Learn about “Zoobiquity”
(The April 23 Compassionate Living Tip from Interfaith Paths to Peace)
Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, a cardiologist at the UCLA
Medical Center, coined the term "zoobiquity" to describe the idea of
looking to animals and the doctors who care for them to better understand human
health. Veterinary medicine had not been on her radar at all until about 10
years ago. That's when she was asked to join the medical advisory board for the
Los Angeles Zoo and she began hearing about "congestive heart failure in a
gorilla or leukemia in a rhinoceros or breast cancer in a tiger or a lion."
Natterson-Horowitz
explores the connection between human and veterinary medicine in a book she
co-authored with Kathryn Bowers, Zoobiquity: The Astonishing Connection
Between Human and Animal Health. "This
comparative way of thinking is something that veterinarians learn from their
first week of veterinary school," she tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "When they learn about
the heart, they learn about a four-chambered heart in a mammal and a
three-chambered heart in a reptile and a two-chambered heart in a fish. ...
Physicians, we don't learn that way. We don't think that way."
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