I am thinking about the two grizzly bears at our local zoo that had to be killed in the 90’s because one of them scratched a child who jumped into their caged area. They could then confirm that neither animal had rabies.
Why is there not a more novel way to test for rabies? And why can’t the human be tested for it?
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Because rabies principally infects the central nervous system, which means you need a portion of the central nervous system (i.e., brain tissue) to test. The standard is to sample from 2 different parts of the brain. It’s just not possible to do this and keep the animal alive.
Nowadays it’s become possible to test for rabies without killing the animal, but they haven’t been conclusively proven to be as reliable as directly testing brain tissue, and because rabies is essentially 100% fatal, the risk is too high to justify using a testing method that might not be certain.
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