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The monkeypox outbreak illustrates a growing problem: Exotic animals give exotic diseases to people who get too close, a trend some medical specialists call a serious public health threat.

Such diseases can become a threat not just to the people who buy and sell exotic pets, but to the general public if they spread to native animals.

"This is a harbinger of things to come," warns Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota, who advises the government on infectious disease.

"There are some of us who feel like lone voices in the night" in calling for better scrutiny, says Peter Jahrling, a scientist at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute.

Monkeypox, a relative of smallpox usually found in tropical African forests, apparently jumped from an imported Gambian giant rat into prairie dogs when both species were being housed together by an exotic pet distributor in Villa Park. The outbreak marks the first time monkeypox has been detected in the Western hemisphere.

SARS, the respiratory epidemic, is similarly thought to have come from civet cats bred as an exotic meat in Chinese markets where bats, snakes, badgers and other animals live in side-by-side cages until they become someone's dinner.

Then, there's salmonella, which iguanas and other reptiles, as well as birds, routinely shed in their feces. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counts a stunning 90,000 people a year believed to have caught salmonella from some form of contact with a reptile, either touching it or touching a surface where the reptile had tracked the bacteria.

A common scenario, Osterholm says: Parents wash the reptile cage in a bathtub or sink their child uses, and the child gets sick. Salmonella can be life-threatening in children.

There are no good counts of how many exotic animals are sold, but they're immensely popular, says Richard Farinato, director of the Humane Society of America's captive wildlife program. About 800,000 iguanas alone are imported for the pet trade.

There is little federal scrutiny of most imported animals for potential human health risk, and rules on owning and selling exotic animals vary by state and city.

"We have a policy that says don't buy these kinds of animals as pets," Farinato says. The monkeypox outbreak "is one example of why."

# posted by Medical Information : 3:02 AM