Yesterday, the New York Times ran a piece by Hal Herzog, author of “Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It’s So Hard To Think Straight About Animals,” in which he questioned the scientific basis of claims for the health benefits of pets.
There’s certainly nothing wrong with challenging claims on the basis of their facts. I do it all the time, and wish the media would do more of it. And here at Pet Connection, we could all retire early if we had a dollar for every time someone replied, “Cite, please?” to a comment on the blog.
But you know what annoys me as much as sloppy science? Using sloppy logic and equally sloppy science against it.
First, let me mention that Herzog named our own Dr. Marty Becker and his book “The Healing Power of Pets”" in his article. I’m sure Dr. Becker’s gratified at being acknowledged as the leader in this particular area, but maybe not so much at his work, which is about pets, being lumped in with inappropriately pal-ing around with wild animals:
Herzog wrote:
The idea that domestic animals are beneficial to human health and happiness has been fueled by books like “The Healing Power of Pets: Harnessing the Amazing Ability of Pets to Make and Keep People Happy and Healthy,” by the veterinarian Marty Becker, and by news reports claiming that having a dog helps you live longer or that swimming with dolphins can cure autism, bad backs, attention deficit disorder and even cancer. But is there any truth to these claims?
Dolphins are not pets. If we’re going to debate this, can we at least agree on what the subject of the debate is? If it’s “spending time with wild animals,” that’s one thing. If it’s petting your cat, that’s another.
Back to Herzog. After a quick look at some of the research on health and pets — “a survey of 92 heart attack victims revealed that those who had pets were nearly five times more likely to be alive a year later than those without them” … “stroking an animal lowers blood pressure” … “AIDS patients living with pets are less depressed” … “pet owners have lower cholesterol levels, sleep more soundly, exercise more and take fewer sick days than non-pet owners” … he goes on:
Indeed, I have a stack of articles in my office supporting the hypothesis that pets are healthy for us.
Unfortunately, however, I also have another stack of articles, almost as high, showing that pets have either no long-term effects or have even adverse effects on physical and mental health.
He then goes through some of those studies, which he says had findings including “living with a pet did not make people any happier,” “no evidence that pet owners lived any longer than anyone else,” and that a study in Finland found “pet owners were more likely than non-pet owners to suffer from sciatica, kidney disesae, arthritis, migraines, panic attacks, high blood pressure and depression.”
Now, I’m in complete agreement with Herzog that we should be more clear when we talks about whether and how pets are beneficial to human health, and about scientific research and what it tells us. For instance, take the studies about dog walkers living longer after heart attacks than non-dog owners. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that most dog owners like dogs.
Some non-dog owners like dogs, I’m sure, but many either don’t like them or just don’t have strong feelings one way or another. Common sense would suggest that for a dog lover, being around a dog would make you feel subjectively better at least, and potentially improve some objective parameters of health as well, whereas for someone who either doesn’t care much for dogs, or who actively fears or dislikes them, the opposite would be true.
But to wrap this up by saying the following?
No doubt, the talk in some medical circles of prescribing puppies and kittens for the chronically ill is well intentioned. But until the research is complete, pet lovers should probably keep taking their Lipitor and Prozac.
Really? Because if Mr. Herzog has a stack of articles suggesting there’s two sides to the healing power of pets, I’d like to introduce him to the stack I have on Lipitor and Prozac, along with their other statin and antidepressant cousins.
Let’s start with this look at the subject in an overview of many different studies about statin drugs from the paper that published Herzog’s piece, The New York Times. In “Great drug, but does it work?“, Tara Parker-Pope writes:
Statins are among the most prescribed drugs in the world, and there is no doubt that they work as advertised — that they lower not only cholesterol but also the risk for heart attack.
But in the fallout from the headline-making trial of Vytorin, a combination drug that was found to be no more effective than a simple statin in reducing arterial plaque, many people are asking a more fundamental question about statins in general: Do they prolong your life?
And for many users, the surprising answer appears to be no.
It turns out that, despite their widespread use in any and everyone with high cholesterol, the only people they help are middle-aged men with cardiovascular disease. Everyone else has no benefit, no longer life, and worse, an increased risk of side effects, including a form of amnesia.
What about Prozac? I’m going to link to a long article, and I recommend you read all of it, but here’s one paragraph, discussing a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Assocation:
In an analysis of six large experiments in which, as usual, depressed patients received either a placebo or an active drug, the true drug effect—that is, in addition to the placebo effect—was “nonexistent to negligible” in patients with mild, moderate, and even severe depression. Only in patients with very severe symptoms (scoring 23 or above on the standard scale) was there a statistically significant drug benefit. Such patients account for about 13 percent of people with depression. “Most people don’t need an active drug,” says Vanderbilt’s Hollon, a coauthor of the study. “For a lot of folks, you’re going to do as well on a sugar pill or on conversations with your physicians as you will on medication. It doesn’t matter what you do; it’s just the fact that you’re doing something.”
The article looks at dozens of other studies and the ongoing medical controversy over antidepressants vs placebos, all of which make conclusions pretty much in line with that one.
So yes, it may be true that pets aren’t always the right prescription — but neither are Lipitor and Prozac, if what you’re looking for is scientific support for your prescription. And when it comes to side effects… I think I’ll stick with my pets.
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