Professional ethics
Being a professional entails making decisions of consequence and to help ensure these are morally acceptable, the necessary principles and tools are provided by professional ethics.

Veterinarians are professionals who must make ad hoc decisions that influence the fate of animals and affect the lives of the people who own or look after them. They also have to address issues of public interest, such as public health. The central role they play in decision-making implies considerable collective and individual responsibility. However, not every decision requires an unique ethical or moral consideration or judgement, although, no matter in what field a veterinarian works, be it clinical practice, research, education, or public health, he or she will always be faced with dilemmas that have no obvious solution. In these situations they have to make a decision, but in the knowledge that afterwards it may be questioned or have an outcome that was never intended. In the process of making decisions there are invariably different interests at stake, all of which must be considered; there are those of the animal, the owner, a third party (which may be society as a whole) and of the veterinarian.

The animals' interests
The immediate interest of an animal is to live in an environment that it can adapt to in the absence of lasting pain or impairment of health. Man bestows values on animals, including those of economic, recreational, intrinsic and naturalistic origin [1], although they are clearly not aware of this fact. The context and population within which an animal belongs are determining factors for the way in which the veterinary profession relates to it, and are beyond the influence that respect for an individual animal might have.

For very obvious reasons veterinary ethics are more complicated than medical ethics:

1. The informed opinion of the animal in question is never available

2. To sustain the life of an individual animal is not a central issue because most domestic animals do not complete their natural life span

3. At best, the reasons for keeping animals are not contradictory to their interests

Read more...

home | editorial | news | reviews | education | tools | policies | archives | about vst