School's pet bat tests positive for rabies

Catching a bat in a school basement and keeping it as a classroom pet is a great way to learn — about rabies.

Two staff members at Trinity Lutheran School are getting a weekslong series of rabies shots after a bat kept in a locked terrarium tested positive for the disease.

On May 9, seventh- and eighth-grade teacher Steve Coniglio used a stick and a bucket to capture the bat, which died two days later.

The bat had been displayed in classrooms and students gave it crickets, but Susan Tucker, head teacher at the central Wyoming school, said Coniglio made sure students did not handle the animal.

State and county health officials on Tuesday interviewed all 95 staff members and students at the school and decided that Coniglio and a teaching assistant who cleaned the cage after the bat died needed to be treated as a precaution, said Marty Stensaas, manager for Fremont County Public Health Nursing...

--USA Today

Woman gets smallpox-vaccine virus via sex

Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describe the case of a woman who developed a genital infection after having sexual contact with a military serviceman who had been recently vaccinated against smallpox.

The infection was from the vaccinia virus, the type of virus contained in the smallpox vaccine. Vaccinia is closely related but less virulent than the smallpox virus, variola, and usually results in just a localized infection.

The case, described in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, involved an otherwise healthy woman who was seen at a public health clinic in Alaska last year for painful vaginal tears that were not the result of violence or abuse. The woman reported having a new sexual partner in the days preceding the clinic visit...

--MSNBC

Genetic Discrimination Ban Clears House; Senate OK Expected

If legislation passed Wednesday by the House of Representatives becomes law, it will be illegal to deny a job or health insurance on the basis of a person's genetic makeup.

With more links drawn between genetic profiles and disease predispositions every day, supporters of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act say the bill will ease patients' worries of being singled out for faulty genes.

“GINA will do more than stamp out a new form of discrimination,” said Louise Slaughter (D-New York) who introduced the bill. “It will allow us to realize the tremendous potential of genetic research without jeopardizing one of the most fundamental privacies that can be imagined.”

Such discrimination is rare, but supporters of the bill worry that as genetic testing becomes common and scientists chart the complex links between genes and health, profiling might also increase...

Wired

Flagellation ritual exposes Filipinos to rabies

More than a hundred men in the Philippines may have contracted rabies after taking part in a self-flagellation ritual to mark Good Friday, doctors and local authorities said on Thursday.

A health alert was issued after a man who took part in the traditional ceremony – where participants slash their backs with knifes before flaying themselves with bamboo whips – died from the virus on 11 April.

Mario Morales, the mayor of Mabalacat in Pampanga province north of Manila, told local media that Eduardo Sese may have contaminated up to 100 people who shared knives to cut themselves. He was bitten by an infected dog in February 2007.

The government doctor in Pampanga, Maria Clara Aquino, said vaccines had been given to 103 people who could have been exposed...

--New Scientist