Through their powers of lateral thinking, veterinary surgeons can play a vital role in identifying solutions to the pressing problems resulting from uncontrolled human population growth, according to Professor Roger Short.
Professor Short is one of the few veterinary surgeons to have been elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of London, in recognition of his distinguished contributions to research on the science of human and animal reproduction.
Giving a public lecture on Royal College Day last month on “the way ahead for the veterinary profession in a warming world”, he said vets have unique skills which will be invaluable when dealing with the twin challenges of over-population and climate change.
A 1954 graduate of the Bristol veterinary school, Prof. Short worked at the University of Cambridge and founded the MRC Reproductive Biology Unit in Edinburgh before moving to Monash University in Melbourne, Australia in 1982.
He explained that his career was shaped by three people: his mother who advised him to apply to become a veterinary student; his first employer in practice who pointed out his failings as a small animal surgeon; and the conservationist Peter Scott, who told him in the 1960s that all efforts to preserve the natural world will be doomed unless human population growth can be curbed.
A veterinary training gives a research scientist tremendous advantages in the search for effective and practical methods for controlling human fertility as it encourages a scientist to think of humans as just another animal – rather than the only animal which is understood by human medical researchers.
“We can run rings around medics because they can’t think laterally. Only we can see the animal in man.”
The biological success of humans has meant that we have now entered a new geological age, dubbed the Anthropocene era by the Nobel Prizewinning Dutch atmospheric scientist Paul Crutzen, Professor Short explained.
This is the era when the lives of all living things are shaped by human activities and began with the Dawn of the Industrial Revolution around 1800. At that stage the global population was about 1 billion, it is now estimated at 6.8 billion and is projected to rise above 9 billion by the year 2050.
Finding ways to feed that many mouths will require revolutionary changes in all aspects of food production. Sadly, there is unlikely to be room in this New World for traditional farming methods or the large animal veterinarians who currently attend to the global livestock industry.
‘All flesh is grass’
Although the concept stated in the Old Testament Book of Isaiah that “all flesh is grass” remains as true today as it was nearly 3,000 years ago, feeding grass to ruminants is a hopelessly inefficient means of generating protein for human nutrition.
Instead it is likely that within 50 years most human food will be derived from synthetic materials produced by bacterial fermentation of plant-based cellulose in the laboratory, he said.
Pessimists may claim that the challenges facing humanity today and into the immediate future will be insoluble but the solution is, in fact, remarkably simple, he suggested.
“We must give the women of the world the powers to control their own fertility. This year is the 50th anniversary of the introduction of the oral contraceptive pill. This technology has already made a massive contribution to preventing unwanted births but it could do so much more,” he continued.
Large scale epidemiological surveys have shown that women who have used the contraceptive pill are less likely to die from a range of conditions such as cancer and ischaemic heart disease than
those that have never used this form of contraception. So it was unfortunate that there is a popular misconception that this technology is a danger to women’s health.
Seen from a veterinarian’s viewpoint, it also seems astonishing that the pill is usually taken in such a way as to maintain the woman’s menstrual cycle. If similar drugs were to be used in a veterinary patient they would be administered continuously throughout the normal cycle.
In developing countries with limited food supplies, this would save women from the considerable energy losses associated with losing up to 100ml during each menstrual cycle, he noted.
But there would also be major health benefits for women in more developed economies. Continuous suppression of the oestrus cycle will save those using oral contraceptive pills from the hazards of nulliparity, he pointed out. It would eliminate the effects of natural hormones on breast, uterine and ovarian tissue which make those women who never undergo pregnancy more vulnerable to developing cancers involving those organs.
Professor Short went on to query whether the Vatican’s opposition to all forms of contraception could be overturned by promoting the pill as a means of preventing cancers in nuns, a group with exceptionally high incidence of those conditions, rather than as a contraceptive option.
Promoting wider use of the contraceptive pill is also likely to have a direct effect on that other threat to human existence – global warming, he said. It has been calculated that every £4 spent on increasing the availability of contraception will save a tonne in carbon dioxide emissions. The same results would require £15 to be spent on expanding wind power production, £31 on solar energy and £58 of hybrid vehicle technology.
Prof. Short noted that the production costs of manufacturing the pill were about two US cents for a month’s supply. “So the cheapest method we have got for preventing global warming will also radically improve the health of women and help them escape from the tyranny of their unwanted fertility.”
He concluded that among the tasks that members of his profession should take on is in lobbying for the contraceptive pill to be taken off prescription and be made available at cost price in pharmacies throughout the world.
He recognised that such a move would be strongly opposed for very different reasons by religious leaders, the medical profession and the drug manufacturers. But he hoped the views of the veterinary profession would have an influence.
“Up vets and at ’em – we need your lateral thinking to save the world!”
