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ThiswaswhenIbegantogetdisillusionedwithm’ycareer, the 1990s. Veterinary surgeons were becoming wary of
particularly with respect to chronic inflammatory conditions.
During the 70s and 80s not only did more, stronger antibiotics come on to the scene but so did more powerful and longer acting steroids appear.
I could suppress symptoms by giving increasing doses of steroids, but the symptoms returned soon after the steroids
were stopped. I sort of fell into a cycle of perio’
ds during which I gave high doses which diminished the symptoms but caused a high thirst to develop followed by a low dose period in which the thirst disappeared but the symptoms only vanished for a relatively short period. Then when the stronger, longer acting steroids appeared, we began to see
adrenal gland malfunctions.
It was all quite depressing.
It was at this stage of my career that I began to associate anal gland impaction with ear trouble. I discovered that almost invariably dogs with otitis external also had impacted anal glands and that the ears improved quicker if the glands were expressed. I also noted a progression of itchy skin going to recurrent A/G trouble and then onto ear problems.
I couldn’t explain it then, but then I hadn’t heard of Hering.
Then the food industry began to see the potential profit from pet foods. In the late 1960s, the American food company brought the Science Diets to the UK .
“We will only sell it through vets, not supermarkets” they said. “It will help you to make more money”.
Then when the profession had built up sales sufficiently, it began to be sold in shops but other varieties of Science Diet were offered to veterinary surgeons and a similar cycle established. The profession acted as super-salesmen for Hill’s. In the 1960s veterinary surgeons would say “If I wanted to sell dog food I would open a pet shop. I am a pro- fessional. I do not buy paper from my accountant, nor pencils from my accountant”. But in the 1970s the profes- sion’s waiting rooms began to look more like a pet shop,
selling everything a pet owner could want.
The next stage in the debasement of the profession came in
Recently however, the profession has started to fight back.
The promotion of Raw Meaty Bones began to affect the pet food industry, while the “Don’t Over-vaccinate” movement has begun to have an impact on the pharmaceutical indus- try’s profits. This has of course initiated a response by Big Business, which resents loosing its profits. Unfortunately because it is the holistically based practitioners, the atten- tion is focused on them. Because the homeopaths have been most vocal (and in my opinion the most effective in their opposition to the current order of things), they have been singled out for the first onslaught by Big Business. The veterinary homeopaths are being attacked on all fronts, inside and outside the profession.
I do not usually subscribe to conspiracy theories, but the profusion of apparently coordinated attacks by units such as the Good Thinking Society and the Campaign for Rational Veterinary Medicine plus the Council RCVS leads me to think that it must be organised. That means it needs financing. There is no prize for guessing where the money is coming from. I ask you, how can a part-time Veterinary Surgeon afford to organise and run a nationwide series of meetings at which homeopathy is mocked.
Don’t be too dismayed. It’s my opinion that if we hold firmly to our principles and are not afraid to shout them from the rooftops, then homeopathy will be recognised as the force for good that it is, and homeopathy and the BAHVS will come out on top.
investing in Practices. Non-vets were allowed to own prac- tices, and companies were established to cream off any profit that a practice could make. Hard business principles were applied, sales targets set, large chains were built up, the veterinary surgeons lost control of the profession, and its debasement complete.
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In 1998, at a meeting in Belgravia House, a big wheel from Banfield – a chain of over 500 practices in the USA – said that all the branches were connected to a central com- puter. The veterinary surgeon made an examination and took the history. He/ she then fed the details into a com- puter, which told them what tests to make. When the test results were fed back into the computer it would announce what the diagnosis was and what drugs should be prescribed. This he maintained was “Best Practice”. When asked what would happen if the veterinary surgeon disagreed with the computer, the answer was that the veterinary surgeon was free to diagnose and pre- scribe whatever he/she wanted to, but if their results were not as good as those achieved by those, who fol- lowed the computer’s advice, then they would be sacked. Unfortunately no one thought to ask what ‘good’ was in this instance: clinical effectiveness or financial profit.