Why One Veterinarian Quit, Disgusted With a Profession He Once Revered

"I'm not saying everybody does it, and it's probably not the majority," Watkinson, 32, tells Paw Nation. "But there are people in this profession who do things like that. There are veterinary practices where a vet is given minimum financial targets and has to make a certain amount of money per consult." Pet insurance can be helpful to pet owners in emergencies, says Watkinson, but "it's an easy excuse for some veterinarians to take advantage of the system." And what about a client who owns a purebred dog with a lot of inherited problems? "It's a potential goldmine," says Watkinson.

Unsurprisingly, Watkinson's statements haven't endeared him to his peers. "My [veterinarian] friends are deserting me now because I've criticized the profession," the ex-veterinarian says. The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons denounced the Daily Mail article and implied that Watkinson was doing it to publicize his new book, "On the Destiny of Species: by Means of Natural Selection, or the Elimination of Unfavoured Races in the Struggle for Life." In it, he blasts the veterinary profession for supporting a dog breeding industry that produces purebreds with inherited diseases and physical deformities considered "cute," and catering to sentimental -- a dirty word in Watkinson's book -- pet owners, rather than acting in the best interest of animals.

"I've been accused of doing all this to sell books, be sensational and to make money," says Watkinson, who quit the profession a year ago. "But I'm broke. This was done out of a deep respect for the way that nature works and a compassion for animals."

"In veterinary school, there was lots of 'we can do this' [procedure], but not a lot of 'should we do this?'" says Watkinson. "We were taught almost as technicians," he says. "My ethical training was limited to one afternoon in five years. We're not really taught to think; we're taught to do all these procedures. And they get more complicated each year so we have more options to keep all these animals alive. We fight the powers of nature, really, and what we've ended up with is a lot of diseased dog breeds that couldn't survive without us."

A particular incident from veterinary school still haunts him. He was caring for an elderly dog after the canine (whose story is told in an excerpt from "On the Destiny of Species," below) had one of its legs amputated due to cancer. "It was a really old dog and the prognosis was six months more to live," Watkinson recalls. "I sat up all night with that dog, and it screamed all night. I thought, 'We've only done this to massage the emotions of the owner.' It's an old dog. It hasn't got long to live whether you take the leg off or not and it's just going to cause misery by amputating its leg. If we just put that animal to sleep, it wouldn't have screamed there all night."

Is Watkinson saying that dogs with cancer shouldn't receive life-extending treatments? "If there's no suffering, I have no problem with it," says Watkinson. "But I've been to seminars where veterinary oncologists have said, 'You should do everything you can to save these animals. Euthanasia should be the last resort. There is always something we can do.' And that's the mentality I'm trying to address. 'There's always something we can do to save it,' is another way of saying, 'There's a lot more money we can make out of it.'"

Dr. Tony Johnson, a clinical assistant professor at Purdue University School of Veterinary Medicine and consultant for PetConnection.com has practiced in a clinical setting for 13 years. He thinks Watkinson is taking the case of a few bad apples and wrongly extrapolating it to the entire profession. "I have heard of vets who are financially motivated, but that is a tiny, tiny fraction of the profession," Dr. Johnson says. "The vast majority are ethical and are motivated by a love of medicine, pets and helping people."

What about veterinarians looking into a client's financial status? "I have never heard of that happening," says Dr. Johnson. Contrary to Watkinson's claims that veterinarians purposely try to increase the amount of the bill, Dr. Johnson says veterinarians often have to communicate with distraught pet owners and talk them out of doing procedures that the vets don't feel are right. "It's our job to get the pet owner's feet back on the ground and talk to them about what's in the best interest of the animal," Dr. Johnson says. "[Watkinson] is damning a whole profession based on his own bitter experience, and it's not right. The whole profession is not broken."

By the time Watkinson graduated from veterinary school, he had already decided not to work at a veterinary clinic. "I knew I would be forced to look after the emotions of the owner more than I would the interest of the animals," says Watkinson. He ended up in a farm-animal practice because he thought "it would be slightly more focused and pragmatic."

Watkinson looked after cows on dairy farms, but that too, posed moral dilemmas. After eight years, he had had enough.

He didn't really "decide" to write a book, he says. "After I quit my job, I just started researching and writing, trying to find out, 'What are we actually achieving?'" says Watkinson. "The book isn't entirely about domestic animals. It goes beyond that and much more into natural history." Heavily influenced by Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, there are chapters that are critical of the veterinary profession. "I don't believe that all veterinarians are cutthroat, heartless monsters," Watkinson says. "I think many are very compassionate, but unintentionally end up supporting the problems they swore to get rid of."