SYNOPSIS VETERINARY BIOETHICS IN PRACTICE:

FEELING FOR ANIMALS AND ANIMAL FEELINGS.

By Michael W. Fox D.SC., PH.D., B. Vet. Med., M.R.C.V.S.

   Veterinary bioethics has a broader mandate than veterinary ethics that deals primarily with professional ethics and standards of practice. Veterinary bioethics addresses the ethos, telos  and ecos of animals, namely animals’ behavioral and emotional needs; their biological purpose, and, for domestic animals used for different purposes, their social, emotional and other uses or values; and their ecological, environmental roles, value and impact.

   Veterinary bioethics  embraces the absolute moral principles of compassion and  ahimsa, (avoiding harm), and is empathy-based, feeling for animals and recognition of animals’ feelings being a prerequisite for optimal care, maximal animal well being ,and welfare.

   Many illnesses and behavioral problems in dogs, cats and  also farmed, laboratory , circus and zoo animals can be prevented, and others cured by their caretakers/guardians adhering to five basic bioethical principles. These principles combine to make a simple formula to help insure animals’ health and overall well being: Right Understanding and Relationship + Right Breeding/Genetics + Right Nutrition + Right Environment + Right Holistic Veterinary Care. = Animal Health and Well-being.

  It is every person’s responsibility as an animal lover and/or care-provider to recognize the importance of these principles as basic animal rights for several reasons. These include the prevention and alleviation of much animal suffering; and reduced veterinary and other related costs associated with many animal health and behavioral problems, if not most, and even having to euthanize the animal or put her/him up for adoption.

   These principles bring out the best qualities in people as caregivers by enhancing the human-non-human animal bond, and in the animals themselves under their care, in terms of quality of life and relational/emotional experience. They also provide an ethical compass of responsibility and compassion to advance the moral/character development of children, who, in learning by example how to respect and care for other animals, enhance their self-esteem and self-worth through loving service, and in the process refine their ability to empathize with other sentient beings.

   As animals have served and benefited us for millennia and continue to do so in myriad ways, so we benefit the more we serve and help them as our wards, companions, healers, teachers, patients and friends---all of whom are related to us, but are more ancient, if not wiser than we. The bond that people have with the animals in their lives must become a boundless circle of compassion, expanding to encompass all living beings, domestic and wild, captive and free, if we are to justify keeping any animal as a domesticated companion beyond our selfish needs.

VETERINARY BIOETHICS OF COMPASSIONATE CARE
   Veterinary bioethics calls on every veterinarian to apply the bioethical principle of compassionate care in their treatment of animal patients and in the advice given to client-owners and care-givers. This helps override the situational ethics of treating animals kept as commodities on factory farms where optimal care of animals on an individual basis is not normally provided for reasons of cost; and where a companion animal is not given optimal care because the owner is of limited financial means or does not feel that the animal is worth the expense of costly diagnostic and treatment procedures.

   Rather than compromising their professional standards and integrity in such situations, veterinarians have a moral obligation to advocate compassionate care regardless of the context and situational ethics in which their services are required. This is because the bioethic of compassionate care is a fundamental human responsibility and every animal’s basic right. Furthermore, compassionate care is vital to animals’ health, welfare, and physical and psychological well being. It is therefore as essential a component of holistic, integrative, and preventive veterinary medicine as is caring for the land a vital aspect of sutainable agriculture.

   Other professions and business enterprises are similarly being called to accountability and responsibility, just as all of us in our personal lives must find ways to cause less harm to the natural world and to animals domesticated and wild, in the process of satisfying our basic needs. To realize the long term benefits of applying bioethics in our decision-making and consumer-choices, to our own health, to the economy, and to the entire life community of this living earth, means living mindfully, and by the guiding principle of compassionate care.

   No new laws, government oversight, or international conventions can equal the profound benefits that will come from the incorporation of the bioethics into the veterinary and medical teaching curricula, and into every level of society.

For further reading, see M. W. Fox (2001) BRINGING LIFE TO ETHICS: GLOBAL BIOETHICS FOR A HUMANE SOCIETY. Albany, NY. State University of New York Press.