"The country has never had easy access to human rabies vaccines, but the disease has soared in recent years: from fewer than 200 cases in the 1990s to 3,302 in 2007, and such official estimates are likely to be an undercount. That makes rabies the third-biggest infectious disease killer in China after AIDS and tuberculosis.... Lacking an effective animal vaccination program, in 2006 China began enforcing a one-dog per family policy and in a June crackdown one city culled 37,000 dogs in hopes of quelling an outbreak. Instead, officials only angered animal rights activists in China and abroad, while leaving U.S. epidemiologists scratching their heads in bemusement. "Beating dogs to death—that's just not a 21st century way of going about stopping rabies," Rupprecht says." - Shannon Jiménez

I would have thought a communist country with a totalitarian government would have a relatively easy time implementing a mandatory vaccination program, but I guess I'm wrong. I do imagine giving a dog a shot would be far easier, far less messy, and probably even cheaper than having to capture and beat a dog to death. - Victor Ganata