Too much to type so I am stealing comments from VIN - Feline Medicine board. This is regarding the FIV vaccine:
Start VIN dialog:
Q: Do you ever use the FIV vax?
A: No, never.
More blurbs:
Interference with testing... we will never know the true status of vaccinated cats. PCR is not sufficiently accurate and serologic tests will be falsely positive.
Lack of proven broad efficacy.
Potential for the induction of Vaccine-associated sarcomas with this adjuvanted product.
With all due respect, we are kidding ourselves if we think that providing lentivirus vaccine protection is as easy as killing a couple of viruses and putting them in a bottle with some adjuvant. If that were so, the 6 billion $$ that has been spent in the effort on the human side so far would not have been necessary, and we'd have had an efficacious HIV vaccine long before now. It's just not that simple.
It is an
adjuvanted product. All adjuvanted vaccines cause chronic injection site inflammation which is the underlying cause for vaccine-associated sarcomas. If it is not broadly efficacious (which I believe it is not) and therefore provides little protection, and it runs the risk of predisposing to sarcoma formation which is a fatal disease, then why use it?
End VIN info.
Please understand that I hate typing and I don't have a lot to time to post.... so my lack of warmth and fuzziness is just part of my...ahem....'charm'. I say it like it is with no intentions of hurting your feelings.
In the past, we also took this thought. As long as the FIV positive kitties (Tommy) was not a fighter, was altered, we let them co-live.
And this is still my *personal* philosophy.
But at the end, Tommy was drooling very heavily and his mouth was bleeding.
Even with the underdstanding that I was not there to walk in your shoes.......I will comment that I would have put him to sleep before this stage.
When I would try to clean him, the bleeding got worse. I put him in isolation -
IN GENERAL, I am quicker to consider quality of life than most people. I would have euthanized prior to this stage.
So that Franklin caught FIV in my house and did not have intercourse or fight frightens me and has shaken what I believe I knew about FIV.
Understood but I think that in hindsight you can see where the problem most likely was.
Would I let a terminally ill FIV + cat that was drooling and bleeding have access to other cats? No.....
Being blunt here.....what bothers me is that there were obvious mistakes made with F and T. Mistakes that you can learn from. So.....why punish Franklin because a mistake was made by allowing contact with a very sick animal that was draining bodily fluids? (Assuming that this is when/how F's infection came about.)
Franklin is a lover - hugging and grooming all the other cats in the house.
And I cannot say that this would not bother me because it would - slightly. But would I lock him in isolation? Me? No. But that does NOT mean that my answer is the 'right' one as there is no 'right' answer here.....because nobody can tell you with 100% certainty that FIV can't be transmitted via casual grooming.
BUT......Keep in mind that you are comparing apples and oranges here....in that F was infected by a cat that he should never been allowed contact with.....one that was actively bleeding.....and by one that I argue may very well have benefited from an earlier euthanasia.
That is why I am keeping him in isolation... Both so he doesn't catch something from the rescue cats coming in and going out through the house, but to protect them from his grooming them...
You never worried about casual grooming before so why now? And with regard to him "catching something
".....I do not agree with keeping him like a 'boy in a bubble' just to keep him from catching something. I firmly believe in quality of life.
I would really appreciate it from such a professional as yourself.
Keep in mind that my comments are coming from my heart and how I believe that cats should live. A pure scientist, on the other hand, would have every FIV cat locked away or - worse yet - euthanized.
Everyone is free to have philosophical differences. Some readers may be appalled at what may seem to be a cavallier approach to the health of the 'herd mates'. I do not take their health lightly but then neither do I take lightly the isolation of a living animal.
One also has to figure in just how small of a space 'isolation' is. If it is just one room in a house....I don't consider that to be much of a quality of life. I know that my cats would go stir-crazy locked between 4 walls....and I firmly believe that *some* cats that *appear* to tolerate this boring level of confinement have had their spirits broken.
Just my opinion.....because I am sure that my last statement is going to stir up a debate.
This question does not have an easy answer but consider that you have not worried about this issue in the past and..... consider that there were some mistakes made that I don't think that you will repeat.
Edited a gazzilion times to fix the quotes.
