Sneakers: The Amazing Felis Domesticus

Introduction

Keeping Your Body's Army Well Equipped and Well Prepared When scientists learned how the immune system works, they thought that some diseases could be prevented in people and animals if the body had the chance to become familiar with the disease molecules first so that they could make a few antibodies to them. That was how the idea for vaccines was developed. Scientists tested their idea by injecting weakened disease molecules into different animals, such as rabbits, horses and goats. While the disease molecules themselves weren't strong enough to cause the disease, they did manage to cause the animals bodies to make the right antibodies to fight the disease. That way, if the animals were ever infected with molecules that were strong enough to cause the disease, their bodies were prepared in advance to know how to create the right antibodies.

Rabies Rabies is a disease found in mammals throughout the world. It is caused by a virus, which is a tiny agent that gets into cells and disturbs their normal function. Rabies eventually causes death. Because the rabies virus can live in saliva, if an animal that has rabies bites another animal, the animal that is bitten can "catch" rabies. The virus moves through the blood system from the bite into the central nervous system, where it multiplies and kills brain cells. Rabies causes spasms in the throat, which makes it hard to swallow. That's why animals with rabies often loam at the mouth". The old term for rabies was "hydrophobia", which means fear of water".

Animals Helping Animals Louis Pasteur developed the first rabies vaccine on dogs in 1880 in France. Along with two other scientists, Pasteur took samples of infected dogs' saliva and injected them into dogs, guinea pigs and rabbits in order to try to find a cure for the disease. One of the dogs that had been injected with the virus became ill and then miraculously recovered. A few weeks later the same dog was injected again with the virus, but this time it did not get sick. It appeared to be immune to the rabies virus.' Every year animals receive millions of rabies vaccines that were developed using animals. Without these injections they would die if exposed to rabies. Indeed, every year 15,000 unvaccinated animals are infected with the virus and die in Canada.

Did You Know On Monday, May 6, 1895, a mother named Mrs. Meister came to Dr. Pasteur's laboratory with her nine-year-old son, Joseph, who had been bitten by a rabid dog two days earlier. She begged Dr. Pasteur to give her son the vaccine. Otherwise, he would almost certainly die of rabies. So Joseph Meister became the first human to receive the series of 14 injections of the rabies vaccine and he never showed any sign of the disease. After news of the success was made public, people came to France from around the world to be vaccinated.