I remember not too long ago that I would look at practitioners who had been in practice 20 or more years and wonder how they could keep going after so many years and being so old. Now that I have been in practice way more than 20 years it doesn't seem like such a big deal.
Besides a few gray hairs and some stiff joints, being in practice this long has given me to opportunity to observe the general health of our companion animals over several generations. I can see quite a paradox developing over these years. As our diagnostics and medicines have (supposedly) gotten better, the general health of our patients is and has been declining.
When I was in vet school we rarely saw cancer in dogs or cats. Allergies were seen periodically but were easily controlled (not cured) with a shot of long acting steroids. Periodically we would see a patient that was epileptic and rarely one that had an autoimmune disfunction like Lupus. Sometimes we would see gastritis if the dog got into the garbage but never chronic long-term inflammatory bowel disease. FIP in cats was nearly unheard of. Probably the worst we would routinely see in cats was cystitis/Feline Urologic Syndrome. There were some common respiratory conditions and skin conditions but nothing really monumental as compared to the array of syndromes seen today.
Now, a few decades and many dog and cat generations after I graduated from vet school, we have CAT scans, MRIs, in-house diagnostics that surpass anything the commercial laboratories were offering, 100% complete and special prescription diets, really powerful second and third generation antibiotics, vaccines that were not even imagined when I was in school, chemotherapeutic agents, and whole new classes of drugs that were not even under development back then.
With all this advanced technology and more powerful pharmacy, we now also have a near epidemic of cancer in companion animals (about 50% of my small animal consultations are for various cancer diagnoses), a rash (if you will pardon the pun) of non-responsive allergies, autoimmune diseases that would rival anything seen in human medicine, and new contagions and degenerations assaulting these animals on a routine basis.
If our medicine is so improved, why do we not have a cure for these diagnoses? Or more importantly, why are we routinely seeing so much deep seated and serious disease that could not even be imagined a few years ago when we have all these new and improved tools that are supposed to bring us health?
Maybe the environment is that much more toxic? Maybe medicines have gotten more manipulative but less curative? Maybe we are breeding more chronic illness into these animals? Maybe their nutrition has strayed so far off the evolutionary path that their bodies are starving while at the same time obese? Maybe because medicine is not looking at disease as a static diagnosis to be manipulated rather than a life long pattern to be improved?
Whatever the answer, I think it is important for us to seriously address the cause of this general deterioration of health in our companions, not just for their sake but for ours.
Consider this. The intergenerational span of dogs and cats is less than a year (and that is being generous). So in the nearly 30 years that I have been in practice, in the nearly 30 years that medicine has gotten more aggressive/more manipulative/less curative in the larger sense, in the nearly 30 years that nutrition and environment have been altered, we have seen several generations of dogs and cats pass our way. In these generations we have seen an overall deterioration in the collective health of the domesticated members of the species.
As humans our medicine, nutrition, and environment have all followed the same path as that described here for our animals. And we can see the toll it has taken on them. The human intergenerational span is considerably longer than that of dogs and cats so perhaps we show our changes on a slower course than do our companions but make no mistake it is the same path.
Our dogs and cats are the sentinels showing the future for the human species if we continue down this same medical path, and it is scary.
If you find this way of thinking fantasy, consider the levels of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia, and other degenerative disease present in our human population today as compared to 75 years ago. Look at the near epidemic rate of ADHD, ADD, and Autism in our children today as compared to even 50 years ago. And that is not even touching on the extreme mental and emotional disorders that have brought us events such as Columbine or the Jeffrey Dahmers of the world.
The answers to these issues are not found in doing more and more of the same but in exploring alternatives that hold the promise of true cure and of health on all levels - regardless of the lobby, regardless of the politics.
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