37. The recognition of animals as patients – the frames of veterinary medicine
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The aim of this paper is to investigate in the social frames that determine veterinary practice in different ways. In veterinary ethics, the focus is often directed tripartite structure of veterinarian – owner – animal. But this triad turns out to be embedded in wider structures that build the implicit basis for a differential treatment of different animals. Hence, they pre-determine the triadic clinical encounters. Sophisticated technologies like blood donation, renal transplants, prostheses, etc. are provided to companion animals regularly. The individuals are considered patients with a normative demand for beneficence even similar to humans. Livestock is treated differently. A cow with acute renal failure would not get a donation but would be euthanized. In epidemics, economic constraints might widely overrule the individual’s status as patients; e.g. in the food-and-mouth disease culling is performed because it is easier and cheaper than vaccination. The concern for the patient is limited to preferably painless killing. Hence, we can understand some animals (e.g. livestock) as ‘liminal patients’. Consequently, these frames determine a ‘differential allocation’ of the recognition of animals as patient in different ways and degrees with crucial, however, often tacit impacts on concrete decision-making. Public expectations as well as the hidden curriculum of the veterinary profession determine how ‘one should treat’ a cow, a dog or a rat. However, these frames are not entirely determinant but are changeable.