One Health Initiative

You have to read pretty carefully to find it, but there is is, in the recent front page article of the Philadelphia Inquirer about groundbreaking research regarding the administration of oxygen to patients suffering cardiac arrest: "Studies in dogs and in premature infants have long shown that too much oxygen can be harmful."

The gist of the article is just that: that even though it may seem counter intuitive, too much oxygen after sudden cardiac arrest can actually do more harm than good. But my point is not about the information but rather about how they arrived at the information: from studies in dogs (and premature infants). And note the use of the wording "long shown;" in other words, these studies have been around for a while.

There is simply no getting around the fact that human health and animal health are inextricably linked. Which is why I was so delighted to learn that the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine has joined the "One Health" initiative to advance research and knowledge of both human and animal health. "One health (formerly called One Medicine) is dedicated to improving the lives of all species--human and animal--through the integration of human medicine and veterinary medicine," reads the vision statement.

This can only be beneficial if schools like Penn continue to advance knowledge and research across species by encouraging and supporting collaboration between colleagues who might not always work together. Case in point. The genesis of some of the collaboration in oncology that is going on at Penn came about because a vet student happened to attend grand rounds presented by a human oncologist. He made the point that the Vet School has "patients" too that often presented with many of the same symptoms that doctors were seeing in their human cancer patients.

One of the oncologists I interviewed admitted that prior to that student telling him that the Vet School had patients, he never thought about the similarities, but once he did, it became so very obvious that the two professions had to work together.

The name of the game going forward for health advances has to be cooperation by professionals across species because we all share the same environment. Read more about the One Health Initiative on their web site and see if you don't start seeing more and more references to animal health in human medical research.