I heart EED (mostly)

This week's rotation is EED: Exotic and Emerging Diseases. Also known as "foreign animal diseases" (FADs) or "transboundary diseases."

I like this rotation for a few reasons:

1. It is low-stress. Other than some online, open-book, take-as-many-times-as-you-want quizzes, all we have to do is show up and listen. After last week's multiple exams, and 2-3 exams for each of the next 2 weeks, I can use a rotation that doesn't add anything else to that.

2. We get to start late sometimes. Class started at 8 am on Monday and Friday, 8:30 am on Tuesday/Thursday, and 9:30 yesterday (which was totally awesome).

3. A lot of it is self-guided, self-paced learning. We have 1.5-2.5 hours of lecture every morning, in which we cover a different type of FADs each day, and then the rest of the time is for us to go online and complete a series of modules and associated exams that is part of initial accreditation training for us to become certified after graduation in issuing health certificates and certificates of veterinary inspection for animals traveling across state lines.

We are learning about some cool, and really scary, diseases -- most of which are not currently present in the U.S. but have been eradicated in the last 50 years or so and/or are rampant in other parts of the world and could easily get into the U.S. and wreak havoc on our food animal and equine populations. Those would be diseases like:

* Highly pathogenic avian influenza
* Exotic Newcastle disease
* Contagious equine metritis
* Foot and mouth disease
* Vesicular stomatitis
* Swine vesicular disease
* Vesicular exanthema
* Dourine
* Surra
* Nipah virus
* African horse sickness
* Glanders
* Venezualan equine encephalitis
* Equine piroplasmosis
* African and classical swine fever

Pretty exciting stuff, no? Actually, it's quite interesting. And it's really alarming to realize how easily a terrorist (or just someone stupid) could visit a foreign country, be on a farm or ranch or livestock sale, pick up something highly contagious, and 24 hours later be back in the U.S. on one of our farms or ranches or livestock sales. It's actually surprising that it hasn't happened a lot more often. Our instructor pointed out that a lot of terrorists are interested in actions that will make a big splash and get lots of media attention (e.g. bombings, anthrax), whereas the spread of a foreign animal disease to the U.S. national herd could be hugely devastating both economically and with loss of food and animal life -- but fortunately(?) it's a little more insidious and not as splashy as blowing up a building.

The only thing I really haven't liked this week was watching a video yesterday of animals infected with foot and mouth disease (FMD).

There are a couple locations in the U.S. where these big scary diseases are researched and tested for -- the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, IA, and the NVSL on Plum Island, which is near New York.

The folks on Plum Island are always having U.S. vets and FAD researchers come out to spend time on the island and see what these FADs look like in a real live animal -- fortunately most of the FADs are still actually foreign, so U.S. vets don't have the opportunity to see outbreaks in the country very often. So they go to Plum Island and watch cows, pigs, etc. being infected with these various diseases in a lab setting.

FMD is not a disease that in and of itself is very fatal to infected animals. It basically causes horrible blistering in and around the mouth, on the tongue, and in between the "toes" of cloven-hooved animals. That means it really hurts for the animals to walk, and they aren't super-excited about eating, either, since they have blisters all over their tongues. The disease itself actually runs its course in a few days, and the blisters start to heal, and the animal then has some degree of immunity from future infection. But until then, the animal might be so lame that it can't or won't walk over to a feed trough or water tank, so can have complications from anorexia and dehydration. They can also get teat lesions which can develop into mastitis, which might either make the cow really sick, or result in her being culled due to decreased production from her infected/scarred mammary gland.

Anyway, the video we saw was a recording of the progression of disease in cows and pigs over about a 10-day period. It was so sad! In a realistic outbreak with actual disease in an animal population, of course you'd be treating the animals with supportive care -- pain relievers, helping them get to food and water, etc. But I guess to make it the best teaching demonstration of what FMD can actually do to these animals, the infected cows and pigs don't really get that stuff.

I know that there are reasons to purposely infect animals with horrible diseases (i.e. so we can see what happens and be prepared to treat or control such diseases in a real-life outbreak; so we can research different means of diagnosis and treatment; etc.). But it's tough to watch a video of these guys suffering when we're all in vet school because we want to help animals and relieve their pain.

But other than that, good rotation!