The first chapter of this book describes how Barbara Natterson-Horowitz (who I’ll be referring to as Dr. NH for brevity), a human cardiologist, got mixed up in this whole animal debate. In 2005, she got called into the LA Zoo to treat a tamarin monkey for some heart troubles. She approached the monkey as she would a human patient: calmly, eye contact, and speaking to her. To Dr. NH’s surprise, the on-call vet warned her to not look at the monkey that way, as it could trigger capture myopathy. Capture myopathy is a vet term for when a surge of adrenaline in an animal’s heart, eventually leading to death. Immediately, Dr. NH thought that sounded familiar, and she was right. About 30 years after vets identified capture myopathy, human cardiologists named the same condition “Takotsubo” in humans. Why did veterinarians figure this out first, she wondered.
As Dr. NH dug deeper, she realized that vets and human doctors overlooked not just this condition, but a plethora of others. After reaching out to Kathryn Bowers (a scientific journalist and the co-author of this book), the two started to uncover “the astonishing connection between human and animal health,” as it had been overlooked for so long.
The introduction of this book is a fantastic way to ease readers into the next 300-odd pages. It’s fun, engaging, and quickly shows the unfortunate consequences of separating humans from our fellow creatures… and how promising it could be to look at human health from a more primal angle.
PS here’s a little Tamarin Monkey to warm the heart:
