About three months ago, I commented on an essay in Newsweek by a veterinary oncologist who, among other things, said that “pet owners routinely rack up $10,000 bills” to save the lives of their pets. As I said at the time, that vet doesn’t service pets and their owners in my neighborhood, where few of us struggling middle-class folks have that kind of cash laying around. And with our own health concerns to worry about, it’s unlikely we’d want to dig ourselves that deep into debt for a pet. Evidently, the claim that spending that much on a pet’s health is done routinely says a lot about the socioeconomic status of the veterinarian who wrote the essay, her clientele, and the Newsweek editors who evidently didn’t find the claim extraordinary.
At the time, I didn’t have any real data to back me up – just some common-sense notion of the economic challenges and the priorities people around me work with to meet those challenges.
Turns out I was pretty spot-on with my comments that time, at least according to an Associated Press-Petside.com poll.
The AP and Petside Reports that “Money is a huge consideration in pet care“:
All pet owners hate to think about it, but when the family pet gets sick, money matters.
For Nancy Gates, whose dog, Arabella needed a $500 heart surgery, the only option was to put her dog down.
“It was pretty straight forward because I had four young children to feed. The vet said surgery was my only option. I did not want my dog to suffer,” said Gates, 41, who lives in Cotati, about 50 miles north of San Francisco.
Money is something to consider for the majority of pet owners dealing with animal health care, according to a new AP-Petside poll.
Most pet owners, 62%, say they would be likely to get vet treatment if the bill exceeded $500. But for a bill of $1,000, that figure drops to 42%. If the cost is $2,000, 35% would pay, and if the cost reaches $5,000, 22% would foot the bill.
A longer report, issued by the AP, reports that many people are painfully aware of the economic pressures pushing them to choose euthanasia for their pets over costly medical treatment.
Why bring this up? As I’ve mentioned in several blog entries, a common platitude used by euthanasia proponents goes something like this: “When our pets are dying and in pain, we give them a merciful death; Why do we force humans to suffer?”
It’s an emotionally compelling argument – one used recently by Philadelphia writer Mary Shaw, who wrote an essay filled with misinformation about Kevorkian (i.e. the people who died at his hands were terminally ill). Naturally, something that inaccurate ended up being disseminated to many online publications – Salon.com, Alternet, and thepeoplesvoice.org, to name just a few.
Mixed in with the pile of misinformation about Kevorkian and the pro-assisted suicide movement was this:
When a pet becomes ill to the point where it is near death and suffering uncontrollably, a veterinarian will not think twice before recommending that the pet be euthanized, to put the animal out of its misery.
So why do we treat our dying pets with more mercy than we treat our dying people?
As I’ve written here, here, here and here – rather than being an argument, this is a distortion of why pets are euthanized by their owners. Only a small fraction are suffering painfully from an incurable disease that is killing them. Economic factors are more common – the pet becomes incontinent, harming rugs, furniture and floors or – as the recent poll indicates – we just can’t afford to spend the money on the kind of medical treatment the pet needs.
So the next time someone makes an argument that we should treat our loved ones – parents, grandparents, etc. – more like animals – just think about what that really means. And then ask the person who made the argument if that means that we should have our loved ones euthanized if they become incontinent or the medical care they need is too expensive – since that is how we treat our animals. –Stephen Drake
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08/01/24:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/08/01/opinion/letters-to-the-editor-dog-and-human-euthanasia-end-of-life/
Re “She kept her gravely ill dog alive. Was that animal cruelty?” (Opinion, July 23): As a potential severely ill and disabled person (aren’t we all?), I feel threatened by the idea that it could be a crime to keep a dog alive. If the law holds that a dog that “had bed sores, an open wound, and couldn’t stand or walk” would be better off dead, can such judgments about people be far behind?
Felicia Nimue Ackerman
Excellent points Stephen. I actually think we should *welcome* this argument from euthanasia proponents because it brings clarity to the true issues. The last paragraph of your post says it all.
Those of us who oppose assisted suicide *agree* that the same motivations that lead us to euthanazing our pets is motivating us as a society to consider “assisted suicide” of those dependent upon us. Those motivations, however, are not “compassion” and “dignity”. The motivations have more to do with the desire to spare ourselves the financial and emotional cost of care & treatment which we do not arbitrarily consider commensurate with the “quality of life” remaining for the person who is very ill and/or very disabled.
Yes, we do not want our dogs to suffer when we put them down. That is always the last comment we say out loud when we make that sad choice. What we do not say, but ultimately know, however, is that we are also making a decision to *not* pursue costly treatments and procedures that would allow our pets to be comfortable until they die naturally. This is a very reasonable judgement for us to make for our dogs & cats but we should all run away from applying it to those human beings who are dependent upon us (Yes, I am a speciest!)