Veterinary medicine and the lifeboat test: a perspective on the social relevance of the veterinary profession in the 21st century

摘要

Over the past several decades, the veterinary profession in North America has become severely imbalanced and now serves society in a very lopsided way. What we do, we do very well. But what we do not do, or do too little, is a shameful disservice to society. What do veterinarians do? In North America in 2004, veterinarians do clinical practice, especially companion animal practice, and not much else. No detailed statistics on veterinary activity in Canada appear to exist, but Canadian statistics probably are very similar to those available for the United States. According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, in 2002, 90% of all veterinarians were in clinical practice, and 75% to 80% of practitioner time, or about 70% of total veterinary activity, was devoted to companion animals, mostly dogs, cats, and horses (American Veterinary Medical Association, 2003). This amount of companion animal practice is highly beneficial to North American society, and only just meets current market demand. At its best, companion animal practice is also the apex of veterinary scientific and technical clinical achievement. It is, and deserves to be, a source of pride to all veterinarians. But the proportion of total professional veterinary activity devoted to companion animals is skewed. This distortion of the veterinary profession is an alarming new development of the past few decades. It is a derangement that leaves society as a whole poorly served, with fundamental social issues, such as public health, food safety, food supply, and environmental security, unaddressed by the animal health specialists society has educated at great expense. This narrow application of veterinary expertise also jeopardizes the veterinary profession itself. It is an extreme position, with far too many eggs in one basket. It ransoms the profession to the commercial marketplace. It undermines the capacity of the profession to serve the public good in truly essential ways, and thereby it directs the profession toward social irrelevance.