More on the need for comparative medicine
The leadership of the AVMA; veterinary medical researchers and administrators in academe; and federal, state, and local veterinary public health communities received a wake-up call in the recent letter from Dr. Kahn.1 Moreover, Dr. Kahn's visionary 2006 article titled “Confronting zoonoses, linking human and veterinary medicine”2 published in the CDC's prestigious Journal of Emerging Infectious Diseases should be a similar epiphany for her physician colleagues, along with the entire US government scientific infrastructure.
Longstanding omission of recognizing and fully utilizing veterinary medicine's unique and talented biomedical and comparative medicine research potential has been unaccountably shortsighted. Dr. Kahn expressed the tragic, painful truth: “Without expanding this realm [physician-veterinarian research teams], the microbiology, pathophysiology, and epidemiology of emerging zoonoses and bioterrorism threats will continue to progress at a snail's pace.”
Dr. Kahn alluded to the illustrious (yet limited) history of comparative medical liaisons in which physician-veterinarian teams have provided synergistic contributions critical to advancing and improving human and animal health. Nonetheless, realistically, a large part of the general public; most allied health professionals; National Institutes of Health leaders; the news media; and most influential elected federal, state, and local government officials, with few notable exceptions, are uninformed and unimpressed. To date, organized veterinary medicine has been disconcertingly ineffectual in penetrating this barrier. Veterinarians, collectively, should urge prudent revision with aggressive repair of our public affairs strategy and tactics.
That our nation and the scientific community continue on this long-standing, dangerously myopic path demands the same admonishment of government blundering given by Winston Churchill prior to World War II when he occasionally recited the following poem:
Who is in charge of the clattering train?
The axles creak and the couplings strain,
And the pace is hot, and the points are near,
And Sleep has deadened the driver's ear;
And the signals flash through the night in vain,
For Death is in charge of the clattering train.
Bruce Kaplan, DVM
Sarasota, Fla
Sees importance of study on cats fed vegetarian diets
Thank you for publishing the JAVMA article titled “Evaluation of cats fed vegetarian diets and attitudes of their caregivers.”1 It is important for the veterinary community to understand that pet owners are now considering their actions with respect to their pets in a broader context than they used to. This article shows how our clients' ethics can potentially impact the health of their pets. I am relieved to see that the majority of cats fed a vegetarian diet had normal blood concentrations of taurine and cobalamin. Given the media attention to subjects like mad cow disease, more and more of my clients are asking about what goes into pet foods. It is reassuring to know that I can recommend a meat-free diet to those clients who want to eliminate the link between their cat and the slaughterhouse.
Michael C. Roth, DVM
Canaan, NY
Wakefield LA, Shofer FS, Michel KE. Evaluation of cats fed vegetarian diets and attitudes of their caregivers. J Am Vet Med Assoc 2006;229:70–73.
The authors respond:
We would like to thank Dr. Roth for his interest in our paper. As he comments in his letter, there is growing public interest and concern about the proper feeding of companion animals, and we hope that our study will serve as a stimulus for further investigation in this area. We would like to point out that although it was encouraging that none of the cats tested in this investigation had taurine or vitamin B12 deficiency, we feel that given the limited scope of the study and the self-selection of the population, our findings should be interpreted with caution. We recommend that people who wish to feed vegetarian diets to their cats be counseled about the potential risks and the need to use a properly formulated recipe or commercial food. We also recommend follow-up contact of those owners with their veterinarians at least twice a year to monitor proper recipe use and examine their cats for signs of nutrient deficiency or excess.
Lorelei A. Wakefield, VMD
Bergh Memorial Animal Hospital, New York, NY
Kathryn E. Michel, DVM, DACVN
Frances S. Shofer, PhD
Department of Clinical, Studies–Philadelphia School of Veterinary Medicine
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa
