In the early days of the settlement of Australia, enterprising settlers unwisely introduced the European rabbits. This rabbit had no natural enemies in the Antipodes, so that it multlied with that promiscuous abandon characteristic of rabbits. It overan a whole continent. It caused devastation by burrowing and by devouring the herbage which might have maintained millions of sheep and cattle. Scientists discovered that this particular variety of rabbit ( and apparently no other animal) was susceptilbe to a fatal virus disease - myxomatosis. By infecting animals and letting them loose in the burrows, local epidemics of this disease could be created. Later it was found that there was a type of mosquito, whick acted as a carrier of this disease and passed it onto the rabbits. So while the rest of the world was trying to get rid of mosquitoes, Australia was encourging this one. It effectively spread the diseas all over the continent and drastically reduced the rabbit population. It later became apparently that rabbits were developing a degree of resistance to this disease so that the rabbit population was unlikely to be completely exterminated. There were hopes, however, the problem of the rabbit would become manageble.
Ironically, Europe, which had bequeathed the rabbit as a pest to Australia, acquired this man-made disease as a pestilence. A french physician decided to get rid of the wild rabbits on his own estate and introduced myxomatosis. It did not, however, ramain within his estate. It spread through france, where wild rabbits are not generally ragarded as a pest but as a sport and a useful food supply, and it spread to Braitain where wild rabbits are ragarded as a pest but where domesticated rabbits, equially susceptible to this disease, was the basis of a profitable fur industry. The question became one of whether man could control the disease he had invented.
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