‘What is Reciprocity and why is it integral to One Medicine?’, explained by Founder, Professor Noel Fitzpatrick

Reviewed by Danielle Ellis, B.Sc.Sep 9 2024

A link to the news story on Humanimal Trust’s website can be found here. The following is a transcript of the Humanimal Trust’s video.

Medical advances do not happen at the same time - or in tandem - for the benefit of humans and animals, and that is why we advocate for One Medicine.

Many years ago, when I was studying the history of medicine, I came upon a rarely used term that described human and veterinary medicine working together. That term was ‘One Medicine’.

In his book ‘Veterinary Medicine and Human Health’, Dr Calvin Schwabe spoke of One Medicine, which laid the foundation for what we now know as One Health. Now One Health is the approach where human, animal, and environmental health is studied together to optimize outcomes. But nearly all of the focus in One Health is for the benefit of humans. This is not One Medicine, and it's not fair.

I was so frustrated that little was being done to help animals and I recognized the integral role that they had played through experiments, which yielded every drug and implant we have for humans today. I was infuriated by the lack of opportunities to apply all of this know-how and these drugs and implants, which animals gave to human medicine for the benefit of my own animal patients suffering from those self-same diseases that were induced in a normal animal in an experiment. And that's when I knew I had to launch a new platform and lay the foundations for the work that Humanimal Trust does today - removing barriers and seeking to close the divide between human and animal medicine. One Medicine, which benefits all patients regardless of species.

The key difference is reciprocity. Now, whilst we wholeheartedly support the three R’s, that is replacement, reduction and refinement in relation to animal use in research, it was clear to me that a fourth R was missing from the three R’s principle and that is reciprocity. So that not only medical practitioners and allied researchers and humans would benefit, but all patients would benefit regardless of their species and in this way, any medical advance arising from animal experimentation would be given back to help animals affected by disease as well as humans.

In One Medicine, we consider the significant contribution that animals have made to medical research by giving their lives to help humans to live better lives. And we believe that studying the mechanisms, causes, effects, and responses of animals to naturally occurring diseases in the clinical setting will help reduce the need for animal experiments.

Reciprocity is about sharing the benefits of medical advance equally with humans and animals. With well-designed and ethically well based studies, with fully informed guardian consent, we could investigate disease in an animal who's already suffering from that disease, rather than inflicting that same disease on a healthy animal.

It's well recognized that naturally occurring disease is in fact a better study model than experimentally induced disease, and studies on naturally occurring disease would help reduce the suffering of humans and animals alike. One Medicine is focused on the similarities rather than the differences between humans and animals. And it advocates for the sharing of treatments and medical advances between humans and animals that benefit all patients. It does not ‘other’ another species. And in the process, we do not need to take the life of an animal.