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To: 9YearLurker
How many people in the US die from drinking the milk of rabid cows in a decade?

Only a couple of people die per year of rabies in the US. For all I know, the handful whose exposure to rabies was not traced back to an animal bite got it from drinking raw milk of a rabid cow. It is SOP to track down people who are known to have consumed raw milk from rabid cows and administer the prophylaxis. This happens every few years.

There is little scientific literature on whether rabies virus has been definitively identified in rabid cow's milk. However, that means little: the most recent human survivor of rabies never did have a lab test that definitively demonstrated rabies; the lab tests were all inconclusive. She was diagnosed based on symptoms. The only way to be sure of finding rabies virus is by the same method that has been used for decades: examination of brain tissue collected post-mortem.

According to this article, in countries where there are far more rabies cases than in the US, transmission of rabies from mother to infant through breast milk has been documented. There is, therefore, no reason to think rabies couldn't be transmitted through raw cow milk. Pasteurization kills the rabies virus; in the countries where rabies runs rampant, milk is typically boiled before use, so rabies transmission through the consumption of raw milk has not been observed.

50 posted on 05/23/2012 4:54:37 PM PDT by exDemMom (Now that I've finally accepted that I'm living a bad hair life, I'm more at peace with the world.)
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To: exDemMom
Only a couple of people die per year of rabies in the US.

More people die from falling trees. Maybe we should ban those.

53 posted on 05/24/2012 7:54:20 AM PDT by Sirius Lee (When we cease to be good we'll cease to be great. Be for Goode.)
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