Free Republic

He received his inoculation directly from Louis Pasteur, on July 6, 1885 Handout picture of a two-month-old bear cub named Boo Boo held by a student at Washington University in St. Louis MORE Bear Cub Meant to Relax Students Before Finals Ends Up Biting Them and Sparking a Rabies Scare Rabies is among the most terrifying viruses to get. According to the Centers for Disease Control, “once clinical signs of rabies appear, the disease is nearly always fatal.” (Really: there have been fewer than 10 documented cases of survival once symptoms appear.) Luckily for us—and our pets—Louis Pasteur developed a...

Lake Wales, FL (AHN) - A Florida boy was bitten on the finger by a rabid bat while trying to get his dog away from the animal. The 12-year-old Lake Wales boy is receiving a series of shots to protect him from developing the fatal disease after the bat tested positive for rabies. Although human deaths from rabies are rare in the United States, many wild animals carry the disease, which can be transmitted to family pets and then to their human owners.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Rabies cases leapt nearly 63 percent in China in the first nine months of the year as the people's mad affair with pet dogs deepened, the China Daily reported on Tuesday. Rabies, "mad dog disease" in Chinese, killed 1,297 people up to the end of September, far exceeding the 1,003 deaths the Health Ministry reported for all of 2002, the newspaper said. This is the fifth straight year that China has seen a big jump in rabies infections. "Experts from the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention are blaming the trend in pet ownership, the shaky...