93 On My Composition Class!!

I know this is not a perfect paper, but my teacher gave me 93 for this. yay me ! I only got the grade but not review, so there are still some errors. We had to pick one topic that we like, and make 6 pages argumentative essay. So, this is what I wrote.

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The Role of Veterinary Medicine in Public Health

1. Introduction

The recent epidemics of severe acute respiratory syndrome-associated coronavirus (SARS) in China, West Nile virus in the U.S., and avian influenza in Asia have grabbed the attention of the general public and scientific community on veterinary pathogens. These epidemics made us realize the importance of public health, which is defined as a science to prevent rather than treat a disease through surveillance of cases and the promotion of healthy behaviors. Public health is the science and art of promoting health, preventing disease and prolonging healthy life through organized efforts of society. In addition to these activities, in many cases treating a disease can be vital to preventing it in others, such as during an outbreak of an infectious disease. Vaccination programs are examples of public health measures. Curiously, all of resent epidemics are the infectious diseases caused by zoonitic viruses, which can infect both humans and animals. The most unique character of viruses is that they can replicate themselves only by infecting a host cell, therefore cannot reproduce on their own. At the most basic level, viruses consist of genetic material, either DNA or RNA, contained within a protective protein coat called a capsid. They infect a wide variety of organisms: both eukaryotes and prokaryotes. The simple structure and wide range of its hosts including humans make virus infection complicated. Many people, even the medical doctors who were treating infected patients died from previous epidemics. People realized the high mortality of zoonotic infectious diseases and importance of tracking back the source of the epidemics, which most of the times is animals. Although many people say veterinary and human medicine are equally important science, based on these characters of zoonotic infectious disease and public health, veterinary medicine can play more important roles than human medicine for public health because of its unique strength in comparative medicine that can deal with much wider range of the health related issues (Eyre 40).

2. Veterinary Medicine as Preventative Science

Generally speaking, humans’ lives are more important than animals’. Therefore, when zoonotic epidemics happen, people tend to focus on the number of people who were suffered from the infectious disease, and many people think veterinary medicine can not play important role more than human medicine when a pandemic happens in human society. It is true that veterinarians can not treat patients suffered from an infectious disease, however, those people ignore the motto of public health: to prevent rather than treat a disease through surveillance of cases. Public health states that to recognize whether human and animal outbreaks were simultaneous would provide important information for identifying the causative pathogens and developing control strategies to both humans and animals. For example, physicians treating the initial West Nile virus patients in New York City in 1999 might have benefited if they knew that for the previous month and concurrently, veterinarians in the surrounding area had been seeing dozens of dying crows with neurological symptoms similar to those of the affected humans (Kahn 556). In addition, public health also states the importance of vaccination programs as their measures. Studies on animal papillomaviruses of rabbits, cattle, and dogs have provided the intellectual background for the identification of human papillomaviruses as ethological agents of the overwhelming majority of cervical cancer and some coetaneous cancers. Most interestingly, the success of the recently highly publicized vaccine against human papillomavirus is based on the proof of a principle gained in vaccine development against animal papillomaviruses (Palmarini 131)

3. Veterinary Medicine as Basic Science

Some people would say veterinary medicine can not play an important role more than human medicine because veterinary medicine can not be applied to human medicine because of the genetic difference, just like the fact that we can not transplant organs or deliberate mating between different species because of the species barrier resulting in immunoresistance by the genetic difference. However, many researches showed the opposite results. Feline leukemia virus was taken as an example that retroviruses horizontally transmitted could cause tumors in out bred animal species; this fuelled the chase for human retroviruses, eventually leading to the discovery of human T lymphotropic virus. Many viruses of domestic animals have also inspired, directly or indirectly, discoveries of related human viruses. In addition, early studies on HIV-1, now the new Lentivirus prototype and the most studied virus in human history, in the 1980s took some advantage on data accumulated on maedi-visna virus, which is the lentivirus infection of sheep studied from 1940s, and another animal lentivirus, equine infectious anemia virus (Palmarini 132). Moreover, the effective vaccine for Feline Immunodeficiency virus, Fel-O-Vax FIV, will have an important impact on veterinary medicine and human medicine in addition to being used as a small animal AIDS model for humans (Uhl et al. 113).

4. Veterinary Medicine for Public Health

The number of people having companion animals has been increasing, and people have started to seek quality of life even to their companion animals. Therefore, many people want veterinary medicine to focus more on companion animal medicine than comparative medical research and livestock medicine, which are important areas of veterinary medicine to collaborate with public health. As the result, veterinary schools shifted their focus so that it matches the social needs. However, just like what happened in human medicine, this shift has caused fewer numbers of veterinary students to pursue research careers. In addition, comparative medicine program have been shifting from a research to service orientation that limits veterinarians’ research involvement to bring primarily caretakers for laboratory animals (Kahn 560). This is clearly limiting the possibility of veterinary medicine to public health. Research on pathogens of veterinary interests also needs to be fostered, not only for its direct relevance to animal health, but for its significance to comparative medicine and public health also (Palmarini 132). For example, the first hint that kuru, the first recognized human transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE), and scrapie, the first disease described within the group of TSEs of sheep, might be similar diseases was made serendipitously by a veterinary pathologist, William Hadlow, who was attending an exhibit on kuru at the Wellcome Medical Museum in London (Palmarini 132). This sort of linking the idea of veterinary medicine to public health can be done only by veterinarians educated in the medicine which has the strength in comparative medical research and livestock medicine.

5. Conclusion

Research found that zoonotic diseases were twice as likely to be associated with emerging or newly discovered infections as non-zoonotic pathogens and that viruses were the zoonotic pathogens most likely to emerge. RNA viruses, in particular, have been identified as highly likely to emerge. These agents include West Nile virus, avian influenza virus, and severe acute respiratory syndrome-associated coronavirus (Kahn 558). Many zoonoses attract the public’s attention because of the high death rate associated with the infections (Hubalek 403). The understanding of complex emerging diseases need collaborative efforts between experts in public health, the environment, and animal health, where veterinary scientists can provide a critical contribution. However, most people do not view veterinarians as a source of information for human health (Grant 159). This situation hindered communications between veterinarians and physicians who will be involved in the outbreak of response at the basic level. We have to recognize the importance of veterinary medicine in public health because it is the only science that has broad range of species in it to study. Therefore, of course veterinary and human medicine are equally important science, however, veterinary medicine can contribute more efficiently than human medicine when it comes to the subject about public health, because of its strength in comparative medicine.

Works Cited

Capua, Ilaria., Ian Brown, Michael Johnson, Dennis Senne, and David Swayne. “Veterinary Virologists Share Avian Flu Data.” Science 312 (2006): 1597.

Eyre, Peter., N. Ole Nielsen, and James E.C. Bellamy. “Serving Society First: A Time For Change In Veterinary Medicine.” Journal of American Veterinary Medical Association 225 (2004): 40-1.

Grant, Sara., and Christopher W. Olsen. “Preventing Zoonotic Diseases In Immunocompromised Persons: The Role of Physicians and Veterinarians.” Emerging Infectious Diseases 5 (1999): 159-63.

Hubalek, Zddenek. “Emerging Human Infectious Diseases: Anthroponoses, Zoonoses, and Sapronoses” Emerging Infectious Disease 9. 403-4.

Kahn, Laura H. “Confronting Zoonoses, Linking Human and Veterinary Medicine.” Emerging Infectious Diseases 12 (2006): 556-61.

Palmarini, Massimo. “A Veterinary Twist on Pathogen Biology.” PLoS Pathogen 3 (2007): 131-4.

Taylor, H., Louise, Sophia M. Latham and Mark E. J. Woolhouse. “Risk Factors For Human Disease Emergence.” Philosophical Transactions Of The Royal Society Of London Series B, Biological Sciences 356 (2001): 983-9.

Uhl, E.W., T.G. Heaton-Jones, R. Pu, and Janet K. Yamamoto “FIV Vaccine Development and Its Importance to Veterinary and Human Medicine: A Review FIV Vaccine 2002 Update and Review.” Veterinary Immunology and Immunopathology 90 (2002):113-32.