I've been thinking about the rabies testing problem from an assay point of view. First of all, there are only two reasons to kill an animal suspected of having rabies. 1) In the case of a bite in order to test for rabies so that that human bitee can be treated. 2) To prevent any other people being biten by the suspected animal. Back in the days before there was treatment for rabies, #2 was the only reason to kill an animal for obvious reasons. The infected human was already dead anyway since at the time, rabies was 100% fatal to humans. But by the same logic, if an animal could be isolated and prevented from biting anyone else, there was no reason to immediatly kill it since there was no treatment for the bitee anyway. With the advent of treatment, reason #1 became more urgent. The early treatment for rabies required rapid intervention with a very painfull series of rabies shots. Thus if the animal was found to be tested negative for the virus, the bitee could be spared the pain of the vaccine. Today, since the advent of a less painful series of vaccines, the issues are different but history colors our view of rabies. Too many people died rather horrid deaths for us to be blase about this illness. Today, there are only two reasons to kill an animal that bites a human but is otherwise asymptomatic for rabies. 1) To spare the human the necessity of taking three rabies vaccine shots at a cost of ~$200. 2) Because the test for rabies currently requires the examination of nervous tissue. To do anyway with reason #1, we would have to pass a law that requires the bitee to submit to the rabies vaccine. For obvious reasons, this will not happen. So that leaves reason #2 as a point of attack. If we had a non-invasive way of testing for the rabies virus, it seems to me, we could stop all killing of animals (all animals) for testing. Humans only contract rabies from a bite if the animal is currently shedding the rabies virus in its saliva correct? Thus if we had a means of testing the saliva for rabies virus, we win. So here is were I come in. I'm a molecular biologist that has done alot of PCR (polymerase chain reaction) PCR amplifies DNA (or RNA, if reverse transcriptase is also used) that is present in the sample in a DNA sequence specific manner. It is a very sensitive test for the presence of DNA of a specific kind. After the OJ trial we probably all have a vague idea about how PCR works. In principle, what would be required for development of a PCR-based saliva test for rabies would be (first) a design of DNA primers (short sequence specific runs of DNA) against the rabies virus genome. The most efficient test would amplify all types of rabies virus at the same time. I'm willing to design the primers but before I do, I'd like to know alot more about rabies strains, current test procedures and what kind of research there is out there currently. Anyone intersted in helping me with the preliminary research into the feasiblity of this project, or anyone with ins to the CDC ect. please e-mail me. Max [Posted in FML issue 1960]