Comment by lbenes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lbenes | Hacker News Reader

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This is terrible advice. Whether it's for your own heath or your pet's you should always educate yourself. Doctors/veterinarian are heavily influenced by drug/pet supply companies. From her first days veterinary school, my girlfriend was constantly lobbied and given perks and educational material from the industry. It's not that she's not a good vet, but the system is corrupt.

In the case of my grandfather, multiple times we caught the doctor prescribing expensive prescriptions when more effective generics were available. In the case of my dog, my local vet pushes for Purina pet food[1] and vaccines when my doc is regularly titered. She is oblivious or fails to acknowledge the risks of a Lyme Vaccine carries [2] and serious allergic reactions that her recommended flea control can cause.

The only way to guarantee the best health care for yourself and your pet, is to educate yourself.

[1] http://www.aplusflintriverranch.com/define-menufoods-petfood...

[2] http://www.alldogsgym.com/health-and-nutrition/articles/heal...

I still remember my vet having recommended opening my cat up (at a cost of thousands), with big chance for dying, for a sickness the vet couldn't figure out that my cat recovered on her own after we decided to let her come home and die with us instead. The vet said it was urgent because she wouldn't eat but actually our cat just needed a bit more attention when being fed while sick. She recovered after I took a day off and fed her a biscuit by hand the whole day, every 5 or 10 minutes.

This is a single anecdote. This kind of thing happens with human doctors, lawyers, auto mechanics, and even engineers.

With incomplete information, you sometimes make an incorrect diagnosis. It doesn't reflect the overall value of the profession.

Your cat could just as easily have died, and from the experience of dating a vet for many years, I can tell you that they very often do.

I am not saying don't educate yourself. I am saying don't self medicate, which is what this site is encouraging ( wither it means to or not ).

For every story you have about a bad experience with a doctor or vet, any medical professional can recount to you hundreds of accounts of people who worsened their condition by either ignoring the advice of their "corrupt" doctor or by self medicating. Find yourself a good vet ( one who went to a good school and did an actual residency at a hospital ) and follow their advice.

Education is of course always good. Just make sure that you're getting an education based on amassed scientific evidence, and not anecdotes, sampling bias, or low-quality studies in general.

The best combination is still a properly educated patient (or in this case, pet owner) and a good doctor/veterinarian.

Purina pet food is the highest quality, not crazy expensive pet food out there (but is owned by Nestle). Your source points out that many suppliers were impacted in 2007 - in fact all most all of the premium dog foods were impacted.

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