I have wondered occasionally why vets get such light treatment o this forum - no animal skeptics?
For example - there appears to be a view among vets that thousands of pounds should be spent by every pet owner with life long flea treatment.
I have not seen any evidence that our previous attepmts to eradicate the world of fleas or other lifeforms using chemical products does anything other than lead to resistence in the long term.
The evidence that significant human disease is caused by cat fleas is very soft indeed, their impact on cats and dogs can easily be dealt with when symptoms occur.
So where did this huge industry burgeon from?
I've always assumed the emphasis on flea treatments was more concerned with day to day quality of life, for pet and owner, rather than any specific health worry.
If so why worry about asymptomatic infestation?Originally Posted by DrS
If the animal has no skin conditions, is not scratching and no one in the family has possibly realted health issues, where is the quality of life benefit?
Flea collars are expensive!!
The ones you get from the supermarket (around 5 - 7 Euros) don't work according to my vet. You have to buy the proper ones from him at about 20 Euros
With Fraggle, Bonnie and Charlie that's lots of money. I usually only do something about it if they are obviously distressed - scratching and so on.
He would say that wouldn't he.Flea collars are expensive!!
The ones you get from the supermarket (around 5 - 7 Euros) don't work according to my vet. You have to buy the proper ones from him at about 20 Euros
With Fraggle, Bonnie and Charlie that's lots of money. I usually only do something about it if they are obviously distressed - scratching and so on.
There is remarkably little published evidence - all I can find is the following, which doesn't even address the efficacy of flea collars in isolation.
Vet Ther. 2009 Spring-Summer;10(1-2):71-7.
Efficacy of a combination of a fipronil-(S)-methoprene spot-on formulation and a deltamethrin-impregnated collar in controlling fleas and sandflies on dogs.
Franc M, Bouhsira E.
Ecole Nationale Veterinaire de Toulouse, Toulouse, France.
Abstract
This study investigated the use of two commercial products, a deltamethrin-impregnated collar and a fipronil-(S)-methoprene spot-on formulation, in combination to protect dogs against sandflies and fleas when they live in or travel to leishmaniasis-enzootic areas. Interactions, tolerance, and efficacy were evaluated. The combination was well tolerated by the six treated dogs. The antifeeding effect on Phlebotomus perniciosus ranged from 89.6% (day 1) to 99.51% (day 21) and exceeded 95% from day 7 through the end of the study; the mortality effect against P. perniciosus ranged from 87.52% (day 22) to 96.82% (day 15). The combination was 100% effective in controlling Ctenocephalides felis felis infestations for 36 days after treatment. These results suggest that it is feasible and advantageous to combine these two commercial products to protect dogs against sandflies and fleas in leishmaniasis-enzootic areas.
Having owned quite a number of cats with seriously outdoor lifestyles, I can safely say that flea-collars are a waste of money. They may reduce the total number of fleas, but there are still rather a lot left. Which is a problem, because cats presumably don't scratch themselves vigorously and for quite a long time at frequent intervals because they're having fun, and cat fleas DO bite humans! They stop sucking as soon as they catch on that they're vampirising the wrong species, but they have very short memories, so you end up with a trail of tiny itchy red dots across your body.
As far as I know there's no health risk involved (unless you have a phobia about catching the Black Death), but it's annoying for both you and your pet. Also, some cats are allergic to flea collars, and others - particularly toms - simply won't wear a collar for any reason, and they'll get them off pretty quickly.
The chemical method of flea control, on the other hand, seems to me to be 100% effective, even without the collars. It takes about 5 seconds to administer, the cat doesn't mind, and it doesn't cost "thousands of pounds" unless you have an unfeasible number of cats. And by the way, I was told about it by a vet.
I haven't done the math, but the fraction of the money you spend on a cat throughout its lifetime on healthcare as opposed to just feeding the brute is usually very small, unless your cat is seriously ill and you spend vast sums on elaborate medical procedures to keep it going just a little bit longer. In which case "pet skepticism" really should kick in. It's not a person, it's a cat, and you're doing it no favours, just pandering to your own sentimentality - have the poor old thing put down.
Since there's no NHS for cats, if your cat breaks a leg or something, the bills can run quite high, but that's just your bad luck (though worse luck for the cat), and if you have a particularly reckless or misfortunate moggy, these days most vets offer pet health insurance.
Practical considerations aside, I don't quite see the point of this thread. Obviously treating your pets like children is ridiculous, and I'd never pay for a terminally ill cat to have a kidney transplant, even if I could afford it. But the original point seems to be that if you buy a cat or a dog or whatever, knowing in advance that you'll have to feed it for perhaps as long as 20 years, that's fine, but coughing up a few quid for a flea collar every now and then makes you a half-witted victim of woo-woo, and you should instead buy a couple of pints and allow the creature living in your house to be permanently infested with parasites.
What Pebble appears to be saying is that he/she bought a flea collar, it didn't work, and therefore vets are all conspiring together to flog dodgy products to us. And anyway, you shouldn't mollycoddle the hairy little buggers by ridding them of bloodsucking insects unless they're visibly covered in scabs.
Might I suggest that you give your cat to somebody who likes cats and buy a pet rock instead? I think you'll both be a lot happier.
Not at all, but the a vet was trying like damn to get me to but nearly £100 of flea treatment for asymptomatic - flea dust! That was just 6 months worth of 'preventative' therapy.
I am fine with prevention when there is some evidence base behind it - for example published evidence of efficacy (some pretty pathetic by normal standards), some decent evidence of cost-efficacy (none).
Most veterinary products are simply borrowed from human medicine with very modest analysis of benefit in animals, and the dietry nonsense they expound would make Gillian McKeith blush.
So looking after an animal well - fine, but evidence please.
I think the answer is simple - go to a different vet! You're quite right to say that £100 is way, way, way too much to charge for getting rid of cat-fleas. Though when you say "flea dust", I do believe you mean "flea crap", which is absolutely unmistakable, and isn't going to be there unless your cat genuinely has fleas.
My apologies for implying that you don't care for your cat - I naturally assumed that you were making a disproportionate fuss about the prices a normal vet would charge. But I still think you're making a slightly hysterical "my vet tried to rip me off therefore all veterinary medicine is a con-trick and therefore my cat probably doesn't have fleas at all so I don't have to bother" kind of point. Just because one person did something bad to you doesn't mean that every other person in that category of persons is bad - I would have thought that was the kind of thing this forum is all about disagreeing with!
Also, although cats suffer from entirely different diseases from humans, but are nevertheless sometimes given remedies which might work for you, that's because a lot of human medicine applies to all mammals - antibiotics for example - so you're not being terribly logical to assume that vets are frauds just on the basis that many of their treatments are derived from human medicine. Getting yourself vaccinated against feline enteritis or feline leukaemia would be a waste of money because somebody worked out a special medical procedure only of benefit to cats.
There are good vets and bad vets - I encountered one who not only charged far too much, but actually treated the wrong part of the animal because he was drunk! Some of them think they can get away with a great deal because their patients aren't human, but most of them actually like animals. My advice would be to find a practice with several partners - a bad vet won't last long with a couple of good ones looking over his shoulder.
Thanks for your opinion, now care to provide any evidence to support the many assertions? That is what skepticism is about.
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