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Cat Organ Transplants
sophie baines writes "Vets have given their approval for cats to have kidney transplants in the UK-despite ethical concerns about the procedure.
Liverpool University is believed to be one of the few veterinary teaching centres around the country to have the advanced specialist equipment needed to carry out the operation."
It's a cat! I've got two cats. While I will certainly agree that they have a mind of their own (and for some reason think that the best place to be is underfoot while I'm walking in the morning), but consent??? It's a cat...
"Mr. Whiskers, this is a risky operation with potential complications. It is entirely possible that you could die due to this surgery. I still advise you to have it done, as your organs are failing and you won't live much longer without a transplant. We have a ready donor, do you give your consent for this transplant to be done?"
"Meow."
Boggling what people will do to have a cause.
Grimwell - old, cranky, mean, obsessive
That's discrimination that is
>>particularly over the issue of choice and consent
We decide for them where they go, what they eat, when to bath, push them away when we want.
We let them locked inside when there's nobody home, we decide when and why they lose their reproductive abilities. If they need medication, we push it inside their throats.
Yeah, like people care for choice and consent from cats.
What kind of freedom is that?!
So, how do you get replacement cat kidneys? Do you wait until a suitable donor dies of natural causes, or do you just butcher the first one that will work?
Or do you want me to harvest the kidneys of your precious kittens without your permission?
What some people will say to complain about people with a cause...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Its interesting that people would see fit to spend generous wads of cash on extending the life of a cat by a couple of years. I wouldve thought that the cost of this would be prohibitively expensive... for the average owner as well as the average cat :)
I also wonder how someone can justify paying this sort of money... thinking of the starving children, etc, etc. Maybe a compulsory tour of a human hospital to look at lack of funding might be in order for people that would pay for this...
those who control the past, control the future. those who control the present, control the past.
... my sister is a vet who was working at the University of Florida, Gainseville teaching centre. She's performed the procedure several times. Successfully, too!
"Yeah, well, Dracula called and he's coming over tonight for you and I said okay."
at first I thought this was an article about can organs being donated to humans.
this is not a sig.
Steve Austin. Astronaut. A cat barely alive.
... stronger ... faster.
Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world's first bionic cat. Steve Austin will be that cat. Better than he was before. Better
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
She's still with me. I made a choice based on my earnest belief that I had a chance to help a creature who was in need. I probably wouldn't have made this choice for a stray, choosing first to support the 'higher issues' that people are referring to here- other people, for example. And if she hadn't lived, I still believe that it would have been worth it. Why? Because I couldn't live with the thought that I had let her die without trying. That's why these people will pay for these transplants.
Part guilt, part love. I know my time with her is limited. Eventually, her hips will give out due the calcification there, and her fused-from-the-middle-down spine won't give her the flexibility to work around it. and the hours of physical therapy i've done with her- yeah, I know, physical therapy for a cat- won't be able to make up for it, and to ease her discomfort she'll be put to sleep. But in the meantime, she fell asleep with her head on my arm last night. She won't last till they have replacement parts. Too many things wrong. But how do you look at an animal that you've accepted into your family- and that's the key moral issue for most people- and deny them treatment that might let them live?
it isn't necessarily right, but we make our choices based on what affects us closest to home first. It takes a lot of guts and perspective to accept those other issues out there- poverty, hunger, disease, the ecological state of our planet- as part of our own household.
Just some thoughts; feel free to pick apart and disagree.
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
Feline kidney transplants have been performed in the USA for a while now, in a number of locations. I read about a hospital in Florida, perhaps the same one referenced by the poster above.
I recently had one of my cats euthanized for chronic renal failure (he had a blood clot in his legs and tail and couldn't walk, among other things) and I learned how some people spent thousands of dollars to transplant kidneys or perform regular dialysis.
I didn't read about any particular ethical concerns, just the vets shrugging and saying "if you really want to do it, and you have the money, it's possible".
But my belief is that 1) it's just a cat, you'll get over any grief; and 2) there comes a point when treating your pet that you are no longer doing it *for* the animal, you're doing it *to* the animal for your own selfish wishes. At that point it's better to euthanize.
A cat with transplanted kidneys will never be the same anyway, he will have to take constant
immunosuppressants and other drugs just to stay alive, and will have constant complications and will not be a very happy cat.
My $0.02 as a cat lover.
As another comment said, you could just butcher the first one that matches. Who decides that one cat is more valueable than the other ?
If you "repair" your cat at the cost of another cat, I feel that it isn't seen as a living beeing, but as a thing.
And in the end, a cat isn't afraid of death. It is your egoism to keep something that you own.
yea I didnt really understand the whole "ethical issue" at first til I read more.. I thought they meant that it was a very dangerous procedure!
ethical issues about consent for a cat are ridiculous. You're effectively a parent to a creature which cant make sophisticated choices like this. People get surgery on their kids every day. A good example is surgery to detach conjoined twins from each other. Sometimes its medically unnecessary, and nobody asks the kids (when theyre young that is).
So whats better: "Mr Johnson, we can give your cat a kidney transplant, but we wont be liable if he sues!" or "Mr Johnson, Im sorry.. we have to kill your cat."
You have GOT to be kidding. What kind of whacko would plunk down money for surgery on a cat that probably cost at most, what, twenty bucks? Sounds like time for Kitty to ride the needle. Nighty night!
I am Law! You are Crime!
That is compassion. That is what separates us from the wild.
Take care of your kitty and love her while you can. And do the same for her as you would do for anything else you love. Put yourself in her place.. you may want to give her the put down yourself, so you can comfort her as she goes - as she would not want to die in some vetrinary hospital full of pain and strange and frightening noises she has no idea what is. I know I certainly would rather pass along peaceably in known surroundings with those I love.
I had to put down my dog. The mistake I made is I took him to the vet. He died there with the doctor poking and probing him. I still regret doing this to him. I wish so bad I had just left him under his favorite tree in the back yard to finish his existence. I swore to myself on that day should I ever get another dog, I am going to have the correct euthanasia on hand just in case anything goes wrong so serious as to warrant it, so he won't have to suffer. I guess I feel that way because as a kid, I watched an old hunting dog "make his last hunt". It was not a pretty sight. Everyone knew the dog had to go - arthritis had eaten him alive. But there was no need for that. It took several minutes for the blood loss to take away the pained consiousness of the terrified dog. Never again. Not if I have any say in it.
If I could make a suggestion - dig your hole and plant a pretty tree on top of your friend. You will know that your friend now lives on as part of the tree. Life to Life.
I am anubi here - but I post as AC to drop below the filters. I know you, SolemnDragon, will note it because it will show up in your logs.
Cats aren't able to tell others that "Hey I'm in constant excruciating pain here, let me die" so how do you know that keeping it alive is the best thing for it? What if you are just enabling it to live an extra day filled with nothing but pain?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Because her whole attitude changes when she's suffering. She DID have serious pain. She stopped playing, stopped purring, and stopped being interested in her food. Now she purrs, plays, and expresses preferences betwen types of foods quite cheerfully.
I think people underestimate exactly how much one learns when living in close concert with other creatures. So long as she's interested in life- interested in interacting with the world around her, and i don't mean whether she's bored... if her eyes get that glassy listless look, her coat gets dull, and she mewls in pain when she moves, that's when i'll know she's hurting most. Until then, we deal with day-to-day pains as they come up, and she seems really interested in life and living and the world around her.
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
Human cloning has been outright abolished, so until the people that consider it a "moral dilema" I won't be getting a new pair of lungs from my spare parts body anytime soon.
But this has the potential of generating a lot of money for cloning and stem cell research. Already there is a lot of pet cloning going on (although at the 6 figure price tag I won't be cloning my kitty anytime soon) Hopefully this will create a demand for cloned pet parts which will have the direct effect of funding research in these areas.
Hmm, Chia Kidney, just add water and watch it grow.