The last portion of this book I want to cover has to do with cancer and DNA… not exactly the kind of *fun* note you want to end on, but hey it’s important.
One of the “grabbing” points on the back of this book is that even dinosaurs got cancer, and today that disease is still a primary hitman for mother nature. Although evolution has evolved to accommodate greater variation (thanks to 2n DNA strands and more sexual reproduction rather than asexual), it’s still a huge problem, that can even be in higher proportion in certain groups. A very common example of this is the higher rate of breast cancer in Ashkenazi Jew women. However, even more than any of the parts of this book, Dr. NH emphasizes that collaboration between vets and animals is already benefitting patients. In fact, in 2009 a team of vets and human doctors successfully created a vaccine for malignant melanoma for doggos based off of healthy human cells!! And yet, according to some of Dr. NH’s friends, leading oncologists never consider cancers in the *natural world* when treating their own human patients.
In almost all of these chapters, it’s incredibly clear that doctors, patients, vets, and animals could all be benefitting from some sort of collaboration, either with money, ideas, or actual treatments. Our society focuses on cancer a lot- rightfully so. Don’t we owe it to every patient to give them their best fighting chance, biases aside?