Petsmart sued over infected hamster cause of 3 deaths

[rabbitsncavyluv]

PetSmart sued over infected hamster blamed in 3 deaths - Yahoo! News

[CF#5]

Not sure what to make of this... I like that petstupid is going to end up losing a ton of money over it, most likely in a settlement before it goes to trial. But I don't like hamsters and other small animals being labeled as disease carriers. Anyone who receives a transplant has to know there are risks involved. It's messing with nature in a way that was never intended by whoever designed the life (and death) forces of this planet. Things will inevitably get screwed up in some cases, and that's just a fact of modern western medicine. Ultimately, this will probably get settled for significantly less than whatever amount is being sought, because the plaintiff will have one hell of a hard time proving the hamster actually caused the disease. Another question is why petstupid is being sued, but the doctors and medical facility responsible for the transplant weren't mentioned as co-defendants. Seems to me this is a publicity stunt, and while I tend to think the plaintiff is simply a golddigger looking for as much press as possible, I can't say I know her exact intentions. Any bad press for petstupid and petco can't be too terrible.

[Jazz Mayhem]

Looks to me like the screening procedures of donors is a bit lax, seems like it's more the hospitals responsibity to know a bit more about the organs they're giving people.

[Biscuit]

UNOS, United Network of Organ Sharing, sets up the regulations on what tests are performed for a cadaveric transplant match.

http://www.unos.org/whatWeDo/organCenter.asp

When a problem occurs like this, they do investigate their policies. They keep stats on an enormous amount of things pre and post operatively, for the rest of a recipients life.

We have an entire transplant database set up with people who do nothing but input data that goes to UNOS. I doubt this incident has escaped them.

(Yeah yeah, I work in organ transplant)

[Susan9608]

Actually, the screening process donors go through is pretty thorough and impressive, and the process of selecting both the organs to transplant and the receipents to receive those organs is a very delicate and painstaking process that takes hours of research. Lymphocytic choriomeningitis is fairly obsecure, so it's not something that would be routinely screened for. Perhaps that will change now, but I can't see how you can fault the screening process for something like this.

[Jazz Mayhem]

Originally Posted by Susan9608

Actually, the screening process donors go through is pretty thorough and impressive, and the process of selecting both the organs to transplant and the receipents to receive those organs is a very delicate and painstaking process that takes hours of research. Lymphocytic choriomeningitis is fairly obsecure, so it's not something that would be routinely screened for. Perhaps that will change now, but I can't see how you can fault the screening process for something like this.

Petsmart should definitely be help responsible in some way but at the very least, the screening procedure needs to be re-examined. People have pets, pets can carry/spread all sorts of nasty things. For you people who know about this stuff, how difficult would it be to determine whether or not a donor is a pet owner?

[cavy phoenix]

I am never buying anything at petsmart again, it sickens me they run animal mills.

[Chin Lover]

That is soo weird, I've always thought that Petco had the worst animal care system... but all the articles I see here are all of Petsmart.