A 13-year-old boy has undergone three surgeries after being attacked by a rabid beaver in Maryland. That is horrific. But the answer to a disease outbreak cannot be to treat killing animals as the default solution.
Dominick Cebula was swimming at Cunningham Falls State Park on 26 July when a beaver attacked his chest underwater. He managed to pull the animal away, but was bitten again on the hand before escaping. He was airlifted to hospital, underwent surgery for nerve damage and received rabies post-exposure treatment. The beaver was later caught, killed and confirmed to have rabies. Then came more attacks.
On the 5th of August, another rabid beaver reportedly attacked a 19-year-old fisher at the same park before being caught and killed. Days later, a 10-year-old girl was attacked while canoeing at Seneca Creek State Park.
Rabies is deadly. Once symptoms develop, the disease has a near 100% fatality rate, although prompt post-exposure treatment can prevent it.
So deal with rabies.
Do not declare open season on beavers.
Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources said it was investigating a possible outbreak at Cunningham Falls. Its response included dismantling a nearby beaver lodge, daily and night-time surveillance, and plans to “remove additional beavers” if others were found.
“Remove” is a convenient word when the animals being removed may lose their lives. The same authorities acknowledge that beavers are normally non-aggressive and generally avoid conflict with humans. These animals are not guilty by association. A beaver does not become disposable because another beaver contracted rabies. Animals are individuals, not interchangeable members of a category humans can kill whenever managing them becomes inconvenient. Living near an outbreak is not a crime. Being the same species as an infected animal is not justification for death. Protect humans. Close areas. Warn visitors. Monitor the outbreak. Treat anyone exposed. But killing healthy animals in anticipation of danger is not protection. It is the familiar assumption that when human interests and an animal’s life collide, the animal automatically loses.
That assumption is the problem.
Rabies is the danger.
Beavers are not.
The fact that for decades we’ve decided to fight rabies by not fighting rabies but instead declaring war on the “messengers” means we haven’t actually found a good solution to fight rabies. If we had focused on actually fighting rabies, possibly through vaccination, inoculation, quarantine, treatment, etc. there is a good chance it wouldn’t even be a concern right now.
We saw something similar with HIV. When it was first discovered, the initial response was attacking the people carrying HIV. Gay men. This unleashed terror on large numbers of humans without doing anything to suppress HIV.
When the obvious folly of this approach, which wasn’t driven by science or epidemiology but by homophobia, became obvious and we switched to fighting HIV instead, very soon solutions were developed so that what used to be a dreaded disease little more than a decade ago is barely an afterthought.