Zoobiquity Read Online Free Page B
Author: Barbara Natterson-Horowitz
the overlaps in the ways animals protect and defend their territories—and how and why we humans create borders, castes, kingdoms, and prisons. It dangles the possibility that human parenting could be informed by a greater knowledge of how our animal cousins solve issues of child care, sibling rivalry, and infertility.
Of course, human beings are unique as a species. Contained in our mere 1.4 percent genetic difference from chimpanzees are the physical, cognitive, and emotional features responsible for Mozart, the Mars rover, and the study of molecular biology itself. But the magnificent glare of this crucial but tiny percentage blinds us to our 98.6 percent sameness. Zoobiquity encourages us to look away, for a moment, from the obvious yet narrow range of differences and embrace the many enormous similarities.
Sadly, Spitzbuben the tamarin later died—not, I hasten to add, because of my attempt to befriend her. After her necropsy (the term for an animal autopsy), I took a slide of some of her heart cells to one of the most respected cardiac pathologists in the country, a colleague of mine at UCLA, Michael Fishbein.
As we peered through Fishbein’s microscope, I noted how the damaged heart muscle cells seemed ensnared and strangled by the surrounding tissue. I felt a jolt of dreadful recognition as I spotted familiar-looking pink and purple shapes illuminated in the glaring white circle of the microscope’s frame. Although the abnormal cardiac cells belonged to a furry, tailed tree dweller, they were essentially identical to human heart cells with the disease.
But this was more than a cellular display of our common ancestry with animals. The patterns illustrated a simple fact well known to veterinarians but unknown or ignored by modern physicians. Animals and humans share a vulnerability to the same infections, illnesses, and injuries.
As he had done so many times before with human heart specimens, Fishbein studied the slide carefully before he spoke. “Cardiomyopathy,” I recall him observing. “Could be viral—looks just like a human’s.”
His phrase contained the essence of zoobiquity. Undistracted by fur and a tail, we saw, under that microscope, not “heart disease in a tamarin” but, rather, “heart disease in a primate”—gorilla, gibbon, chimpanzee, tamarin … or human.
As I heard Fishbein’s words, my single-species focus officially died. Emerging in its place was zoobiquity, a connecting,
species-spanning
approach to the diagnostic challenges and therapeutic puzzles of clinical medicine. I would never look at another heart, human or animal, the same way again.
* One of Virchow’s most illustrious students was the Canadian doctor William Osler, revered by American medical students as a father of modern medicine. What’s less well known to physicians is that veterinarians also consider Osler a father of their profession. He was a key advocate for the comparative method and influential in shaping what became McGill University’s School of Veterinary Medicine in Montreal.
† One of the first modern efforts at unification came in the 1960s from the eminent veterinary-epidemiologist Calvin Schwabe, who is regarded as a pioneer of this field.
‡ The movement has gone by several different names over the years, including comparative medicine and One Medicine.
TWO
The Feint of Heart
Why We Pass Out
An urban hospital’s emergency room only occasionally resembles its television doppelgängers on shows like
Grey’s Anatomy
and
House, M.D
. Yes, we do see those whirlwinds of frantic activity around gunshot wounds, heart attacks, and drug overdoses. But in between come the calmer, less grim interludes. They arrive in the form of familiar characters: the hypochondriac, the overly vigilant parent, and, of course, the fainter.
As trivial as it might seem, fainting—what doctors call syncope—is so prevalent that it accounts for 3 percent of ER visits and 6 percent of hospitalizations in the
Of course, human beings are unique as a species. Contained in our mere 1.4 percent genetic difference from chimpanzees are the physical, cognitive, and emotional features responsible for Mozart, the Mars rover, and the study of molecular biology itself. But the magnificent glare of this crucial but tiny percentage blinds us to our 98.6 percent sameness. Zoobiquity encourages us to look away, for a moment, from the obvious yet narrow range of differences and embrace the many enormous similarities.
Sadly, Spitzbuben the tamarin later died—not, I hasten to add, because of my attempt to befriend her. After her necropsy (the term for an animal autopsy), I took a slide of some of her heart cells to one of the most respected cardiac pathologists in the country, a colleague of mine at UCLA, Michael Fishbein.
As we peered through Fishbein’s microscope, I noted how the damaged heart muscle cells seemed ensnared and strangled by the surrounding tissue. I felt a jolt of dreadful recognition as I spotted familiar-looking pink and purple shapes illuminated in the glaring white circle of the microscope’s frame. Although the abnormal cardiac cells belonged to a furry, tailed tree dweller, they were essentially identical to human heart cells with the disease.
But this was more than a cellular display of our common ancestry with animals. The patterns illustrated a simple fact well known to veterinarians but unknown or ignored by modern physicians. Animals and humans share a vulnerability to the same infections, illnesses, and injuries.
As he had done so many times before with human heart specimens, Fishbein studied the slide carefully before he spoke. “Cardiomyopathy,” I recall him observing. “Could be viral—looks just like a human’s.”
His phrase contained the essence of zoobiquity. Undistracted by fur and a tail, we saw, under that microscope, not “heart disease in a tamarin” but, rather, “heart disease in a primate”—gorilla, gibbon, chimpanzee, tamarin … or human.
As I heard Fishbein’s words, my single-species focus officially died. Emerging in its place was zoobiquity, a connecting,
species-spanning
approach to the diagnostic challenges and therapeutic puzzles of clinical medicine. I would never look at another heart, human or animal, the same way again.
* One of Virchow’s most illustrious students was the Canadian doctor William Osler, revered by American medical students as a father of modern medicine. What’s less well known to physicians is that veterinarians also consider Osler a father of their profession. He was a key advocate for the comparative method and influential in shaping what became McGill University’s School of Veterinary Medicine in Montreal.
† One of the first modern efforts at unification came in the 1960s from the eminent veterinary-epidemiologist Calvin Schwabe, who is regarded as a pioneer of this field.
‡ The movement has gone by several different names over the years, including comparative medicine and One Medicine.
TWO
The Feint of Heart
Why We Pass Out
An urban hospital’s emergency room only occasionally resembles its television doppelgängers on shows like
Grey’s Anatomy
and
House, M.D
. Yes, we do see those whirlwinds of frantic activity around gunshot wounds, heart attacks, and drug overdoses. But in between come the calmer, less grim interludes. They arrive in the form of familiar characters: the hypochondriac, the overly vigilant parent, and, of course, the fainter.
As trivial as it might seem, fainting—what doctors call syncope—is so prevalent that it accounts for 3 percent of ER visits and 6 percent of hospitalizations in the
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