Trish commented on ferrets who contracted when given an intranasal vaccine for canine kennel cough. And added: >Based on this incident, I would **never** allow any of my ferrets (or the >shelter ferrets) to be given Intranasal Vaccinations for any disease!!! It >is just too risky. The fault in this instance was the vet and not the vaccine. Each infectious organism has its own peculiarities and is adapted to infect certain species. Vaccines are adapted to fit those individual differences. The vaccine for kennel cough may work in dogs but not in ferrets. That does not mean that an intranasal vaccine for ferret distemper won't work as well or better than the current injectable form. It may be safer or it may not work as all. No one knows yet although United Vaccines is looking into it. Humans have been vaccinated for decades with a vaccine that works in a mucous membrane. The oral polio vaccine works in the gut, where polio enters the body. I'll bet most people on the FML are too young to have ever heard of a person coming down with polio (it still does occur very rarely). Obviously, mucosal vaccines *can* work since polio is almost nonexistent now. Since Fervac-D is adapted to grow in chicken eggs, it's likely that a chicken given the vaccine would become infected with distemper. I don't know if distemper causes illness in chickens, but it would still be infected, but for the sake of argument, say your family chickens come down with distemper. This is no reason to claim that Fervac-D causes distemper in all animals. Don't shoot the messenger. The *route* of administration is not necessarily flawed because several ferrets nearly died after receiving the wrong vaccine. Whether intranasal vaccines will be better than injectable vaccines for ferrets isn't known yet. That form of delivery needs to be tested and stand or fall on its own merits but all intranasal vaccines are not necessarily bad. --Jeff Johnston [Posted in FML issue 1622]