under ten for the years 1979-1988, for which the recommendation is not that dogs are unsuitable with young children, but that more responsible dog ownership, education, and stronger animal control laws are needed. And that "Parents and physicians should be aware that infants left alone with a dog may be at risk of death." Author: Sacks-J-J. Sattin-R-W. Bonzo-S-E. Author Affil.: Unintentional Injury Section, Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, Ga 30333. Title: Dog bite-related fatalities from 1979 through 1988. Source: JAMA. 1989 Sep 15. 262(11). P 1489-92. Not to mention the numbers of infants maimed and killed by abusive parents and babysitters. All in all, I'd tend to conclude that ferrets make pretty safe pets: zero documented fatalities in almost 30 years from either injury or disease, and only four incidents of any sort, three of which were presumably due to careless parents (unless perhaps the full article explains how a ferocious ferret bludgeoned its way past the parents and broke down the door into the baby's room in order to chew on its ear?). Interestingly, I've not yet found any mention of non-disease fatalities due to cats (urban legend of cat suffocates baby.) By the way, for those looking for ferret and other pet health info, Medline and PsychInfo are good places to hunt if you have access and aren't squeamish. Medline includes abstracts from veternary journals; PsychInfo has neurophys studies. -- Allyn Weaks [log in to unmask] [Posted in FML issue 0786]