Questions? June 17, 2008 5:57 am
Posted by tungtide in Uncategorized.trackback
If nobody’s going to ask any questions I’m going to start talking to myself.
Anyone interested in drug interactions and herbal supplements? I can talk about that for hours.
imemerson
tungtide
Bret
Since questions often beget questions, let’s start with something general. To each of our various scienticians:
What would you say is the most promising research going on in your field today, both with respect to technological advancements (which will eventually affect the general public) and with respect to broadening our general knowledge of science (which the general public probably doesn’t care about)?
I am probably supposed to email these questions so you can answer in a new post, but I want Dave to feel happy about getting a comment.
I’m happy to get questions in comment form, email, or carrier pigeon (although most people reading this don’t know where I live). In fact, I’m all warm and fuzzy just from getting a comment…wait, why am I wearing this sweater?… … … that might explain the warm and fuzzy.
I’ll take a little time to think about my answer and post something in the next day or two. Perhaps Brandon or Bret will have something to add before that.
An interesting question…
There is continuous research involving various medical and surgical treatment advances for all species as they pertain to the individual animal. Everything from new surgical approaches to advanced internal medicine, oncology, chemotherapy, etc. These developments and population studies are what have helped veterinary medicine evolve over the decades.
That being said, I would say the most significant focus of study currently involves the public health realm and potential spread of infectious and zoonotic disease. Veterinarians are critical in first line recognition and treatment of various diseases that can directly and indirectly affect humans. Everything from food safety (E coli, salmonella, listeria, campylobacter) to highly pathogenic diseases that can be transferred from animals to humans and vice versa (avian influenza, SARS, plague, tuberculosis, anthrax, rabies, west nile virus, etc.) are potentially devistating diseases for the human population. History proves this over and over again, but we are becoming more prepared every year to deal with the next threat to people.
Not only is our health at risk but so is our economy. New advances, vaccines and antibiotic developments are protecting our food supply by improving animal health and thus productivity. Being able to eliminate diseases like foot-and-mouth disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, rinderpest, etc. from our animal population gives us international clout and a political upper-hand with other countries, but that’s another discussion entirely and more politics than strict science.
So what all of this is coming down to is this: The USDA’s efforts to have a national animal identification system (NAIS) to be able to trace animals back to their point of origin and to any physical premesis they occupied at any time. If there were to be a disease outbreak this would allow immediate ability to quarantine the appropriate populations (animal and potentially human) and hopefully stop the spread. While these are fairly political and legislative points, they are all based on firm scientific principles of disease etiology, transmission and epidemiology, and are supervised by experts in the field.
Oh, and I could go on and on about herbal supplements in animals and various problems with those…bring it on!
Here’s a question for Bret and Dave. Have there been any significant changes to farm animals’ biology and behavior in the last few decades due to the increased use of growth hormones? Could our interference actually change or speed up their evolution as a species?
Hey Bret, aren’t you supposed to be a contributing author? You should be able to make your own posts instead of just commenting on the ones in place.
Yeah I’m still getting the hang of the website. They’ll come….
Tungtide,
How about Model Based Drug Development? I think population PK has heped in understanding the PK of compounds in patient population. Even with few plasma samples, one can get estimates of population parameters like Clearance, Volume of distribution and the effect of covariates like age, weight, genotypes across various studies. I totally agree with you on the impact of “omics” in drug discovery and development!