Category: Veterinary medicine
An Age of Endarkenment? The American Veterinary Medical Association and Homeopathy
It can be frustrating, and sometimes even a little depressing, to be a skeptic. Promoting reason and science-based medicine often feels like a Sisyphean effort that garners lots of hostility and ad hominem attacks from proponents of pseudoscience and few concrete victories. But once in a while, something happens to give a little hope and inspiration. In 2010, for example, the House...
Learning from Animals: Evolutionary Medicine with a Twist
In 2005, cardiologist Barbara Natterson-Horowitz was called to the zoo to examine a non-human patient, an emperor tamarin with heart failure. She was surprised when the veterinarian told her not to look her patient in the eyes because eye contact could cause capture myopathy. In this condition, when an animal is captured, restrained, and feels threatened, there is a catastrophic surge of...
An Appraisal of Courses in Veterinary Chiropractic
Today’s guest article, by By Ragnvi E. Kjellin, DVM, and Olle Kjellin, MD, PhD, was submitted to a series of veterinary journals, but none of them wanted to publish it. ScienceBasedMedicine.org is pleased to do so. Animal chiropractic is a relatively new phenomenon that many veterinarians may know too little about. In Sweden, chiropractic was licensed for humans in 1989, but...
The Top Ten Pet Supplements: Do They Work?
An Embarrassment of Riches? Much has been written here about the dietary supplement business, a multibillion dollar industry with powerful political connections, and about the woeful inadequacy of regulation which allows widespread marketing of supplements without a solid basis in science or scientific evidence. The veterinary supplement market is a pittance compared to the human market, but still a billion-dollar pittance that...
The English government cracks down on alternative pet remedies
One cannot play charades forever. European veterinary groups have long been more skeptical about “alternative” veterinary practices than their American counterparts. For example, the European Board of Veterinary Specialties refuses to grant continuing education credits for non-scientific endeavors attempting to masquerade as a way to improve one’s clinical knowledge, and the practice of veterinary homeopathy is forbidden in Sweden. Now comes good...
Special Challenges of Science-Based Veterinary Medicine
On this site there have been several thoughtful posts (e.g. by Dr. Atwood and by Dr. Novella), and subsequently much heated commentary, on the distinction between Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) and Science-Based Medicine (SBM). I agree wholeheartedly with the position that the two are not mutually exclusive, and that SBM is essentially EBM as it should be practiced, with a comprehensive consideration of...
Raw Meat and Bone Diets for Dogs: It’s Enough to Make You BARF
Some of the most rewarding interactions we have with our pets involve food. Most dogs respond with gratifying enthusiasm to being fed, and this activity is an important part of the human-animal bond. Providing food is also part of the parent/child dynamic that in many ways characterizes our relationships with our pets. Giving food is an expression of affection and a symbol...
Animal acupuncture
Periodically, one sees newspaper articles extolling the virtues of acupuncture for animals. To those familiar with the practice of acupuncture, the tag lines are nauseatingly familiar, e.g., acupuncture has been around for thousands of years, it works to stimulate the animal’s natural energies, etc., etc. Ditto the testimonials; Fluffy wasn’t helped by anything else; now, after a few months of treatment (and...
Animal vaccinations
Without question, vaccination has been one of the most important interventions in disease prevention that has ever been developed. In spite of the demonstrable, and ongoing, success of vaccination, a small, but vocal, anti-vaccination movement has developed in human medicine, occasionally buttressed by horrifying instances of adverse reactions, as well as the occasional publications in scientific journals (vis, the Wakefield debacle). Vaccine...
Is There a Placebo Effect for Animals?
One of the occasional arguments used in support of “alternative” approaches to human medicine is the observation that since “alternative” medicine is used (with anecdotal success) in animals, and animals don’t know anything about the treatment that they’re getting, then they must work a priori. Of course, the fallacy of such an observation is pretty obvious to anyone with a logical/skeptical frame...