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Comment by carride | Hacker News Reader

Easier regulatory environments. Not only do you not need to talk to the FDA before testing your drug in animals, cats are way less likely to sue you if they get sick from your drug. Of course, we’d still do our best to make sure they didn’t, but it’s less likely to sink the entire company if they do.

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Unfortunately, the reality of trying to cure animals is that sometimes you accidentally hurt animals. That's also the reality of trying to cure humans.

This is the exact same issue vets face when they perform surgery on your cat, and it's the exact same issue that surgeons face when they perform surgery on you. The difference is that vets don't have to pay tons of money for malpractice insurance in case they get sued by the owner, which is one of the big reasons why veterinary surgery is so much cheaper (i.e. affordable to ordinary people) than human surgery.

>veterinary surgery is so much cheaper (i.e. affordable to ordinary people) than human surgery....

..."in the USA". At a guess, I'd say it's the complete opposite in Europe with it's pesky human healthcare systems.

To be fair, human surgery also costs a lot in Europe. It's just not paid by the patient. It's not healthcare in itself that is free but health insurance.

It also costs less.

How many European doctors make more than $500k / year ? The average orthopedic makes roughly that (https://www.kaptest.com/study/mcat/doctor-salaries-by-specia...)

And that's a huge problem. All our doctors (Eastern EU here) are leaving for UK, US, or richer western EU countries. To resolve that, we have a law that requires newly graduate doctors to stay and work here for a long time (10 years here IIRC), which is rightly seen as a serious issue wrt. their personal freedom. That pushes people away from pursuing medical degrees.

It's cheaper, but that has its price too.

> All our doctors (Eastern EU here) are leaving for UK, US, or richer western EU countries

To be fair. That's true of educated people in general, not just doctors.

I can't fully agree. I think the situation is much better than it used to be and is improving, for example IT workers are not universally leaving anymore, a lot of them now stay and there are many foreign people coming here! There is now an exciting startup sector too, and the international corporations are finally building IT hubs here. But it keeps getting worse in the medical sector because of that law and because it's not paid well enough given the long hours and stress.

Nowadays, older doctors (those who have served their 10 years) are moving from insurance-based to cash-based treatment because they demand much more than the "pricing tables" dictate - so there's a lot of doctors around you, but you can't go to them because the "public" insurance can be used only where they accept it, they never give you cash. The prices are very similar to US hospital quotes - in absolutes, not PPP. Meanwhile, we still have the "public" healthcare providers (these are corporations, but usually wholly or partially owned by political entities), but the quality is getting worse, they are unable to keep it stable, much less improve - not surprising since they rely on essentially forced labor.

I've actually paid less for a private X-ray (in the UK) than it cost for my cat at the vet. Vetinary drugs are also often more expensive than their human equivalents.

I suspect scale may be a factor here.

And that's how our dog died in 25 days from a painkiller that the protocol is to check for liver function after 30 days...

I suppose this sentence is meant to be a little tongue in cheek, but a few of us at least do not find it funny.

I can see why you found that upsetting.

Still: our society (rationally) does not devote the same resources to drug development for animals as it does for humans. And even protocols, dosing regimens, etc, for humans are not perfect. And even when the ideal protocol is chosen, some people still have a bad outcome by being an outlier.

Medicine is very imperfect; veterinary medicine is worse.

I thought this is paraphrased, but this is lifted straight from the article. This is so incredibly wrong I simply couldn't get past this statement.

Is it? It seems like it's just acknowledging a objectively true reality. In the US getting sued for failed human medical intervention is common and costly. Courts (and juries I'm sure) don't look on animal lives with the same value as they do human lives. You might have a different value system, but the article isn't talking about your moral system, it's talking about objective reality.

I think the person you're replying to is using the term 'wrong' morally.

But, like they said, it's talking about the legal reality and not the moral reality. I find it hard to see how that could be either factually or morally wrong.

Out of context, it sounds awful.

But having read the whole article, he doesn't seem like a monster at all. If it works as planned it'll really help some cats.

How we got to our current state of medicine is horrifying, but the alternative is more grim.

There is no clean arrival for good, safe, effective medicine. A little gallows humor isn't hurting anyone.

Correct, that comment was italicized to show that it was lifted straight from the article

I think this company is not understanding the role that animals have in millennial households.

The company which is betting the farm on cat owners spending money to treat their suffering cats doesn't know their market?

On the basis of what evidence.

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