Q: How can you tell when an animal is in pain?
A: What may seem like a simple question is actually a very complex one. Recognizing pain in animals can be difficult.
In human medicine, pain can be assessed both subjectively and objectively. Sometimes, it is as simple as asking the patient “Are you in pain?” This [...]
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[...] The practice of prescribing medications designed for humans to animals has grown substantially over the past decade and a half, and pharmaceutical companies have recently begun experimenting with a more direct strategy: marketing behavior-modification and “lifestyle” drugs specifically for pets. America’s animals, it seems, have very American health problems. More than 20 percent of [...]
Entering the serene, skylighted oncology suite, I immediately see the goose standing on the tile floor: large, gray, and stately. His bill and legs are orange-hued with subtle gradations to rose, and the slate-colored plumage of his upper body gives way under his tail to bright white. He is elegant for such a full-bodied creature [...]
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Fluffy is getting old. Going on 13, she’s geriatric for a Rottweiler. And like many people past retirement age, she takes a lot of pills—steroids for her bad hips and pinched nerve, a chewable tablet for her underactive thyroid, even Benadryl for her allergies. Her owner, Kelly Dowd, is happy to pay the $75 monthly. [...]
Two reports from TRAFFIC, the world’s largest wildlife trade monitoring network, on traditional medicine systems in Cambodia and Vietnam suggest that illegal wildlife trade, including entire tiger skeletons, and unsustainable harvesting is depleting the region’s rich and varied biodiversity and putting the primary healthcare resource of millions at risk.
The results of field studies carried out [...]
The U.S. military’s medical school in Bethesda is drawing criticism from a coalition of physicians and military officers for using live animals in some medical procedures, such as surgeries, a practice many medical schools have long abandoned.
Students and faculty at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences insert breathing tubes in live ferrets [...]
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British scientists plan to create the world’s first human stem cells from embryos that are part human and part animal, after the government’s fertility watchdog approved the research.
The team at Warwick Medical School hope to use the stem cells to study fatal heart diseases, after being granted a year-long licence for the controversial work by [...]
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Three people have been infected with a form of MRSA usually found in pigs, the first time any humans in Britain have been infected by an animal strain of the superbug.
The variation has been found in farm animals and humans on the Continent, causing serious [...]
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Scientists have developed the first genetically altered monkey model that replicates some symptoms observed in patients with Huntington’s disease, according to a new study funded by the National Institutes of Health. Researchers are now able to better understand this complex, devastating and incurable genetic disorder affecting the brain. This advance, reported in the May 18 [...]
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Ants may be an unwelcome intruder at picnics, but they could soon be a welcome guest in your medicine cabinet. Chemists in China report identification of substances in a certain species of ants that show promise for fighting arthritis, hepatitis, and other diseases.
For centuries, ants have been used as a health food or drink ingredient [...]
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