U.S. pets increasingly medicated

WAYNE COUNTY, N.C. — With aging, it's become a routine faithfully endured by the Guffords. Each day starts with a blood-sugar check and a shot of insulin. Then a couple of pills, maybe mashed into a bowl of tuna and canned carrots. Mixed with dry chow.

All for their 12-year-old dog.

Brownie takes more drugs than his human companions put together. He has been medicated in recent months for diabetes, infections, high blood pressure and his finicky gut that rebels at red meat. Since 2005, he has taken drugs for everything from anemia to a spider bite.

"He's our baby. He's a family member. I would want somebody to do that for me," explains Ann Gufford.

She estimates spending $5,000 over the past two years on medicine for her baby, a mixed beagle-cocker spaniel. He has lost a couple of steps on the squirrels outside their little home near Goldsboro. His hearing is failing. Still, without some of the drugs, he'd probably be gone.

"You cannot put a price on that," Gufford says.

"And I don't want to," adds her husband, Ben.

Americans have begun to medicate their dogs, cats and sometimes other pets much as they medicate themselves.

They routinely treat their pets for arthritis, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, allergies, dementia and soon maybe even obesity. They pick from an expanding menu of mostly human pharmaceuticals like steroids for inflammation, antibiotics for infection, anti-clotting agents for heart ailments, Prozac or Valium for anxiety, even the impotence drug Viagra for a lung condition in dogs.

Increasingly, they buy at people pharmacies or online and sometimes pay with health insurance.

Until recent decades, American veterinarians still concentrated on care that reflected the country's agrarian roots: keeping farm animals healthy to protect the human food supply. Instead of being medicated, a very sick animal was quickly sacrificed to save the herd. Pets were typically kept outside with the cows, chickens and pigs. A dog was lucky for a dry place in a crude shelter; a cat, for a warm spot in the barn.

Within the past five years, pets have finally overtaken farm animals in the pharmaceutical marketplace, claiming 54 percent of spending for animal drugs, according to the trade group Animal Health Institute.

Keeping more than 130 million dogs and cats alone, Americans bought $2.9 billion worth of pet drugs in 2005. Though equal to only 1 percent of human drug sales, the market has grown by roughly half since the year 2000.

"As more and more drugs are being developed for people, more and more drugs are being developed for veterinary medicine. It's really a parallel track," says Dr. Gerald Post, founder of the nonprofit Animal Cancer Foundation.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved more than 40 new pet drugs over the past five years.

One of them was Slentrol, which became the first government-approved slenderizer for obese dogs in January. It will cost up to $2 a day, though buyers could presumably put their pets on a diet and save money on food in the bargain.

The market growth reflects an intensifying bond between pets and their people, who are comforted by the unquestioning love of their animals in an affluent society where traditional institutions are frayed and mobility severs family ties. A 2002 survey for the American Veterinary Medical Association found that 47 percent of people viewed their pets as family members.

This attitude — people depending on their pets — makes customers vulnerable to overspending, some vets warn.

For example, a single three-month course of pet chemotherapy might cost $3,000, though chemo in an animal is meant more to ease symptoms than prolong life. It's a reasonable option only for some pets. Researchers have also begun to test new, expensive, targeted cancer drugs like Gleevec on animals.

"I really should have let him go before I did," says Margaret Park, in Raleigh, who had her failing Abyssinian cat treated with a second round of chemo. "When you've been treating an animal for a really long time, you lose your objectivity a little bit."

Unwilling to let go, some people go to extremes to scrape up the cash — even mortgaging their houses, says Dr. Steve Suter, who treats pet cancers at North Carolina State University's veterinary college.

Of course, many people still medicate pets sparingly. Laura James of Plymouth, Mass., said she and her husband had a tumor removed from their 11-year-old golden retriever. When it returned, though, they decided to let "nature take its course," and had to put their pet to sleep recently.

They never considered pet chemo, rejecting it as too expensive. "If it were our children, there'd be no question, but it's a pet," James said. Then she added, "My sister thinks I'm cruel."

James is not the only one uneasy with the cost of pet medicines. Dr. Laurence Family, a vet in Latham, N.Y., acknowledges coming across the occasional client who finds his charges "outrageous."

Some question whether society is keeping priorities straight. Dianne Dunning, an ethicist at N.C. State's vet school, anguishes over the millions of unwanted animals that are euthanized each year while millions of dollars are spent on pet medicines.

David Rothman, a Columbia University expert in medicine's role in society, points to the millions of people who are desperately short on care: "If you can't get malaria drugs in some Third World countries, what are we doing with chemotherapy for cats?"