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Spanish health authorities seem as if they have no heart. They want to euthanize Excalibur, a dog that could have caught Ebola from his owner, the Spanish nurse who was diagnosed with the virus this week.

But the question of Excalibur's fate is a lot more complicated than just ... Awww, how could they put down a cute dog?

For a better understanding, we turned to Dr. Amesh Adalja. A specialist in infectious diseases, he's a senior associate at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Center for Health Security, and he's having a very busy week, fielding interview requests to talk about Excalibur while attending the third annual IDWeek for infectious disease experts. Adalja told us what is already known about dogs and Ebola (very little, it turns out) and why we need to know a lot more.

So what do we know about dogs and Ebola?

We know about Ebola in humans. We know bats. We know antelopes. We know non-human primates. There's not a lot of work done with dogs.

Do you think a dog could transmit Ebola to a human?

We know Ebola is transmitted through blood and body fluids, and people with Ebola are only infectious when symptomatic. But that's based on human data. We don't really know what the role of dogs is in Ebola transmission. Yet dogs are mammalian species and we know viruses – and Ebola — can infect multiple mammalian species.

So it's reasonable that Spanish health authorities are worried that the dog may have been infected. I think [the authorities] are trying to be proactive and not open up a whole new realm of transmission, and that's why the suggestion is that they euthanize the dog.

Couldn't you just test the dog for Ebola?

We don't have diagnostic tests for dogs. We don't know what symptoms dogs might have. What if dogs don't experience symptoms?

And the dog can't tell you, 'I've got a fever' or 'I have muscle aches and pains.' So you have to be measuring temperatures — that is, if dogs even have same fever response as humans. It's very hard to translate what we do for [evaluating] humans to dogs.

Yet we humans love our dogs, which makes us want to keep Excalibur alive.

People are very attached to animals. It's hard for them to think about this [proposed euthanization].

Couldn't you keep the dog in quarantine?

That's very hard to do. Is the incubation period the same in a dog as a human? Does the virus follow the same type of spread inside [a dog's] body? The way we test for virus in the blood – is it the same for dogs as for humans?

All our protocols and algorithms work on primates. It's unclear to me how to translate that to canines and do it with certainty that would ensure the dog wasn't infected or poses no risk.

We know, for example, that in humans, Ebola remains in the semen for three months. What if [the virus] remains in the dog's semen for three months? We can tell a human to refrain from sex or practice safe sex but how do you that in a dog? Even if a dog doesn't have symptoms, it may have a mild case of Ebola that can transmit to other dogs if it has sex with other dogs.

What about the fact that saliva is a body fluid [that can transmit Ebola]? Dogs do a lot of licking, they lick people's wounds.

And that's never a good idea?

There's a risk of infection in general.

Your view of the Spanish decision to euthanize?

I understand a whole bunch of considerations are in play. We're really in uncharted water.

Definitely there is enough unknown that Spanish public health authorities are justified in their concern.

And it sounds as if there's no place for this dog to go.

I don't know what life that dog could have – perhaps as an experimental animal to understand what the disease does. I do hope we learn from this experience irrespective of the outcome about what Ebola does in dogs.

Why is that important?

We heard that during the quarantine in West Point [Liberia], dogs were eating the bodies of the deceased. If we have these situations where bodies are lying in the streets of Africa, it's important to know the virus's role in different animal species help design control strategies and understand the real scope of the disease.

Excalibur

ebola

dogs

Spain

Spanish health authorities seem as if they have no heart. They want to euthanize Excalibur, a dog that could have caught Ebola from his owner, the Spanish nurse who was diagnosed with the virus this week.

But the question of Excalibur's fate is a lot more complicated than just ... Awww, how could they put down a cute dog?

For a better understanding, we turned to Dr. Amesh Adalja. A specialist in infectious diseases, he's a senior associate at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Center for Health Security, and he's having a very busy week, fielding interview requests to talk about Excalibur while attending the third annual IDWeek for infectious disease experts. Adalja told us what is already known about dogs and Ebola (very little, it turns out) and why we need to know a lot more.

So what do we know about dogs and Ebola?

We know about Ebola in humans. We know bats. We know antelopes. We know non-human primates. There's not a lot of work done with dogs.

Do you think a dog could transmit Ebola to a human?

We know Ebola is transmitted through blood and body fluids, and people with Ebola are only infectious when symptomatic. But that's based on human data. We don't really know what the role of dogs is in Ebola transmission. Yet dogs are mammalian species and we know viruses – and Ebola — can infect multiple mammalian species.

So it's reasonable that Spanish health authorities are worried that the dog may have been infected. I think [the authorities] are trying to be proactive and not open up a whole new realm of transmission, and that's why the suggestion is that they euthanize the dog.

Couldn't you just test the dog for Ebola?

We don't have diagnostic tests for dogs. We don't know what symptoms dogs might have. What if dogs don't experience symptoms?

And the dog can't tell you, 'I've got a fever' or 'I have muscle aches and pains.' So you have to be measuring temperatures — that is, if dogs even have same fever response as humans. It's very hard to translate what we do for [evaluating] humans to dogs.

Yet we humans love our dogs, which makes us want to keep Excalibur alive.

People are very attached to animals. It's hard for them to think about this [proposed euthanization].

Couldn't you keep the dog in quarantine?

That's very hard to do. Is the incubation period the same in a dog as a human? Does the virus follow the same type of spread inside [a dog's] body? The way we test for virus in the blood – is it the same for dogs as for humans?

All our protocols and algorithms work on primates. It's unclear to me how to translate that to canines and do it with certainty that would ensure the dog wasn't infected or poses no risk.

We know, for example, that in humans, Ebola remains in the semen for three months. What if [the virus] remains in the dog's semen for three months? We can tell a human to refrain from sex or practice safe sex but how do you that in a dog? Even if a dog doesn't have symptoms, it may have a mild case of Ebola that can transmit to other dogs if it has sex with other dogs.

What about the fact that saliva is a body fluid [that can transmit Ebola]? Dogs do a lot of licking, they lick people's wounds.

And that's never a good idea?

There's a risk of infection in general.

Your view of the Spanish decision to euthanize?

I understand a whole bunch of considerations are in play. We're really in uncharted water.

Definitely there is enough unknown that Spanish public health authorities are justified in their concern.

And it sounds as if there's no place for this dog to go.

I don't know what life that dog could have – perhaps as an experimental animal to understand what the disease does. I do hope we learn from this experience irrespective of the outcome about what Ebola does in dogs.

Why is that important?

We heard that during the quarantine in West Point [Liberia], dogs were eating the bodies of the deceased. If we have these situations where bodies are lying in the streets of Africa, it's important to know the virus's role in different animal species help design control strategies and understand the real scope of the disease.

Excalibur

ebola

dogs

Spain

The Syrian smuggler agrees to meet at an outdoor cafe in Kilis, a town on the edge of Syria-Turkey frontier. As waiters deliver glasses of hot, sweet tea and Turks play dominoes at nearby tables, he talks about his role in the "Jihadi Highway" and why he finally decided to quit.

The smuggler, in his mid-20s, is open about every aspect of the lucrative enterprise, except for revealing his name. He is well known to the militants of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, who paid him well for his skills, and who certainly would kill him for speaking to a journalist.

For the past two years, he says, he helped hundreds of bearded young men — and in recent months, four young women — cross the Turkish border into Syria to join ISIS.

He says he is not a religious radical, just someone who needed to support his family as the Syrian civil war dragged on. He decided to quit when more moderate rebels, who now control Syrian territory across the border from Kilis, threatened him. The moderate rebels wanted the smuggling routes closed to stop more fighters from joining the ranks of ISIS.

i i

Smoke rises from buildings in Syria's Kobani city on the Turkish-Syrian border, near Sanliurfa, on Monday. Sedat Suna/EPA/Landov hide caption

itoggle caption Sedat Suna/EPA/Landov

Smoke rises from buildings in Syria's Kobani city on the Turkish-Syrian border, near Sanliurfa, on Monday.

Sedat Suna/EPA/Landov

Smuggling is a good business, he says with a shrug: "The money is very good, but you feel you are bad."

But that's not how he felt in 2012, when he began his work. At that point he believed he was helping the Syrian revolution that began as peaceful protests against an oppressive regime.

As the Syrian regime stepped up the violence and it became clear there was no prospect for international support, local rebels welcomed international recruits willing to fight and die in Syria. They said they came for jihad.

"They are excited people and don't think about the risks," he says.

It was easy work at first, says the smuggler.

"The Turkish people, in the beginning, they just closed their eyes," he explains.

At Turkish airports near the border, he would greet bearded men who had all kinds of foreign accents, and who came without luggage.

At the airport, he says, some Turks voiced their support. "Good luck in jihad in Syria," they would say, and the smuggler believed he had Turkey's tacit support.

Even when his clients were young women — between 17 and 20, from Tunisia, Morocco, one from Britain — no one stopped him. The four had met militant fighters online and came for marriage and jihad.

The Jihadi Highway from Turkey to Syria long has been an open secret, well documented by the international media, Syrian activists and the Turkish press. The militants often were spotted in border towns buying supplies before crossing into Syria to join ISIS.

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Vice President Joe Biden said in a speech at Harvard University's Kennedy School last week that "our allies in the region were our largest problem" in promoting the growth of radical groups.

Biden said that U.S. allies, including Turkey, were so determined to unseat Syrian President Bashar Assad that they channeled money and guns to anyone willing to fight.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was incensed, and Biden has apologized. The diplomatic spat comes at a sensitive time, as the U.S. wants Turkey to join the anti-ISIS coalition.

"The Turkish government steadfastly denies that it has ever, ever helped (ISIS)," says Soli Ozel, a specialist in international relations at Istanbul's Kadir Has University.

But the Turkish media has documented tacit backing, says Ozel, including "turning a blind eye, allowing them to come and be treated in Turkish hospitals when they are wounded."

Turkish analysts say the indirect support was based on Turkey's gamble as the Syrian revolt raged on that the militants would boost the rebel cause in the absence of Western support.

Turkey was slow to see the danger, even as Washington began to raise the alarm. In recent weeks, Turkey has stepped up border patrols and arrested suspected militants.

The Syrian smuggler chain smokes as he explains that the Turks finally are shutting down the pipeline used by him and others like him.

"All of them, they got warning" from the Turkish border police, he says. "So, it's not easy to go to ISIS from the border."

But it's also not impossible, he says with a grin and glint of professional pride.

But those moves may have come too late for Turkey, where the spread of radical Islam now makes the ISIS threat a direct domestic danger, says Ozel. There are reports that more than a thousand Turks have already joined the militants with support cells inside the country.

"We know that, for instance, these guys had recruitment offices in different parts of the country," says Ozel, as ISIS targeted Turkish youth and others, "who may not like their methods but sympathize with their ideology."

The sympathy has been on display at Istanbul University, where ISIS supporters openly attacked anti-ISIS students. Last week, a mosque in Istanbul's Fatih neighborhood offered prayers for militants killed in U.S. airstrikes. These are small details, says Ozel, but indicate an alarming trend. It will be part of Turkey's calculation as it considers a role in the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS.

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The latest victim of the Ebola panic has not been tested for the deadly virus. But he lived with someone who has it.

Amid fear over the virus's possible spread in Europe, Spanish authorities say they'll take no chances. They will not test him. Instead, to play it safe, they will kill him.

This latest victim ... is a dog.

Excalibur, a sandy-colored mixed-breed mutt, belonged to a Spanish nurse who was the first case of Ebola to be transmitted outside Africa.

Mara Teresa Romero Ramos, 40, helped treat two Spanish priests who had contracted Ebola in West Africa, where they worked. They were repatriated to Spain for treatment but died in August and September.

Doctors say Romero entered one of the infected priests' rooms just twice: once to help treat him, and once after his death, to collect some of his belongings. She was wearing a protective suit but somehow became infected. Today she told Spain's El Pas newspaper that the problem might have been when she removed her protective gear.

Laid low by a fever, Romero hung out with her dog in her apartment, in a southern suburb of Madrid, for about a week before checking herself into a hospital this past Monday. Her husband has been placed in isolation as well, as a precaution, though he has no Ebola symptoms.

Madrid's regional government issued a statement Tuesday saying that rather than follow the same procedure with the couple's dog, it would euthanize the pet. It said the procedure would be carried out in such a way as to minimize his suffering, and that his body would be incinerated.

From his hospital room, the husband, Javier Limn, responded in a video posted on YouTube.

"This is a call to the population to help me save my dog, Excalibur," Limn says. "They want to kill him."

More than 325,000 people have signed an online petition to try to save the dog.

A bewildered Excalibur had been left alone in the couple's apartment until medical workers arrived early this morning to disinfect the apartment. Dozens of animal lovers, many carrying their own pets, turned out to try to block them.

"Murderers!" they yelled at medical workers who pulled up in an ambulance.

The science on whether pets can transmit Ebola to humans is unclear. The virus can infect mammals. In the current West African outbreak, the source is believed to have been an infected bat. In previous outbreaks, people may have caught the virus when they handled the carcasses of infected gorillas, chimpanzees or other non-human primates.

"There is one article in the medical literature that discusses the presence of antibodies to Ebola in dogs," CDC Director Tom Frieden said at a news conference Tuesday. The study, from 2005, looked at several dogs in Gabon who'd eaten Ebola-infected dead animals. The authors reported, "This study suggests that dogs can be infected by Ebola virus and that the putative infection is asymptomatic."

"Whether that was an accurate test and whether that was relevant, we do not know," Frieden said. But, he added: "We have not identified this as a means of transmission."

And even as the world begs for the dog to live, there is the question of context. Edu Madina, a Basque politician, posted this tweet:

Un perro en Madrid ha generado ms movilizacin y noticias que miles de muertos por bola en frica. Para reflexionar.

— Edu Madina (@EduMadina) October 8, 2014

"One dog in Madrid has generated more mobilization and news than thousands of deaths from Ebola in Africa. Something to reflect on."

Excalibur

Madrid

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