Human healthcare would be much more affordable if it operated on the veterinary model.
'Nails cause problems when they pass through a bovine digestive tract.'
'Well, let's keep them from passing by feeding cows a magnet.'
Problem practically solved.
While we had vets put magnets down cows over the years, my parents were too frugal to let me have one!
There are two primary ways steel gets into the feed supply. A silage chopper can pick it up and cut it into fine bits or a hay baler picks up a stray end of wire and running large bales into a tub grinder to more easily mix feed stocks into a total mixed ration will chop the stray wire (and other parts) into moderately short bits.
Many feed wagons have strong magnets under the discharge chute and grinder/mixers (used to grind grain and supplements) have likewise strong magnets just before the material enters the hammer mill. Despite that some bits will slip by due to the volume of material passing over the magnets as it comes out of the feed wagon.
We do have the vets administer magnets to the heifers we keep at around 9 months of age. One has to watch to be sure they don't work them back up and spit them out! A couple of years ago we had some that did that.
Symptoms of hardware is usually a cow "off feed" meaning she is not coming to the bunk to eat with the rest but usually stands apart and in acute cases will become hunched back. A veterinarian can usually diagnose it with a stethoscope as I think the breathing becomes labored in more acute cases.
Many feed wagons have strong magnets under the discharge chute..
Even though I understand it's 1/r^2 this summoned a vision of a cow magnetically stuck to the discharge tube at her neck, with the head pushed up and mooing unhappily.
I think the force is actually 1/r^4.
The magnetic field is proportional to 1/r^3. But the linear force is not proportional to it. (Rotations are.)
It's 1/r^4 for magnetic dipoles, where both have fixed a fixed dipole moment. So it's 1/r^4 between two permanent magnets.
Where one object is a permanent magnet and the other is some unmagnetized ferromagnetic/paramagnetic piece metal, then the dipole moment of that piece of metal also depends on the distance. Assuming it's proportional to the magnetic field of the other dipole (~1/r^3) then the force is going to be ~1/r^7 for this pair of objects.
Oh, that's right.
But magnetization is famously path-dependent, so now I'm tending to believe the force will be closer to 1/r^7 when moving on the direction of the magnet, but 1/r^4 when moving away. And not exactly any of those functions.
Do you mean that the ferromagnetic material gets magnetized and retains some magnetization while moving away?
Yes.
my parents were too frugal to let me have one!
Your parents wouldn’t let you swallow neodymium magnets?
Now that you have come of age, you can proceed to ingest the damn magnet. Free yourself from the chains (sic) of the patriarchate!
It’s fine if you swallow one. If you swallow two or more then you should probably go to the ER immediately.
I probably didn't state that all that well. If I had really wanted one I'm sure I would have been provided one. It's equally quite possible that since they had to be obtained from a veterinarian that it never occurred to me to ask for one.
OTOH, I did destroy a couple of old radios to get the speaker magnets. If I could go back in time I'd grab those old radios before I'd have a chance to destroy them. Back then they were just that--old radios--with no value and certainly not worth fixing. Sigh...
Frugality first safety second
Honestly it looks fun
Alnico magnets are the same type of magnets used in vintage electric guitar pickups.
That's too bad. My parents were farmers and my dad brought some home one day, even though we no longer had cattle when we lived on our ranch. He thought I'd like to play with them, and he was right! Even my friends who weren't from farm families thought they were cool. I'm going to order some for my kids. These were the classic ones in the 1980's: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_disease#/media/File...
Got one once. Nice strong magnet with an odd shape....you can just imagine it going down the gullet.
I wonder if there is any correlation between cattle containing cow magnets and the strange phenomena of cattle tending to align themselves on a north/south axis.
I'm guessing that the answer is "not much" since deer lineup too and they (probably) don't have magnets in their stomachs.
I still think this deserves the Mythbusters treatment, right?
https://www.npr.org/2009/03/16/101945271/power-lines-upset-c...
I wonder if it's as simple as wanting to catch the most sun hence a north south orientation to expose the flanks and the shadows from high voltage towers interfere with this hence the difference under those towers.
I found the relevant research: https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.0803650105
Furthermore, there was no correlation between the position of roe deer and the time of day when the observation took place, meaning that the position of the sun had no influence on deer orientation.
Although I'm not sure how credible this information is given that they studied google images where who knows what time of day they are taking images at. Maybe there was a correlation.
It should be fairly possible to determine the time an aerial photograph was taken by studying the angle cast by shadows in the photograph.
Thank you! My curious but busy/lazy ass wanted to know the answer but wasn't gonna do the legwork.
This sounds like the likely explanation. Crop rows and greenhouses are generally aligned North-South for the same reason: to maximize direct sun exposure.
I admit that I've never noticed that. They seem to lay whatever direction seems comfortable. In winter time the will lay east-west to catch the most warmth and will often roll on their side to really catch some rays.
Why would a cow magnet settle in the rumen any particular cow related orientation?
This reminds me of the study that concludes dogs shit on north-south orientation (that's why they circle)
I've not read up any studies or papers on this matter. I've lived around farm animals for a large part of my life so I have some anecdotal observations.
From what I've seen, they tend to align themselves into the most pleasant direction depending on the weather conditions of the moment.
- Cold but sunny: Broadside towards the sun
- Wind or rain: back-side towards the direction of origin, heads hung low. So they stand with their butts in the wind to shield their heads against the worst of it.
- Very hot: Butts toward the sun, heads hung low. Often they'll arrange themselves in lines in order to hide in one another's shade.
I've never witnessed them being aligned north-south in a way that can't be explained by the immediate weather conditions.
This was in the southern hemisphere.
Am I the only one who is thinking that cows must feel terrible their whole lives.
That’s one of the reasons why many of us refuse to eat them (or any other animal)
By eating them you shorten the length of time they stay miserable.
"a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food"
By eating them you contribute to the overall demand for new beef, thereby perpetuating the cycle of bovine misery.
Humans are carnivores. Like felines, canines, etc. But it is tough, yes, to be a carnivore when these animals are so lovable and loving. As a beekeeper it's hard to to steal my bees' honey. But... I still do it.
Doesn’t have to be this way though. We’re not obligate carnivores, you can eat no animal product for decades and be just fine.
I think it varies a lot fromncow to cow (and from farm to farm).
I grew up on a (small) farm and we liked them and were fond of them and they seemed to be the same.
Yes, they were absolutely overjoyed when I took them to the pasture at the start of the summer, but no, they didn't seem to bother extremely much when I collected the after the summer.
Letting them out in the spring and seeing these large, generally "lumbering" animals run, hop, and frolic in enjoyment is a scene one never forgets.
I assume they're recovered, cleaned and sterilized, and offered for sale after slaughter.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/295122032671
For your enjoyment.
I'm happy to say that the cow magnets I saw as a kid were more shiny, and (I hope) not used.
I’m getting flashbacks to “drop & run”
My father owned a rural feed store until I was 6 or 7 years old (the early 80's.)
Other than incubators full of chicks and ducklings, and bottle feeding young livestock fresh from auction - swiping cow magnets off the shelf to play with was a favorite pass-time. :)
In those days I can't imagine anyone really cared what happened to the magnets after they went into the cow.
Perhaps something happens in the slaughter house to clear out whatever has gotten into the gut and stomachs - for the sake of meat grinding machinery?
I mean, you don't want the magnets, or any nails or what not they've picked up, to go into any separated products. And separating them from the guts shouldn't be too hard -- they'd be attracted to metal, after all. The question would be how rapidly they degrade.
I think tripe is the only use an industrial abattoir would have for the stomach and that's likely to be handled by a human. My guess is that they have a bucket or something that they put foreign material into.
Hmmm, but I wasn't thinking of pet food: that would probably be ground.
My father worked in a slaughterhouse. The magnets were often recovered in the gut room ( the place where they process guts and hides for the rendering house ). As a result I had/have a pile of these magnets. They actually come in several different forms. I had a few that were covered with some type of plastic and a few others that simply looked like the rough magnets you might find on the back of a fridge magnet just larger. My guess is the farmer would use whatever was actually cheap and available regardless of whether they were "cow magnets".
Cow magnets are great refrigerator magnets! Very cheap, can be used at different angles, and stronger than pretty much any other refrigerator magnet.
The magnets designed for glass whiteboards are arguably too powerful for working as a refrigerator magnet. I was able to pin a 100 page paperback book to the fridge with one of these[1]. For fridges I recommend these[2], which are $8-15 for a ten-pack and plenty strong (plus the shape makes them easy to grab).
1: https://amazingmagnets.com/product-category/large-pawn-magne...
2: https://amazingmagnets.com/product-category/WB-Series-Whiteb...
I feel like in an argumentive mood. I like very strong fridge magnets. They can hold thicker items.
Why do you want to affix thick articles to your fridge door.
Oh, I have a few for just such a reason. I just don't want to unconditionally recommend them to someone without also saying that they are probably overkill.
I also use male-threaded magnets and wingnuts to hold my cable-management pegboard to the bottom of my desk. There I went extra strong because I don't expect them to ever be moved.
A few decades back I fabricated and wired industrial controls. While wiring, we used cow magnets to attach the blueprints to the open cabinet doors so that they were always within sight was we strung wires between PLCs, terminal blocks, relays, buttons, etc.
Even when there were several pages of blueprint stapled together a few cow magnets tended to hold them in place. You just had to be sure to orient them such that they didn’t roll down the door.
I now know what a cow magnet is.
Disappointingly, it's not a magnet that attracts cows.
I've tried so hard to not make a joke about magnets fed to baby chickens, but you pushed me over the edge.
In Australia, a "chick magnet" is a large attention seeking car owned by a young guy. It is intended to attract girls (chicks). It always has a serious stereo, and probably has a modified exhaust.
Young guys spend a fortune on their "chick magnet", presumably to indicate that they could spend a fortune on potential girlfriends. The desired outcome often fails to eventuate - many "chick magnets" are only driven up and down the main street occupied by the single owner and his single friends ;)
In the US a "chick magnet" usually refers to a person who can attract women, but it can also refer to an accessory (including a car) with such a desired purpose.
As well as hardware disease.
I lived in a rural area growing up and it was not uncommon to come across the cow magnets in fields, sides-of-road, and so on. I think I still have a couple of them stowed away somewhere in my pack-ratty shelves. I recall that they were not very strong magnets.
I used to play with them like Rattle Magnets.
https://www.poundfun.com/cdn/shop/files/RattleMagnets.png?v=...
They weren't as fun, but same principle.
A great-uncle had a dairy farm. We played with the magnets too.
My local co-op had them as impulse items at the checkstand. I seem to remember them costing as much as a candy bar, and my parents giving in and getting me a few. IIRC, they were slightly stronger than ceramic magnets, and much less brittle.
Some of my fondest childhood memories are summer visits to my great uncles farm. Playing with a cow magnet in the dirt under the bench grinder in the tractor barn is one of them. I remember them being strong, but I was 10.
I recall that they were not very strong magnets.
I have one on my desk right now, and it’s pretty strong! They’re historically made from Alnico alloys, which were the strongest type of permanent magnet until rare earth magnets were discovered.
How we treat these animals is horrific. We force feed them magnets to counteract the effects of our domination over them.
The thing is cows eat metal while grazing freely too.
I have a background in farming and there has been cases of cows ingesting rather weird things absolutely on their own.
One case I remember hearing about was a cow eating a pack of leftover bolts from construction teams.
Part of the domination I speak of is the pollution of hardware we carelessly leave for other species to suffer from.
How we treat these animals is a blessing compared to how Mother Nature would treat them. We protect them from parasites, bacterial infections, malnutrition, rabies, predators, the weather, physical injuries and yes, ingesting things they’re not supposed to.
I don't know. I feel like a cow without humans is most likely to end up being slowly tear apart by a predator
Maybe we've been wrong all along about toddlers swallowing magnets? ;)
Unfortunately not, some arrangements can pinch together sections of the gut as they pass through and that's a very big problem. No reticulum in toddlers. Rumination is preserved for thoughts only when they get bigger.
Specifically, swallowing ONE magnet is probably fine, since children do not tend to eat metal frequently. Swallowing multiple strong magnets brings the risk of pinching (and necrotizing) sections of the gut.
... and for that kind of rumination, we have therapists to help out.
I guess I still can't read, because I couldn't find the link to their actual products, they are a magnet vendor after all. Very confusing. I had to search for it, but [1] must be linked to somewhere in the article, right?
[1]: https://www.stanfordmagnets.com/alnico-cow-magnets.html
I learned about these accidentally last year and thought they were hilarious, so I bought some here:
https://www.magnetsource.com/collections/cow-magnets-ru-mast...
I'm neither a veterinarian nor a cow, so I don't know how fit for purpose they are, but to me they seem well made.
I don’t imagine it’s an industry that sees much opportunity in converting impulse buyers.
Isn't this dangerous? I'm imagining guts getting punched between a magnet and some metal...
I was thinking that as well, but I think the shape of the magnets have something to do with it.
For human children, swallowing a single magnet is a nuisance, but swallowing more than one is a medical emergency, for exactly that reason.
More than one with some (unknown to me) period between. If swallowed one after the other, I presume they would just stick together without much issue.
This is an unnecessarily verbose way of saying "cows eat random things including metal bits that can kill them, so we have them eat a magnet to catch them".
Then again, it's content marketing. It's written for search engines, not humans.
unnecessarily verbose way
What are you referring to? I just see two words in the title: "Cow Magnets"
I refer to the article's contents
Incidentally, you often put magnets in a hydraulic sump for much the same reason.
That's what this reminded me of too. Very common to have one in the oil pan, transmission pan, and rear axle, often built into the drain plug, to catch metal debris.
"Cow magnets cannot be passed through a cow’s 4th bonivial meta-colon"
Hah, "bonivial meta-colon" does not even resemble any real combination of words. Sure, cows have multiple stomachs, but come on. Now I'm wondering how many joke sentences are mixed in. And I almost believed the bonivial meta-colon because "Stanford" is in the domain name :)
Apparently it’s been there for a while: the Wikipedia talk page for this topic has someone pointing this out in 2009.
This is incidentally why cows can't travel on planes. They always get stopped at the body scanner.
They don't fit through or they can't raise their hands up?
An implication is that, of the metallic debris a cow might ingest, a large fraction of it is magnetizable—otherwise there'd be little point. I wonder, does this feed back into the decisions that are made? Do people deliberately choose magnetizable metals for things that might get broken up in a cow's environment?
Our local hackspace occasionally gets donations from Amazon, often very random things. One time we got a box full of these cow magnets. They're pretty strong, have mostly been used as fridge magnets though
Administer no more than an odd number less than 2!
Dad sold veterinary supplies. We had lots of these to play with. They were the strongest magnets around before modern rare earth magnets came along. Sometimes we used them to clamp steel pieces together prior to welding etc. Lots of uses.
This isn't just about the feed. I once saw the remains of some cattle that got hit by a train and was dumbfounded by the amount of trash they had eaten. You'd be surprised by what they will eat and if the farm is pretty "trashy" that ends up in the cattle as well.
I live by The Thames; for the last few days, we've had magnet fishers on the bank. I gather this crew have fished up a cannon and a sawn-off shotgun, as well as stuff like jewelry.
I'm not going to link to them (Facebook <spit>), but you can search for "Northants magnet fishers".
They all seem to use the same magnets, which look as if they're about 3" diameter, 2" tall cylinders. It seems to require a fair bit of muscle to separate the dredged iron from the magnet. I don't know where they get these magnets.
Related:
Cow Magnets - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10176652 - Sept 2015 (71 comments)
This is why cow tools aren't made of metal.
I had a pair of these growing up, and they're super fun to play with. They have great interactions and make interesting sounds.
“Cancer treatment is expensive.”
“Kill the patient”
Problem practically solved?
Much more affordable, sure, but not better in any other measure.
Vets don't put down animals needlessly, but they do practice medicine closer to engineering.
There's always a cost-benefit calculation, and the answer should never be 'Whatever the cost.'
You think like an insurance company: completely detached from reality.
No, there literally is always a tradeoff, even in human medicine. I was at my doctor's office yesterday because I'm an idiot and injured myself. I asked about the diagnostic advantages of getting an MRI vs an x-ray for the injury (sciatic pain, probably from an injury to my piriformis; don't snowboard on the east coast). The MRI might have provided better diagnostics, but the x-ray (much faster, at lower cost, but at some radiation exposure to me) ruled out the really serious stuff, and the treatment plan was the same regardless. So: Tradeoff. It was, IMO, both financially and ethically better to use the low-resource diagnostic modality instead of tying up the rare and expensive one, even though it gave me a bit of radiation that in an ideal case I wouldn't have had.
For sure. During my mom's cancer treatment, these things came up too. E.g., In going through some options, her neuro-oncologist mentioned one drug, Avastin I think, which would have been something like $100k. In his estimation was unlikely to make any difference in her prognosis, and at best would have been a difference of days of lifespan. She was on Medicare, so it was no cost to us either way, but we all felt like it would have been a waste of money.
At some point during this process it became clear to me that a "whatever the cost" approach is understandable but wrong. We're all going to die. If an intervention can restore somebody to health, to give them years of a good life, that's great. But an awful lot of money is spent on what seemed to me like prolonging the misery. That's not something I want for myself, and it's definitely not something my mom wanted. So as long as there was some hope of more good time, we fought and fought hard. But when hope ran out, we were off to hospice with no regrets. She died peacefully, surrounded by loved ones. It was a much better death than having a lot of futile last-minute interventions.
Speaking of which, if this makes sense to you, make sure your loved ones know your preferences. We had all done living wills years before, and it was such a balm to know exactly what she wanted. I've used Five Wishes for this, and I'm told there are other, possibly better options now too.
It's easy to say that sort of thing, so everyone does. It makes plenty of sense.
People don't want to die in the hospital or go through hell in their last days or weeks.
But nobody wants to die right now, ever. No matter what they said before or what papers they signed.
The standard picture, the logic, makes perfect crystalline sense up until there is a choice between going to the hospital right now and living an undefined amount of time, maybe only a day or a week, but longer than the next few minutes.
Sorry, but this is incorrect:
Plenty of people recognize when it's time. When my mom was diagnosed with glioblastoma, her surgeon said, "This is what you will die from." That's hard to hear, but people can definitely take it on board. To realize that it's not a choice of whether, just how. Take, Brittany Maynard, who had the same thing my mom did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittany_Maynard
I can go as far as agreeing that American culture has a lot of collective anxiety about death, and a consequent refusal to deal with is calmly. But there are plenty of other approaches to that. Like the European movement known as Death Cafe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Cafe
Or the (sadly now defunct) Zen Hospice here in SF: https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-of-zen-hospice-projec...
Many things in our lives can be scary. But we can shape our relationships to them. And given that death comes to all of us, I think it's worth taking the time to get on good terms with it.
My mom (and my brothers and I) chose hospice (cancer) during COVID so she could be with her friends and family in her dying days.
She stopped eating and drinking because she knew it was time. That was a sort of last gift, not having to see her languish for weeks.(although I will never stop being bitter about being unable to have a proper funeral and memorial service).
This is completely false. You’ve clearly not been around dying people with really painful diseases.
I’ve witnessed two elderly people in my family with cancer in severe pain just ride a morphine drip waiting in anticipation for death. The only reason they didn’t euthanize is because it isn’t legal.
The current suicide rates say otherwise
You are interpreting this wrongly. It’s not because there is a cost-benefit that the cost for a high benefit can’t be high.
Healthcare budget is not infinite but in most countries, it’s high enough per operation that, for a given individual, it’s virtually infinite.
Insurance companies don’t care about the benefit, they just want the cost to be low, it’s not the same thing.
I work in healthcare economics and this is false.
There are no healthcare system in the world where the budget is “high enough to be virtually infinite”.
All health systems are all heavily, heavily constrained by budget. The US system is the least constrained (i.e. if you want the latest cancer care paid for, the US is the place with the highest probability it’ll happen), but since there are thousands of insurance plans it’s not even and any two patients may have plans that make different trade offs.
And governments do the very similar math as the insurance companies when it comes to cost-benefit analyses - that’s how they design their benefit offerings.
The difference between systems like Canada (with universal care) and the US is that in Canada the end user doesnt see how the sausage is made.
That’s because the trade offs are the same for everyone and doctors know a given trade off has been made and the technology that is not paid for is just not even brought up to the patient.
Also underappreciated, at the end of the day:
The actuarial calculations don't change because they're concealed behind group-blended risk.If cost of care increases, premiums must increase as well.
No, the reality is that an animal is usually an asset. It costs X to feed and maintain an animal over its life to achieve Y amount of profit from its sale or the sale of its products. If X plus medical costs is greater than Y, you're losing money on this animal.
Tripling the amount you pay the vet does not increase the final profit margin of the animal, so you simply do not. If basic treatment costs more than the animal will generate in its life, you don't treat the animal.
Thinking that any random farm animal is worth infinite medical resources is completely detached from reality. The animal is not worth it. There's not one single reason to pay more to maintain an animal than the money you get out of it. Not in this context.
Vets have an elevated suicide rate, which I ascribe to three factors:
- they can self-prescribe
- they commonly use, unlike human doctors, euthanasia to end suffering
- they became vets because they really like animals, but many owners seem more concerned with their pocketbooks
Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JChwFoCxVC8
From experience with a vet in the family it's very much a 'who the fuck in their right mind would do this?!' type of career to anyone that has the ability to ask a vet their honest opinion about their career choice.
It's literally a medical science degree with a speciality. The same degree that can get you a very highly paid jobs elsewhere yet it doesn't pay that well. You'll likely end up in a poorly paid 24hour live-in clinic with horrible pay and hours surrounded by euthanasia and the associated grief non-stop all the while with those same drugs sitting there. The mortality rate is so horrific that news of another suicide from the graduating year becomes a 'we've lost yet another one' type of statistic.
It's not often you ask someone to give a late teen thoughts on their upcoming career choice and have them rightfully say 'Don't! It's not worth it!' but this literally happened with vet science in my family.
I wonder if this occurs more with small animal vets--"pet vets"?
I know of a number of large animal vets that retired and enjoyed many years of retirement. Perhaps being in the large animal practice where decisions are made on economics and not emotions helps them survive. Those vets also did small animals but it was probably more of a sideline for them.
There's some crazy in equine vet work - the racing side can be a bit brutal with some exposure to criminal elements (not extensive but in places it can be hard to avoid) and the crazy horse lady types can drive vets to drink; these are people that love horses, collect horses, but can't afford to feed them or bear to see them put down, etc.
In general though large animal rural vet work is smoother sailing than the small stuff (from conversations I've had thanks to a farm background and to having developed a bit of animal history recording software for agistment | stud records some decades back).
I had the same experience when doing a career report in junior highschool. I spoke to a vet who had graduated from UC Davis a few years prior and they did everything in their power to talk me out of becoming one.
Yes, and also the human owners are increasingly crazy. As in, they want the same kind of unlimited care a human would get, but don’t want to pay for it and take it out on the vet when presented with the bill.
You never really been Karened until you’ve been crazy cat lady Karened.
They can’t really self-prescribe though, they are not allowed to prescribe drugs to humans. In fact, in many jurisdictions, doctors are legally allowed to self-prescribe.
Perhaps the difference is that vets can both prescribe and dispense drugs, while human doctors often need to have a pharmacist dispense the drugs.
not entirely coincidentally, Corb Lund also has a song about off-label use: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5geefvMDjME
Self-prescription is definitely part of it, but farmers have brutal suicide rates too.
Social isolation + a business where the business often runs counter to your moral preferences = a tough life for both
The "maybe next year" line gets me every time: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRDaPEaDJ7E
Might we interest you in M.A.I.D? (1)
1. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/06/canada-...
Full-disclosure: personally I'm a big supporter of an individual's right to choose to end their own life in a medically-facilitated manner.
There's something weird about letting people who are happy with life (read: society) choose to force someone who isn't to continue living, against their wishes.
Governmemt should not be involved in ending someone's life; Not at their own choosing, nor at forcing them to continue living.
The alternatives then are self service, or private businesses providing assistance? If we want to endorse the former then educating people on the best way to painlessly end their life might be a good idea, the latter though seems like a bad idea with some very badly aligned incentives.
"Cancer is terminal."
"Bankrupt and undignify the patient and their family with needless, hopeless treatment."
Humane, functional american healthcare.
That's not a great analogy. There are plenty of alternative treatments for cancer, and speaking of cattle there were actually Mayo Clinic doctors in the early 1900s using raw milk diets to treat serious conditions including cancer.
A more apt comparison here would be vets throwing pharmaceuticals and radiation at cows who ingested metals rather than a more simple solution intervention.
Veterinary models assume fairly limited lifespans and are economically focused, especially for large animals. If we followed that model it would probably assume no issues past 65 matters, because death and retirement would be the same. Also any issue that costs more to treat than the remaining economic output of that person would result in a trip to the glue factory.
Animals often have relatively short lifespans. For cows its about 2 years for beef and 6 years for dairy. Would these methods work for animals that live more than a decade?
Auguste Escoffier said that 2 years was much too young; you couldn't make good beef stock from such young bones. He said that you had to go to France to get 5-year-old stock bones, the British slaughtered them too young. This was in the early 20thC.
And what influence has the esteemed M. Escoffier's treatise had on the modern ranching industry?
What, he couldn't get an old dairy cow or something for his stock pot?
USDA graded beef is 30-42 months. 3 years +/- 0.5.
Veterinary models also assume that the subject can't sue you.
A note on terminology. Where I come from, at leat, a "cow" is a mature female breeding animal. We'd expect at least ten years out of such an animal, barring any unforeseen circumstances. A young, immature female would be referred to as a heifer. When the "cows" "calve" each year, obviously some of the calves are male and some are female. Most of the males will be castrated at a young age, for the purpose of preventing testosterone from negatively impacting the musculature in relation to meat quality. A castrated bull is referred to as a steer. A steer will almost certainly be raised for slaughter, and for that particular animal, an 18-24 month lifespan is a good estimate. A heifer may either be raised for slaughter, or may be added to the breeding herd. So their lifespan depends. Then there are bulls, who are males who are left intact. These are relatively rare, and their lifespans are shorter than a "cow," because their main purpose is breeding and they become less effective at that job over time. But longer than an animal that's sent to slaughter. Maybe 6 years or so. But the bulls probably don't affect the average too much.
There's also an acceptance in the veterinary profession, partly because of the economics that you describe, that 75% effectiveness at 25% of the cost is a good deal.
Yet for people medicine that's anathema.
Instead, we hide the cruel economic reality behind intermediaries (insurance companies, public hospitals, etc.) and then are shocked when it still leaks out.
No country without infinite money can afford to spend whatever it takes, on everyone, forever.
For livestock, yes. For pets, not so much. People spend stupid amounts of money on their pets and expect results.
What do you call a veterinarian that only treats a single species?
A medical doctor.
The vet that I went to only handled cats. Every vet in that practice was a cat specialist, every room was designed with cats in mind, and everyone who worked the front desk was a cat lover themselves.
While the joke is there, there are single species veterinary practices.
https://catcareclinic.net
https://citydogvet.com
Plus of course all of the horse specialists, particularly around the racing industry.
And no one can talk to a horse, of course.
hmm, but there are whisperers.
Wait, what? Have you actually seen Mr Ed on a broadcast medium?
Human healthcare is pretty affordable when it's not absurdly misinsentivized and mismanaged.
Is it too much to ask for that I want to be the customer paying the treatment, instead of the insurance agency? Put the incentives where they count.
You can, if you can afford it. Few can afford emergencies.
Make an appointment at a VA clinic
Wrong kind of vet.
Golly Gump swallowed a fly