[nagdu] Fw: A Searing Narrative of Rabies, and the Desperation to Forget It.

[Ed Meskys]

----- Original Message ----- 
To: "'Ed Meskys'" <edmeskys at roadrunner.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2012 11:06 AM
Subject: A Searing Narrative of Rabies, and the Desperation to Forget It.


SIDE EFFECTS.
A Searing Narrative of Rabies, and the Desperation to Forget It.
NY Times Tuesday, 2012_07_17
By JAMES GORMAN. I started reading 'Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's
Most
Diabolical Virus,' a new all-about book, thinking that I would be most
interested
in the grim anecdotes and lurid details the book promises, and delivers.
I ended, however, by realizing that I am actually, along with other dog 
owners,
a
kind of public health hero.
Among the lurid details I didn't know about until I read the book is that
rabies,
on its inexorable death crawl through the nervous system to the brain, can 
cause
sustained erections, and on rare occasions frequent, and uncontrollable
ejaculations
in human males.
The authors write, 'case reports from history describe up to thirty 
ejaculations
in a single day' and go on to note that 'The Roman physician Galen, in his 
own
remarks
on rabies, describes the case of an unfortunate porter who suffered such
emissions
for three full days leading up to his death.
So now I know, and I kind of wish I didn't. The book, like any good history 
of
disease
has a narrative course something like a highway with traffic accidents 
liberally
scattered along the shoulder. You feel compelled to look, against your 
better
judgment.
The reading experience thus swings between voyeurism and remorse, as your 
mental
map of rabies comes more and more to resemble a fever dream, or a Hieronymus
Bosch
painting, and you feel that rabies must be diabolical indeed if you can be
infected
by the bite of a book.
That is until you come to a reminder of the mundane but profoundly 
comforting
fact
that rabies vaccinations for dogs, which have always seemed to me a 
bureaucratic
annoyance (who gets bit by rabid dogs these days anyway?) , have produced 
one of
the historic successes in public health.
Hardly anyone in developed countries gets rabies now because dogs are 
routinely
vaccinated.
In the rest of the world, however, 55,000 people die each year of rabies. 
The
authors
of 'Rabid,' Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy, a married couple who are,
respectively,
an editor at Wired, and a veterinarian with a degree in public health, write
that
most of these deaths are in Africa and Asia, a great many are children, and
almost
all are the result of being bitten by mad dogs.
Other animals become infected with rabies and spread it to humans, but dogs 
are
and
have always been the link. We spend $300 million a year in the United States 
on
rabies
prevention. In a pet-centric world, we may sometimes forget that the
vaccinations
are not primarily to protect our pets, although they do, but to protect
ourselves.
It was for human beings that Louis Pasteur risked his own life in developing 
the
vaccine. The authors give a vivid account of his using a pipette in his 
mouth to
suck saliva from the mouth of a rabid dog strapped to a laboratory table.
They also remind the reader of the double role dogs have played in human 
history
-- as man's proverbial best friend, and as a common, and dreaded bearer of
incurable,
fatal madness.
Where rabies is still prevalent vaccination of dogs is still the answer, and
public
health experts argue that it can be cost effective and practical, even in 
very
poor
countries.
A 2010 paper in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases reported that the idea that
most
dogs in Africa are strays is wrong, that the 'vast majority' of dogs are 
owned,
can
be presented for vaccination by the owners, and that mass vaccination 
campaigns
are
feasible.
In the end, I came away from 'Rabid' with much more than a store of 
anecdotes to
drive away annoying dinner guests. I realized that dog owners who bring 
their
pets
for regular vaccination are actually a homeland defense corps of great
importance.
They help keep all of us safe from rabies infection and its many horrifying
results
-- the fate of that poor Roman porter barely scratches the surface -- which 
I am
now trying desperately to forget.