Off a newsgroup

Article on bird flu criticizes effort to monitor cats and dogs
April 6, 2006
New York Times/AP
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/06/world/europe/06cat.html
Five leading European scientists are criticizing officials involved in human and animal health in an article appearing today, saying the officials are not doing enough to monitor cats, dogs and other carnivores for their possible role in transmitting avian influenza.

Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists also urge people living in areas where the A(H5N1) virus has infected poultry and other birds to keep their cats indoors.

The scientists are from the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. They directed much of their criticism at the World Health Organization and the World Organization for Animal Health for emphasizing the lack of evidence that domestic cats play a role in transmitting the virus and contending that more research is needed.

On the Net:Nature: www.nature.com/nature
uropean cat advice: www.ecdc.eu.int/press/press--releases/PDF/060307--press--release.pdf



Feline friend or potential foe?
April 6, 2006
Nature 440, 741-742
Thijs Kuiken1, Ron Fouchier1, Guus Rimmelzwaan1, Albert Osterhaus1 and Peter Roeder2
1. Thijs Kuiken, Ron Fouchier, Guus Rimmelzwaan and Albert Osterhaus are in the Department of Virology, Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
2. Peter Roeder is at the Animal Production and Health Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Viale delle Terme di Caracalia, Rome, Italy.
The full article is available at: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7085/full/440741a.html
Abstract
What role do cats play in the epidemiology of H5N1 avian flu virus? We don't yet have all the answers, but it's time to consider new precautions, argue Thijs Kuiken, Albert Osterhaus, Peter Roeder and their colleagues.
There are increasing numbers of reports from Asia and Europe of domestic cats dying from avian influenza H5N1 virus. The available evidence, albeit incomplete, suggests that cats are more than collateral damage in avian flu's deadly global spread and may play a greater role in the epidemiology of the virus than previously thought. Here we recommend that new precautions are taken by nations and agencies fighting avian flu to minimize the risk of cats becoming infected and spreading the highly pathogenic virus to poultry, humans and other species.

quote:

What role do cats play in the epidemiology of H5N1 avian flu virus? We don't yet have all the answers, but it's time to consider new precautions, argue Thijs Kuiken, Albert Osterhaus, Peter Roeder and their colleagues.

Do these new precautions include 52gr. Match HP at around 3200 fps?

Ain't met a noncompliant crat owner yet that was impressed by anyone telling them about all the bad things their crat did while roaming around, and not at all about any of the bad things that might happen to their precious Fluffies!! Not even experience-they lose one and get another one, and next thing you know it's in my yard like the last one that disappeared.

So when will we stop killing filthy vermin like cats and start killing their filty sub-human "owners" who let them run free?