slb@drutx.UUCP (Sue Brezden) (08/13/85)
> >Uh, rabies is quite curable. A friend of mine was once bitten by a dog that >turned out to have rabies. She got a LOT of shots. >- Sean Casey > Sorry, that's not a cure. That is prevention. If the shots had been delayed, and she had gotten rabies, she would be quite dead. Rabies has a long lead time between introduction of the virus and the time when it gets to where it does the damage. In that time, prevention is still possible. Rabies is not curable. -- Sue Brezden Real World: Room 1B17 Net World: ihnp4!drutx!slb AT&T Information Systems 11900 North Pecos Westminster, Co. 80234 (303)538-3829 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Your god may be dead, but mine aren't. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
bch@mcnc.UUCP (Byron Howes) (08/14/85)
In article <140@drutx.UUCP> slb@drutx.UUCP (Sue Brezden) writes: > >Sorry, that's not a cure. That is prevention. If the shots had been >delayed, and she had gotten rabies, she would be quite dead. Rabies >has a long lead time between introduction of the virus and the time >when it gets to where it does the damage. In that time, prevention >is still possible. Rabies is not curable. I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong, but I think that it isn't rabies that kills, it is the symptoms. If an individual with rabies can be treated for the symptoms the disease itself will run its course. I seem to remember that this has been done in at least one case with no long-term harm to the victim. I'd appreciate a followup if I'm remembering incorrectly. -- Byron C. Howes ...!{decvax,akgua}!mcnc!ecsvax!bch
brownc@utah-cs.UUCP (Eric C. Brown) (08/14/85)
In article <140@drutx.UUCP> slb@drutx.UUCP (Sue Brezden) writes: > Rabies is not curable. > Sorry, Sue, rabies is curable; I recall reading a report that a person with rabies had been cured about 5 years ago. As I recall, it requires VERY aggressive treatment, and the patient nearly died, but the patient eventually recovered. Unfortunately, I don't recall any details about the treatment. Eric C. Brown brownc@utah-cs
omo@mcnc.UUCP (Julie Omohundro) (08/15/85)
Several years ago, I was bitten by a potential rabid animal which disappeared, so I was trying to decide whether or not to take the shots. I was living in Fayetteville, Arkansas, at the time (where there was and is a rabies epidemic). I did as much studying up on the subject as I could in the 7-10 days alloted for my decision. While I cannot verify much of the below as Absolute Truth, I can assure you it was collected with a lot more care and attention than most of the info posted on the net!!! I had no access to medical books, but I did check out 5-6 encyclopedias, all of which were published in the 1970s. In each of them the entry always began something like this, "Rabies is an invariably fatal disease..." The course of the disease is something like this: No verified symptoms for about 2 weeks, although some patients reported a slight tingling at the sight of the wound (upon reading this I immediately felt a tingle, which lasted until I made my decision). Symptoms usually appear two weeks after contact, but sometimes it is as long as 4. Then the patient goes into the "rabid state", which does not include foaming at the mouth, but sounds like you are dramatically overdosed on speed or something--the whole system is running on high--sounds very awful. This lasts 3-5 days, or until the patient dies, which is what usually happens (98%?). If, however, you gut it out through this delightful experience, you then lapse into a coma and die, period. An Aside: On the duration of the initial symptomless period, there is one report of a dog who died after a year in quarantine (in England, I think, which is an island with no rabies and therefore has very strict quarantine rules). However, since in every other recorded case, the symptoms have always shown in less than 6 weeks, it seems to me infinitely more likely that the quarantine was violated than that this demonstrates a potential one-year gestation. I talked to the local Health authorities, my vet and my doctor. My doctor seemed by far the most knowledgeable. (This probably being partially due to the fact that he practiced in a rabies-epidemic area.) He said, as did several of the encyclopedias, that, if you are bitten by an animal that actually HAS rabies, the chances that you will contract the disease are only about 1 in 10. I think this will come as surprise to most people. So rabies is really not wildly contagious--it only gets its rep from being so wildly fatal. Much of our discussion centered around the old versus wildly fatal. Much of our discussion centered around the old versus new shots, which were just becoming available at that time (Catch 22 for me was that the new shots weren't due in Arkansas for another week or two!) He said their was really little statistical evidence to show that the original shots were effective AT ALL. The serum was invented/discovered by Pavlov. He didn't know if it was worth sh*t, but the King's son got bitten by a supposedly rabid dog and the king said shoot up my kid or off with your head (my doctor may have colored this story for me a little), so Pavlov said what the heck. The kid didn't get rabies, so presto, we had a rabies vaccine. The problem is, since you only have a 1/10 chance of getting the disease even if the animal has rabies, and most of the shots in the civilized (and medically recorded world) are taken in cases where the animal escapes or is butchered by some idiot, so you usually don't know if the animal had rabies, and statistically it probably didn't anyway, the evidence just isn't there. Most people who take the shots simply wouldn't contract the disease anyway. He was much more optimistic about the new vaccine, since they had been able to verify the titers. (I don't know exactly what these are, but I also take allergy shots and titers are involved there, too. It seems the more titers you have, the more resistance.) However, he had just been recently involved in a case in Oklahoma where a guy had been bitten by an animal that was verified to have rabies. They followed all the rules--washed the wound immediately and gave him the new vaccine. The guy died 4 days into the rabid phase. I got from another source, which I have always known to be reliable, that the first recorded case of a rabies survivor was a 14-year-old boy in the USA. This was late 70s, so my encyclopedias wouldn't have known about it. I don't remember if my doctor confirmed this, but a virology student I talked to recently said that he thought he had also heard this. I asked him if perhaps the new vaccine had been made from this kid's blood, with all the titers he developed in licking the disease (I don't know much about this, but I know that you can make some kind of serum with the blood of the survivors of some kinds of diseases). He said no, but then I'm not sure what he did say. I think he said that the old serum was from a live virus and the new from a killed one, but I'm not sure why that would make it more effective (as measured by titers). Does anyone know the difference between the two vaccines? (I'm very interested in rabies now, when your life may depend on a subject, it does wonders for your attention span!) I did NOT take the shots, although I might have, had the new vaccine (which requires only 3-5 shots rather than 10-20 and is much less painful) been available in time. The tingling at the sight of the wound disappeared instantly upon making the decision. So what happened? I died, of course |-). IMPORTANT NOTES: If you are ever bitten by a suspected rabies carrier, do NOT kill the animal!!! Cage it. Yes, you CAN kill it and cut off its head and send it to the State Vet for tests, as many poor fools do. Then they find out that, if the test comes out positive, you know the animal has rabies. However, if the test comes out negative, you DON'T know that it doesn't. The only way to be SURE you haven't been bitten by a rabid animal is to keep it in quarantine for 2 weeks (actually, there are no guarantees, but, if it's still alive after 2 weeks, you are VERY unlikely to have been exposed to rabies. Also, if you are ever traveling in Arkansas, consider all strays as suspect: The state has a virtually continual rabies epidemic. Almost 95% of the cases are in skunks, and ANY skunk seen wandering around in the daylight sould be assumed to have rabies. (They are nocturnal.) In fact, any skunk wandering around in the daylight anywhere is potential death. I was bitten by a stray kitten. Cats are very poor carriers of rabies (although no one could tell me if that is due to their habits or their immune system, anyone know?), so you don't normally think rabies when bitten by a cat, unless you are in an epidemic area.
omo@mcnc.UUCP (Julie Omohundro) (08/15/85)
CORRECTION! Sorry, gang, I was just reading another newsgroup where Pavlov was being discussed and his name just wandered into my posting on rabies. Obviously, Pavlov is an unlikely candidate for having anything to do with rabies, unless that was the REAL reason his dog was salivating. (If you are into cognitive psychology, that is a very interesting confusion.)Does Pasteur sound more like it?
doon@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Harry W. Reed) (08/15/85)
In article <3444@utah-cs.UUCP> brownc@utah-cs.UUCP (Eric C. Brown) writes: >In article <140@drutx.UUCP> slb@drutx.UUCP (Sue Brezden) writes: >> Rabies is not curable. >> > >Sorry, Sue, rabies is curable; I recall reading a report that a person with >rabies had been cured about 5 years ago. As I recall, it requires VERY >aggressive treatment, and the patient nearly died, but the patient eventually >recovered. > >Unfortunately, I don't recall any details about the treatment. > >Eric C. Brown >brownc@utah-cs I call this LUCKY not cured. As I recall Rabies has a 80-90% mortality rate. Not very good but not always fatal. With an 80-90% mortality rate I think we might consider Rabies uncurable. Harry Reed
sdyer@bbncc5.UUCP (Steve Dyer) (08/15/85)
> I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong, but I think that it isn't > rabies that kills, it is the symptoms. If an individual with rabies > can be treated for the symptoms the disease itself will run its > course. I seem to remember that this has been done in at least one > case with no long-term harm to the victim. I'd appreciate a followup > if I'm remembering incorrectly. Tetanus kills with its symptoms--if agressive enough treatment is instituted, the person can weather the effects of the toxin. Rabies is another matter. Treating the symptoms can often suppress them, but the patient almost never recovers. Apparently, the damage to the CNS is too great. -- /Steve Dyer {decvax,linus,ima,ihnp4}!bbncca!sdyer sdyer@bbnccv.ARPA
ron@brl-tgr.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>) (08/16/85)
> were effective AT ALL. The serum was invented/discovered by Pavlov.
Freudian slip? I think you mean Pasteur. Something to do with finding
the vacine in rancid butter. Pavlov is noted for his work with dogs,
but I don't think any of them were rabid.sean@cadre.ARPA (Sean McLinden) (08/17/85)
In article <3444@utah-cs.UUCP> brownc@utah-cs.UUCP (Eric C. Brown) writes: > >In article <140@drutx.UUCP> slb@drutx.UUCP (Sue Brezden) writes: >> Rabies is not curable. >> > >Sorry, Sue, rabies is curable; I recall reading a report that a person with >rabies had been cured about 5 years ago. As I recall, it requires VERY >aggressive treatment, and the patient nearly died, but the patient eventually >recovered. > >Unfortunately, I don't recall any details about the treatment. > Sorry Eric, but Sue was (for all intents and purposes), correct. There is at least one case of a boy who survived rabies infection. As I have the case description in my hand I might mention two things: 1) The treatment was palliative, NOT curative, i.e., the symptoms were treated but no effective anti-rabies virus medicines were used. 2) The clinical presentation, while dramatic, was not the most severe ever noted. It is probable that a number of factors including the plasticity of the immature central newvous system and the subacute presentation of the illness combined to allow survival in this case. In many other series (totally nearly 900 cases of recognized rabies), no amount of palliative care had any effect on the outcome of the disease.
bch@mcnc.UUCP (Byron Howes) (08/18/85)
In article <388@bbncc5.UUCP> sdyer@bbncc5.UUCP (Steve Dyer) writes: > >Tetanus kills with its symptoms--if agressive enough treatment is >instituted, the person can weather the effects of the toxin. >Rabies is another matter. Treating the symptoms can often suppress >them, but the patient almost never recovers. Apparently, the damage >to the CNS is too great. Thanks for jogging my memory. You are correct, it was tetanus I was thinking of, not rabies. I will now go and put all of my old Science Newses into chronological order as penance. (I only post this message as I think there are too few people who admit they are wrong in this groupt and in netnews in general.) -- Byron C. Howes ...!{decvax,akgua}!mcnc!ecsvax!bch
peter@baylor.UUCP (Peter da Silva) (08/18/85)
> An Aside: On the duration of the initial symptomless period, there is one > report of a dog who died after a year in quarantine (in England, I think, > which is an island with no rabies and therefore has very strict quarantine > rules). However, since in every other recorded case, the symptoms have > always shown in less than 6 weeks, it seems to me infinitely more likely > that the quarantine was violated than that this demonstrates a potential > one-year gestation. Try Australia. I can't see how England, as close as it is to the mainland, coulde be rabies free... Australia is because for a long time it took so long to get there that the trip served as a quarantine. -- Peter da Silva (the mad Australian werewolf) UUCP: ...!shell!neuro1!{hyd-ptd,baylor,datafac}!peter MCI: PDASILVA; CIS: 70216,1076
andrew@orca.UUCP (Andrew Klossner) (08/21/85)
[]
"Try Australia. I can't see how England, as close as it is to
the mainland, coulde be rabies free... Australia is because for
a long time it took so long to get there that the trip served
as a quarantine."
Whoops, another bald-faced claim about how things "must be" without
regard for the facts. But what can you expect from a mad Australian
werewolf? :-)
The main island in the United Kingdom is in fact rabies-free. (I have
no data on the other big island, the one with Ireland.) There is a
six-month quarantine on incoming cats and dogs to help maintain this
condition.
-=- Andrew Klossner (decvax!tektronix!orca!andrew) [UUCP]
(orca!andrew.tektronix@csnet-relay) [ARPA]abc@brl-sem.ARPA (Brint Cooper ) (08/22/85)
In article <455@baylor.UUCP> peter@baylor.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes: >Try Australia. I can't see how England, as close as it is to the mainland, >coulde be rabies free... Australia is because for a long time it took so long >to get there that the trip served as a quarantine. >-- > Peter da Silva (the mad Australian werewolf) > UUCP: ...!shell!neuro1!{hyd-ptd,baylor,datafac}!peter > MCI: PDASILVA; CIS: 70216,1076 I was in England about a month and a half ago. While they are quite concerned about the rabies epidemic then sweeping through Paris, there was still no evidence of the disease in England itself. Brint