Ebola patient's dog euthanized

Veterinary Science Graduate Certificate from UofI
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MooVet said:
And what happens when you don't take drastic action, you're wrong, and a dozen more human cases pop up because of your mistake? Do you really think that instills trust in people? This reasoning is just plain stupid.

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Btw, that is called evidence. When you have evidence, you act and people see that. That instills confidence.
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Sorry, edited while people were posting. woops.
 
btw, good article in the Economist criticizing politicians in the US calling on a ban on flights from "afflicted" areas.

When you ban those flights to the U.S. then they just fly to Europe. And when those flights are banned, they get jammed on buses in close proximity, and find other ways to travel. increasing the chance of spreading the disease. And when no flights can get in, there is less medical attention and the disease spreads faster, and is more likely to spread farther.

By keeping the flights, you at least have the best chance of monitoring the people.

This is why panicky responses by government are never good responses.
We can't respond our of fear, but out of thought and evidence. Because as DVMD said, unanticipated consequences happen all the time, and you can't minimize them when they aren't even being thought about because we can't take ANY chances.
 
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As an aside, just from an academic standpoint, am I the only one here who is rather surprised people, even those who wrote the paper, are equating positive antibody titers with infection/carrier status. Antibodies indicate previous exposure, not necessarily active infection, asymptomatic infection, or shedding capability by any means. Antibody does not equal antigen, as Dpmd alluded to. A single positive titer does not mean you are a carrier of a transmittable disease in all cases (or even in the majority of cases). All a single titer can definitively say is that was prior exposure, the rest is conjecture without other tests. Are there other papers demonstrating significant rises in ab titers in dogs, or antigen tests, etc?
 
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Ha ha..

Anecdotal evidence of the future...

I just told MrsSOV this story and she said she wants an RPG (rocked propelled grenade launcher) to stop any government from killing her pets without evidence they are harmful. Not sure she is kidding or not. Just imagine that times 10x or 100x or 1000x or 1000000x.

A lot more people could probably die from bad decisions causing panic than from any infectious disease.

(ps I think I have to cut MrsSOV off from watching anymore Arrow episodes - that's where she learned what an RPG is).

(pps- if i start getting NRA literature I am gonna get worried).
 
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WhtsThFrequency said:
As an aside, just from an academic standpoint, am I the only one here who is rather surprised people, even those who wrote the paper, are equating positive antibody titers with infection/carrier status. Antibodies indicate previous exposure, not necessarily active infection, asymptomatic infection, or shedding capability by any means. Antibody does not equal antigen, as Dpmd alluded to. A single positive titer does not mean you are a carrier of a transmittable disease in all cases (or even in the majority of cases). All a single titer can definitively say is that was prior exposure, the rest is conjecture without other tests. Are there other papers demonstrating significant rises in ab titers in dogs, or antigen tests, etc?
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yes. I too am surprised. And I thought they were pretty quick to try to draw inferences from that in the paper.
 
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StartingoverVet said:
and your saying you have a suspected case is worthless. It is based on no science. No knowledge of likely of having been infected. No knowledge the dogs can ever develop a disease. no knowledge of their being able to shed virus. No indication a dog can even get the same form of the disease as humans. NOTHING but your freaking being scared. So who is worthless. Geez. Get over yourself.

I said we can agree to disagree and you say my thinking is worthless. Can't let that one go.

You are not acting like a scientist. You are speculating like a scared little girl afraid mommy is going away.

Stick to the facts.... you wanna be scared, be a politician or a news reporter.

Scientists don't jump to conclusions.
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Seriously? Grow up.

I'm not scared and I'm not some idiot who thinks ebola is in their backyard. Though it's nice to know that when you run out of logic you resort to personal attacks. Great character you've got there.

What I am is someone who is considering this from the position of the officials who made the decision, which is really the only viewpoint that made any difference in this case. The fact that you can't stretch your mind far enough to appreciate the situation these people were put in is not my problem.

In regards to DVMD's comment about testing, I agree that the dog should have been tested. However, as I said earlier in this thread, I understand why they chose not to do that. It would have taken several days to get the results and then we're back to the same logistical issues that I already brought up several times in this thread: what do you do with the dog in the meantime, how do you determine what the "necessary precautions" may be, does the sample need to be tested in a BSL-4 lab or not, etc, etc. Scientifically, there were questions that needed to be answered. Logistically, there were a plethora of obstacles that would have taken too much time and too many resources for the sake of a single dog. Again, this is definitely not the way these domestic animal cases should be handled in the future, but like it or not there were lot of factors at play here and not a lot of time in which to gain more knowledge before making a decision.

StartingoverVet said:
Btw, that is called evidence. When you have evidence, you act and people see that. That instills confidence.
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So how many infections and/or deaths do you think constitutes evidence? And which people are you willing to sacrifice for that information?

StartingoverVet said:
btw, good article in the Economist criticizing politicians in the US calling on a ban on flights from "afflicted" areas.

When you ban those flights to the U.S. then they just fly to Europe. And when those flights are banned, they get jammed on buses in close proximity, and find other ways to travel. increasing the chance of spreading the disease. And when no flights can get in, there is less medical attention and the disease spreads faster, and is more likely to spread farther.

By keeping the flights, you at least have the best chance of monitoring the people.
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I definitely agree with you here. Do you have a link to the article? Last I heard they were beginning screening measures at US airports, not banning flights.
 
MooVet said:
In regards to DVMD's comment about testing, I agree that the dog should have been tested. However, as I said earlier in this thread, I understand why they chose not to do that. It would have taken several days to get the results and then we're back to the same logistical issues that I already brought up several times in this thread: what do you do with the dog in the meantime, how do you determine what the "necessary precautions" may be, does the sample need to be tested in a BSL-4 lab or not, etc, etc. Scientifically, there were questions that needed to be answered. Logistically, there were a plethora of obstacles that would have taken too much time and too many resources for the sake of a single dog. Again, this is definitely not the way these domestic animal cases should be handled in the future, but like it or not there were lot of factors at play here and not a lot of time in which to gain more knowledge before making a decision.
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I think you missed my point. The dog should have been tested no matter what option was chosen, including the euthanasia choice they picked. There is no dog to care for or logistical issues, the dog is dead. Get your samples and still run tests on those (yes you might need a special lab but it is worth it)... that SHOULD have been done. And it was not.

The government panicked. There were many things they could have done differently and they failed. I get there were a **** ton of factors involved, blah blah blah, but they really failed here on this case.
 
DVMDream said:
I think you missed my point. The dog should have been tested no matter what option was chosen, including the euthanasia choice they picked. There is no dog to care for or logistical issues, the dog is dead. Get your samples and still run tests on those (yes you might need a special lab but it is worth it)... that SHOULD have been done. And it was not.
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Thanks for the clarification, I thought you meant testing to determine whether the dog should be euthanized. My bad.

I agree with you here. That would have at least provided some more information, even though I'm not convinced it would necessarily be anything useful for future cases.

ETA: Actually, I wonder if there are any procedures in place that would have allowed them to necropsy the dog. There probably wasn't enough time for any significant pathology to develop, but it still would have been interesting to see the results.
 
MooVet said:
I agree with you there. That would have at least provided some more information, even though I'm not convinced it would necessarily be anything useful for future cases.
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No, may not be useful for anything in the future, but it is a starting point at least. It is an n=1. And should there be future cases, that n only increases.
 
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MooVet said:
ETA: Actually, I wonder if there are any procedures in place that would have allowed them to necropsy the dog. There probably wasn't enough time for any significant pathology to develop, but it still would have been interesting to see the results.
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Doubtful. A necropsy on a an animal potentially infected (even long shot like this one) with a pathogen like Ebola would require a BSL4 necropsy suite. Unsure if Spain has one. Even so, transport of the body would be an issue. Edit- based on a 2013 paper, Spain has no BSL4 facilities. The closest would be 1200km away in Lyon, France.

However, if the virus was indeed present it could easily be seen via immunohistochemistry after a few days (heck, you can see phagocytic cells containing virus as little as 2 days post infection using TEM in susceptible species), or you could go the fresh route and do PCR. Given the pathogenicity, IF the dog was infected, I bet money there would be microscopic endothelial damage even in the absence of clinical signs.
 
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DVMDream said:
...The dog should have been tested no matter what option was chosen, including the euthanasia choice they picked. There is no dog to care for or logistical issues, the dog is dead. Get your samples and still run tests on those (yes you might need a special lab but it is worth it)... that SHOULD have been done. And it was not.
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Are you certain no samples were taken, even after death? I haven't seen any quotes from actual officials in Spain confirming that.
 
bunnity said:
Will be interesting to see how it plays out in the US:
http://6abc.cm/1z14nyR
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Officials said they also received information that there may be a pet in the health care worker's apartment, and they have a plan in place to care for the animal. They do not believe the pet has signs of having contracted Ebola.
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I like the "have a plan in place" part.
 
On a more legal note of risk assessment during an epidemic, here's a link (http://www.promedmail.org/direct.php?id=2856328) to a ProMed post I received about the dog's euthanasia. In particular, the precautionary principle (summary at http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/consumers/consumer_safety/l32042_en.htm) seems to upset the normal process of risk management. Normally, actions are taken as a result of a proven risk. If you use the precautionary principle, then action is taken unless you can prove the absence of risk. Given that the precautionary principle is a part of EU law, maybe Spanish authorities thought they were legally required to euthanize the dog.
 
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Think the whole thing has a lot to do with the general panic surrounding the whole Ebola issue. My opinion is that after the ball appears to have been dropped in how the patients were handled in Spain nobody wants to be the one on the hot seat. Think they gave into panic and decided was easier to ignore the studies/research and just take the issue out of the media. They pretty much were in a lose lose situation, if the dog for some unseen or unknown reason tested positive for Ebola would be a huge uproar for keeping it alive. They put the dog down people are pissed because they ignored the research. As we used to say in the Army is thank god somebody else had to make the decision.
 
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MooVet said:
Update on the dog in Dallas. And it looks like DVMD was right that no samples were taken from the dog in Madrid.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/12/dallas-ebola-health-worker-dog/17159727/

But don't make the same mistake I did and read the comments . . . :smack:
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I'm glad the dog is being monitored this time. There is so much to learn from this unfortunate situation. On a side note, I think vet school interviews will be all over this topic this year, specifically how Spain handled the situation. As evidenced by everyone's responses, there is so much consider. Human/animal bond, inciting panic, instilling distrust in pet owners, potential transmittance of disease to humans, logistics of handling an infected dog, qualify of life of the animal, etc, etc. Personally, I think euthanizing the dog was a missed opportunity to learn more about the disease and I'm glad the US is handling it differently, both from a research perspective and from a recognition of the importance of our pets.
 
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Zensing said:
Hey, don't blame me. That wasn't my post.
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Sometimes SDN is screwy and puts the wrong person to the quote. It appears that is what happened here. SOV quoted MooVet, but for some reason SDN effed up and quoted you as saying it instead. I have no idea how it manages to do that, but SDN can be special like that sometimes..
 
DVMDream said:
Sometimes SDN is screwy and puts the wrong person to the quote. It appears that is what happened here. SOV quoted MooVet, but for some reason SDN effed up and quoted you as saying it instead. I have no idea how it manages to do that, but SDN can be special like that sometimes..
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you don't have to make excuses for SOV ;)
 
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This made me laugh and I figure it is appropriate to post here:

10696311_599653163472954_2115247284233121609_n.png
 
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DVMDream said:
Sometimes SDN is screwy and puts the wrong person to the quote. It appears that is what happened here. SOV quoted MooVet, but for some reason SDN effed up and quoted you as saying it instead. I have no idea how it manages to do that, but SDN can be special like that sometimes..
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Ah. I'll have to be careful of that. Sorry, SOV.
 
dpmd said:
Actually the fact that in the study the owners were questioned about their dogs behavior during the time after exposure and none of those owners contracted the disease (even those whose dogs were eating body fluid filled dead bodies so were pretty much as contaminated as you can get) is a pretty good sign that perhaps the positive antibodies in the dog are not as worrisome as people would think. None had antigen.
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Not really. The owners were just questioned about what exposure risk the dog had and the study looked at antibody and antigen prevalence in the general population of dogs. The study didn't in any way look at anything relating to what type of exposure risk they could provide to your owners. While these were "owned dogs" from this study, we are given no idea if they lived outside 100% of the time or if they were sleeping in bed with their owners and stealing food off their owner's plates. These are two completely different situations regarding the risk they present to their owners.

We need a BSL-4 lab to inoculate dogs and take serial samples of blood and pretty much every body fluid to prove that they don't have phase during which they could be an exposure risk to someone in contact with them. And if there is a viremic phase we need to know when it happens and how long it lasts before anyone could determine what would be an appropriate quarantine period. This is a disease that is currently killing more people than not that have become infected with it. These are the diseases that we cannot take risks with when there are so many unknowns.

Regarding rabies. We have established quarantine time frames because we know the time frames they are at risk for shedding and when we can safely say they are not. We know that if a dog is shedding rabies in its saliva it will show neurologic signs within 10 days.
 
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