Vets asked whether prostheses for pets is morally right

The technology exists to replace limbs and body parts of cats and dogs but vets should ensure that using this technology is in the best interests of the animal, Veterinary Ireland’s annual conference has heard.

Prof Noel Fitzpatrick, the Co Laois-born vet whose work has been showcased by BBC's Bionic Vet and Channel 4's The Supervet, was addressing some 245 vets and veterinary nurses at the three-day conference in Galway.

The neuro-orthopaedic surgeon achieved a world first when he provided bionic paws for a cat called Oscar who lose his two hind paws in an accident with a combine harvester.

Prof Fitzpatrick said it was possible to give animals new legs, feet, knees and shoulders but the moral and ethical implications must be considered.He asked if it was morally right to do a hip replacement on a 13-year-old Labrador who wouldn’t live for another year or to replace a limb on a young animal with cancer who wouldn’t survive another six months.

Prof Fitzpatrick said ego sometimes took over, or vets could come under pressure from the pets’ owners who naturally wanted to prolong their pets’ lives for as long as possible.

“It’s not enough to be able to do something from a medical perspective - it must be the right thing to do in each and every case for that animal and for that family at this moment in time,” he said.

Speaking after the conference, Prof Fitzpatrick also said lessons learned by vets should be used by doctors to help advance further pioneering treatments in the future. Drugs, medical devices and implants must be tested on thousands of animals before being used in a human, but he said animals were not benefitting from the advances they had facilitated.

Prof Fitzpatrick said there was no need to kill so many animals through experiments for human medicine when vets had already pioneered these procedures on their patients and could show they worked.

“Why are we reinventing the wheel?” he asked. He said it was understandable that no one wanted their child to get a heart stent that had not been trialled first, but if a procedure had been successfully carried out hundreds of times on animals, why must the procedure then be trialled on hundreds of animals who did not need it, just so it could be approved for humans.

He said he had set up the Humanimal Trust to advance animal and human healthcare together through shared ideas and technology "where both species truly benefit, not just humans benefiting at the expense of animals".