Without extensive tests on animals, many of medicine's most spectacular advances, from antibiotics to heart transplants, would never have occurred. But increasingly, the tables have been turned: the guinea pigs have become the patients. Today veterinarians treat cancer, implant artificial joints, even perform open-heart surgery. Animal medicine in the U.S. has been transformed into a $5 billion industry that rivals human health care in sophistication. Says Franklin Loew, dean of the Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine in North Grafton, Mass.: "There are no technical boundaries to the application of human medicine to animals."
Four-legged patients are treated for conditions that...
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