Death Sought for Animals in Monkeypox Case

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July 3, 2003

Death Sought for Animals in Monkeypox Case

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/03/science/03POX.html

 

Moving to prevent monkeypox from reaching wild animals in the United

States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended

yesterday that all 850 animals from a contaminated shipment of exotic pets

from Africa in April be destroyed, along with all prairie dogs that might

have been exposed to them.

 

The agency warned pet owners not to release any sick or potentially

exposed animals into the wild.

 

Other mammals in homes or pet shops that might have been exposed should be

killed or should be quarantined for six weeks and watched for symptoms —

fever or cough, cloudy or crusty eyes, swollen lymph nodes or rash, the

agency said. Bodies should be burned, not buried or thrown out, and the

premises disinfected, it added.

 

An outbreak of monkeypox tentatively traced to a Gambian giant pouched rat

in the shipment has caused 81 confirmed or suspected cases in humans,

mostly in the Midwest. Its spread seems to have stopped, and no cases of

human-to-human transmission were found. But the disease spreads easily to

rodents.

 

A spokesman for the agency acknowledged that the authorities did not know

the whereabouts of many of the estimated 850 animals in an April 9

shipment from Ghana to Texas, nor do they know if any were released.

 

" That's one of the things we're really worried about, " said David Daigle,

a spokesman for the agency. " Tracking them all down is darn near

impossible. "

 

Nonetheless, a " very aggressive " effort is on now, said Dr. Martin Cetron,

the agency's deputy director for quarantine. But many were sold at

informal pet swaps, he said, " and then things end without a good paper

trail. "

 

Monkeypox — so called because it was first diagnosed in monkeys — is a

less virulent cousin of smallpox, and vaccination against smallpox appears

to protect against it. There were no deaths in the June outbreak, but in

West Africa, up to 10 percent of cases are fatal.

 

At the beginning of the outbreak, the centers and the Food and Drug

Administration banned importing of all African rodents and the sale or

distribution of six species from the April shipment: tree squirrels, rope

squirrels, dormice, Gambian giant pouched rats, brush-tailed porcupines

and striped mice. They also banned the transport, sale or release of

prairie dogs.

 

Yesterday's directive was ambiguous about what constituted contact with an

infected animal, and it confused some pet shop owners. Details of the

directive are at cdc.gov/ncidod/monkeypox /quarantineremoval.htm.

 

Whitmarsh, an owner of Rainbow Pets in Shorewood, Wis., who caught

monkeypox from a prairie dog in her store, mistakenly thought the order

meant she had to kill the 60 apparently healthy hamsters, rats and gerbils

she now has quarantined.

 

" Our animals are checked by the Health Department daily, and they are

having babies, " Ms. Whitmarsh said. " Sick animals do not have babies. "

 

David Crawford of Boulder, Colo., acting director of the Prairie Dog

Coalition, which defends wild prairie dog habitats and opposes keeping the

animals as pets, called the euthanasia suggestion " a classic case of

blaming the victim. "

 

" This problem was caused by human beings, and it's easy for us to take the

`kill them all' approach, " he said. " But if this was a human population,

we'd be aghast at an order to kill. This calls for quarantine and testing,

not euthanasia. "

 

Two weeks ago, at a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization

Practices at the centers, Dr. Gregory A. Poland, a committee member and

the chief of vaccine research at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, asked why

the agency had not already ordered all possibly exposed animals killed.

 

An official of the centers replied that people became attached to their pets.

 

" So what? " Dr. Poland said. " I know what we'd do if this was an outbreak

of mad cow disease. We'd kill the whole herd. "

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i particularly like the comment of David Crawford, for once, someone dares

telling facts as they are! No one would kill everybody if this concerned

humans, but as animals are touched, it is much easier to kill them all

instead of trying to find a cure & keeping them all alive, then even

saving their lives! Specisciesm is defenetly everywhere!

f