"Vet Bashing"
In a recent canine health bulletin, I wrote: “When a conventional vet wants to learn more about treating skin problems, he will go on a course to be taught how much steroid to give. This is the end of conventional veterinary training as far as dermatitis goes. Many pet owners know more about treating their pets’ skin conditions than vets.”
A vet wrote to complain. “I’m a subscriber to your newsletter, and usually appreciate hearing your thoughts and ideas on various doggie issues,” she wrote. “I will say, though, that I’m totally sick of people who are into natural therapies and constantly denigrate vets. I’m a conventional vet, and I don’t use steroids very much at all. They’re a useful drug, and in fact a lifesaving drug, if used appropriately, and I will admit they’re often overused.
“However, generalising and categorising all ‘conventional’ vets in the same way really rubs me up the wrong way. In fact, it reduces any sort of credibility you have, and makes me so much less likely to bother reading anything else you have to say. Saying that the only dermatological training vets receive is in how much steroid to give is just insulting, inaccurate and disrespectful to the many vets such as myself who don’t just reach for the bottle of steroids whenever a dog is itchy or has a rash.
“It’s quite possible for natural therapies and conventional therapies to work hand in hand. It’s not either or, black or white. At the end of the day, we’re all here for the same purpose – keeping our dogs healthy. I see my role as being in a partnership with a dog owner – they have every right to question my treatment, ask about alternatives, etc. So may people just take medical advice (either human or animal) and do as they’re told, without being an active part of the decision making process. I think that’s where you need to act – to empower dog owners to be involved in their pets’ treatment, rather than just do what they’re told without question. This would be so much more productive than to tell them that all conventional vets don’t know what they’re doing. I have met some people who treat animals with natural therapies who are nothing short of crooks, so it goes both ways.”
Well, I happen to largely agree with this vet. Because she sees her role as one of partnership with dog owners, she’s the sort of vet I would want to work with – especially since she doesn’t always reach for the steroids, and believes that natural therapies and conventional therapies can work hand-in-hand. In fact, this vet sounds like an example of the many good vets who are out there, combining conventional training with knowledge acquired after leaving veterinary college. I think I could also work with her because she cared enough to write to me to voice her views, and is willing to listen to other peoples’ views.
George Bernard Shaw wrote, “The worst sin against our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that’s the essence of inhumanity.”
Ironically, all this vet needs is a good supply of empowered, responsible dog owners to work with – which is actually the aim of these bulletins, the aim of our on-line canine healthcare lectures, and the aim of Canine Health Concern. Our goal is to share information that will help the dogs and, in the process, empower their owners so that they can work in partnership with their vets.
Which brings to mind a conversation I had with another vet.
This particular vet is a raw feeding advocate. We were having a chat about natural feeding, and he told me that processed pet food is so woefully inadequate that we might just as well feed our dogs the bag the food comes in. He told me that he has tried in practice to tell pet owners about the value of real food. “But,” he said, “you can see their eyes glaze over when you try to tell them about natural feeding. They don’t want to know.” Another vet told me that he developed his own brand of pet food, with better quality ingredients, because he had also experienced the disinterest of clients in practice. He felt that, although his food was a second best to ‘real’ food, it was at least better than most pet food.
It seems to me that clients metaphorically bash vets, and vets metaphorically bash their clients. And I can’t tell you how many verbal bashings I’ve had from both vets and dogs owners. Yet, as my complainant stated, “At the end of the day, we’re all here for the same purpose – keeping our dogs healthy.”
I don’t know who invented the term, ‘vet bashing’, or when it first appeared in the vocabulary, but there clearly is a problem between conventional and complementary therapies, and between vets and their clients. But I suspect that all professions suffer from a similar problem. “What’s the difference between a lawyer and a trout? …. One’s a scum sucking bottom dweller, and the other’s a fish.” All builders are cowboys. Accountants are boring. Politicians are crooks. And so on.
Ultimately, it seems to me, we’re all just human beings, doing the best we can with the knowledge we have available. Unfortunately, we don’t go looking for knowledge nearly as often as we need to – which is also why, in my view, laypeople have problems with professionals, and professionals have problems with laypeople. We rely upon experts and fail to understand that experts can get it just as wrong as we can. In fact, experts can often get it even ‘wronger’. At the same time, experts often despair at the reluctance of their clients to take an active role in situations where everyone needs to work together, because the expert knows they can’t do it on their own. Alternatively, depending upon the personality of the expert, they might actively discourage their clients from thinking for themselves.
My statement about steroids and dermatitis came originally from a conversation I had with a homoeopathic vet. I asked him why, after studying for five years to qualify as a conventional vet, did he put himself through another four years of study to become a homoeopath – bearing in mind that by the time a vet has qualified, he’s usually ready to get married, set up home and start a family. He told me that, in college, they used to joke about designing a double conveyor belt, one for animals being given steroids, and another for animals being given antibiotics. There was, he told me, very little else a conventional vet could offer an animal.
He added that, once he qualified and went into practice, he was bored. “If you’ve seen one dog with skin problems, you’ve seen every dog with skin problems, and the treatment is always the same. Give it three months in practice, and you see nothing new. It’s all a repetition of what’s gone before.” This is when he told me about the further education on offer in respect to dermatitis and steroids. He studied homoeopathy because he was looking for something more.
Now, it may be perceived that I’m vet bashing when I quote a vet who himself appears to be bashing his colleagues. In truth, though, what we’re bashing is conventional veterinary training. Let me quote a few more vets who are publicly bashing their own training.
Richard Allport, an esteemed homoeopathic vet, is on record in our press releases and on our DVD, ‘In Search of the Truth About Dogs’, as saying that it’s reprehensible that veterinary colleges should allow pet food manufacturers to pay the salaries of lecturers in pet nutrition. He finds it abhorrent that trainee vets are being misled in this way.
Dr Patricia Jordan, holistic vet and microbiologist, is on record as saying that further education received by vets in practice is delivered by multinational corporations at ‘dinners of misinformation’. She finds it indefensible that vets should be allowed and encouraged to attend corporate sales drives, and receive educational credits for doing so.
And I am on record for saying that vets are being misled by their education which, itself, is largely funded by multinational corporations. I personally believe that vets are betrayed by their education.
This is not, in my view, vet bashing. It’s exposing the educational system for what it is. Veterinary teaching establishments take money from big business – for bursaries, new college wings, research funding, even in the form of free food for animals in their labs. Professional veterinary bodies take money from pharmaceutical companies, chemical companies and pet food companies.
All of the major animal charities also take money from big business. Dr Michael Fox, who also appeared on our DVD, was effectively sacked from his position as chief vet at the Humane Society for writing the foreword to a book exposing the disgusting ingredients in pet food – because the Humane Society was just about to secure a pet food company sponsorship deal.
I have seen other heads roll: the professor within a veterinary college, who, in an attempt to raise funds for his research into autoimmune haemolytic anaemia, unwittingly got involved with people in the alternative field. Before you know it, he was pushed in a back room and had his funding withdrawn. He had to go to another country to continue with his work.
Vets in practice are jumped on from a great height by the Establishment, which takes money from industry, if they speak out about the corruption of money, and the harm experienced by pets and their owners by such practices. Lecturers within veterinary teaching establishments are also muzzled for fear of offending wealthy industrial sponsors.
In my personal experience, even governments are involved in this web of deceit. Many of the multinational corporations are richer than governments, and it is they who pull the strings. This isn’t conspiracy theory – I could show you the letters from government ministers who clearly dance to the tune of the multinationals.
Your dog sits at the bottom of the food chain. He’s the cash cow. When dog owners are deciding whether to give their dogs an annual shot, they are unlikely to know that annual vaccination is a con. They maybe won’t have seen the scientific studies to back this fact up. They won’t realise that governments, despite repeated calls, are unwilling to legislate to help pets. They may not be aware that veterinarians, as a profession, have one of the highest suicide rates, or that they have pressures you do not comprehend.
When you watch a TV commercial for pet food, you won’t automatically realise that the company spent more money telling you how good their food is than they spent on the food’s ingredients. You won’t perhaps appreciate that the multinationals have fingers in every pie: in education, in the media, in pet insurance, in research funding, in lobbying groups and pet charities, in ‘healthcare’, and in government.
I have been working to help the dogs since my own dogs died and I found out why. I don’t have a multi-million advertising budget or influence with government. I cannot dictate the curriculum in veterinary teaching establishments or dictate whether or not vets are allowed by law to administer drugs with horrendous side-effects, or whether, indeed, they are taught about safer alternatives. I do know, though, that vets in college are taught about steroids and antibiotics from wealthy sponsors first, and natural products second, if at all.
What I have seen, and what I can tell you, is that since 1994, I have been seeking to speak directly to dog lovers so they wouldn’t have to stand over the bodies of their dead dogs and ask, as I had done, “Why did nobody tell me?” It has been a lesson in impotence, because I do not have a multi-million advertising budget. Change has been so slow in coming, and so many animals have suffered and died unnecessarily in the meantime.
Nevertheless, change IS slowly coming – and many vets, who I consider to be my friends, are adding their voices to the call for change. But it takes two: speaker and listener – so are you listening?
I can answer that question. Probably one in a hundred people who received this email will have read it. If, on the other hand, I had the money for a TV advertising campaign 15 years ago, your dogs would no longer be receiving annual shots, and they wouldn’t be eating pet food.
Beware false gods, no matter how lovely they might appear. I say this to human beings, irrespective of their profession.
A vet wrote to complain. “I’m a subscriber to your newsletter, and usually appreciate hearing your thoughts and ideas on various doggie issues,” she wrote. “I will say, though, that I’m totally sick of people who are into natural therapies and constantly denigrate vets. I’m a conventional vet, and I don’t use steroids very much at all. They’re a useful drug, and in fact a lifesaving drug, if used appropriately, and I will admit they’re often overused.
“However, generalising and categorising all ‘conventional’ vets in the same way really rubs me up the wrong way. In fact, it reduces any sort of credibility you have, and makes me so much less likely to bother reading anything else you have to say. Saying that the only dermatological training vets receive is in how much steroid to give is just insulting, inaccurate and disrespectful to the many vets such as myself who don’t just reach for the bottle of steroids whenever a dog is itchy or has a rash.
“It’s quite possible for natural therapies and conventional therapies to work hand in hand. It’s not either or, black or white. At the end of the day, we’re all here for the same purpose – keeping our dogs healthy. I see my role as being in a partnership with a dog owner – they have every right to question my treatment, ask about alternatives, etc. So may people just take medical advice (either human or animal) and do as they’re told, without being an active part of the decision making process. I think that’s where you need to act – to empower dog owners to be involved in their pets’ treatment, rather than just do what they’re told without question. This would be so much more productive than to tell them that all conventional vets don’t know what they’re doing. I have met some people who treat animals with natural therapies who are nothing short of crooks, so it goes both ways.”
Well, I happen to largely agree with this vet. Because she sees her role as one of partnership with dog owners, she’s the sort of vet I would want to work with – especially since she doesn’t always reach for the steroids, and believes that natural therapies and conventional therapies can work hand-in-hand. In fact, this vet sounds like an example of the many good vets who are out there, combining conventional training with knowledge acquired after leaving veterinary college. I think I could also work with her because she cared enough to write to me to voice her views, and is willing to listen to other peoples’ views.
George Bernard Shaw wrote, “The worst sin against our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that’s the essence of inhumanity.”
Ironically, all this vet needs is a good supply of empowered, responsible dog owners to work with – which is actually the aim of these bulletins, the aim of our on-line canine healthcare lectures, and the aim of Canine Health Concern. Our goal is to share information that will help the dogs and, in the process, empower their owners so that they can work in partnership with their vets.
Which brings to mind a conversation I had with another vet.
This particular vet is a raw feeding advocate. We were having a chat about natural feeding, and he told me that processed pet food is so woefully inadequate that we might just as well feed our dogs the bag the food comes in. He told me that he has tried in practice to tell pet owners about the value of real food. “But,” he said, “you can see their eyes glaze over when you try to tell them about natural feeding. They don’t want to know.” Another vet told me that he developed his own brand of pet food, with better quality ingredients, because he had also experienced the disinterest of clients in practice. He felt that, although his food was a second best to ‘real’ food, it was at least better than most pet food.
It seems to me that clients metaphorically bash vets, and vets metaphorically bash their clients. And I can’t tell you how many verbal bashings I’ve had from both vets and dogs owners. Yet, as my complainant stated, “At the end of the day, we’re all here for the same purpose – keeping our dogs healthy.”
I don’t know who invented the term, ‘vet bashing’, or when it first appeared in the vocabulary, but there clearly is a problem between conventional and complementary therapies, and between vets and their clients. But I suspect that all professions suffer from a similar problem. “What’s the difference between a lawyer and a trout? …. One’s a scum sucking bottom dweller, and the other’s a fish.” All builders are cowboys. Accountants are boring. Politicians are crooks. And so on.
Ultimately, it seems to me, we’re all just human beings, doing the best we can with the knowledge we have available. Unfortunately, we don’t go looking for knowledge nearly as often as we need to – which is also why, in my view, laypeople have problems with professionals, and professionals have problems with laypeople. We rely upon experts and fail to understand that experts can get it just as wrong as we can. In fact, experts can often get it even ‘wronger’. At the same time, experts often despair at the reluctance of their clients to take an active role in situations where everyone needs to work together, because the expert knows they can’t do it on their own. Alternatively, depending upon the personality of the expert, they might actively discourage their clients from thinking for themselves.
My statement about steroids and dermatitis came originally from a conversation I had with a homoeopathic vet. I asked him why, after studying for five years to qualify as a conventional vet, did he put himself through another four years of study to become a homoeopath – bearing in mind that by the time a vet has qualified, he’s usually ready to get married, set up home and start a family. He told me that, in college, they used to joke about designing a double conveyor belt, one for animals being given steroids, and another for animals being given antibiotics. There was, he told me, very little else a conventional vet could offer an animal.
He added that, once he qualified and went into practice, he was bored. “If you’ve seen one dog with skin problems, you’ve seen every dog with skin problems, and the treatment is always the same. Give it three months in practice, and you see nothing new. It’s all a repetition of what’s gone before.” This is when he told me about the further education on offer in respect to dermatitis and steroids. He studied homoeopathy because he was looking for something more.
Now, it may be perceived that I’m vet bashing when I quote a vet who himself appears to be bashing his colleagues. In truth, though, what we’re bashing is conventional veterinary training. Let me quote a few more vets who are publicly bashing their own training.
Richard Allport, an esteemed homoeopathic vet, is on record in our press releases and on our DVD, ‘In Search of the Truth About Dogs’, as saying that it’s reprehensible that veterinary colleges should allow pet food manufacturers to pay the salaries of lecturers in pet nutrition. He finds it abhorrent that trainee vets are being misled in this way.
Dr Patricia Jordan, holistic vet and microbiologist, is on record as saying that further education received by vets in practice is delivered by multinational corporations at ‘dinners of misinformation’. She finds it indefensible that vets should be allowed and encouraged to attend corporate sales drives, and receive educational credits for doing so.
And I am on record for saying that vets are being misled by their education which, itself, is largely funded by multinational corporations. I personally believe that vets are betrayed by their education.
This is not, in my view, vet bashing. It’s exposing the educational system for what it is. Veterinary teaching establishments take money from big business – for bursaries, new college wings, research funding, even in the form of free food for animals in their labs. Professional veterinary bodies take money from pharmaceutical companies, chemical companies and pet food companies.
All of the major animal charities also take money from big business. Dr Michael Fox, who also appeared on our DVD, was effectively sacked from his position as chief vet at the Humane Society for writing the foreword to a book exposing the disgusting ingredients in pet food – because the Humane Society was just about to secure a pet food company sponsorship deal.
I have seen other heads roll: the professor within a veterinary college, who, in an attempt to raise funds for his research into autoimmune haemolytic anaemia, unwittingly got involved with people in the alternative field. Before you know it, he was pushed in a back room and had his funding withdrawn. He had to go to another country to continue with his work.
Vets in practice are jumped on from a great height by the Establishment, which takes money from industry, if they speak out about the corruption of money, and the harm experienced by pets and their owners by such practices. Lecturers within veterinary teaching establishments are also muzzled for fear of offending wealthy industrial sponsors.
In my personal experience, even governments are involved in this web of deceit. Many of the multinational corporations are richer than governments, and it is they who pull the strings. This isn’t conspiracy theory – I could show you the letters from government ministers who clearly dance to the tune of the multinationals.
Your dog sits at the bottom of the food chain. He’s the cash cow. When dog owners are deciding whether to give their dogs an annual shot, they are unlikely to know that annual vaccination is a con. They maybe won’t have seen the scientific studies to back this fact up. They won’t realise that governments, despite repeated calls, are unwilling to legislate to help pets. They may not be aware that veterinarians, as a profession, have one of the highest suicide rates, or that they have pressures you do not comprehend.
When you watch a TV commercial for pet food, you won’t automatically realise that the company spent more money telling you how good their food is than they spent on the food’s ingredients. You won’t perhaps appreciate that the multinationals have fingers in every pie: in education, in the media, in pet insurance, in research funding, in lobbying groups and pet charities, in ‘healthcare’, and in government.
I have been working to help the dogs since my own dogs died and I found out why. I don’t have a multi-million advertising budget or influence with government. I cannot dictate the curriculum in veterinary teaching establishments or dictate whether or not vets are allowed by law to administer drugs with horrendous side-effects, or whether, indeed, they are taught about safer alternatives. I do know, though, that vets in college are taught about steroids and antibiotics from wealthy sponsors first, and natural products second, if at all.
What I have seen, and what I can tell you, is that since 1994, I have been seeking to speak directly to dog lovers so they wouldn’t have to stand over the bodies of their dead dogs and ask, as I had done, “Why did nobody tell me?” It has been a lesson in impotence, because I do not have a multi-million advertising budget. Change has been so slow in coming, and so many animals have suffered and died unnecessarily in the meantime.
Nevertheless, change IS slowly coming – and many vets, who I consider to be my friends, are adding their voices to the call for change. But it takes two: speaker and listener – so are you listening?
I can answer that question. Probably one in a hundred people who received this email will have read it. If, on the other hand, I had the money for a TV advertising campaign 15 years ago, your dogs would no longer be receiving annual shots, and they wouldn’t be eating pet food.
Beware false gods, no matter how lovely they might appear. I say this to human beings, irrespective of their profession.