7 Diseases Animals Share With Humans

PHOTO: A stallion runs across a meadow in Germany in this file photo.

Horses can experience erectile dysfunction, the authors said, but there’s no Viagra-equivalent for them. Instead vets take a more holistic approach.

“I found that veterinarians are more comfortable talking about the sexuality of their animals then physicians sometimes are,” Natterson-Horowitz said. “We are told in medical school to talk with our patients about their sexuality, but sometimes it’s easier to talk to a patient about whether they have chest pain walking up a flight of stairs or not, then immediately getting into their sexual life.”

Through her research, Natterson-Horowitz said stallions not only have been found to experience erectile dysfunction, they can have sexual dysfunction if they were bred too young or have an upsetting first sexual experience with a mare.

“How the foals were raised and how they were introduced to sexuality and how that could have an impact later in life,” she said.

But acknowledging the similarities between humans and animals from a medical perspective does have bigger implications. How does the “Zoobiquity” approach apply, for instance, to the controversial issue of animal testing?

One could argue “Zoobiquity” is an argument for more animal testing, because of the similarities among different species, or “Zoobiquity” could be the basis for a moral argument against animal testing, because we share more in common than we think with the animal kingdom.

Should the Hippocratic Oath — to do no harm — apply to hippos? Natterson-Horowitz refused to say.

“I can’t give you a simple answer,” she said, “because it’s a very complicated, nuanced question.”

But, she argued, doctors and veterinarians should have a lot to teach each other.

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