One Medicine: How understanding animals can save our lives

Dr Matt Morgan, an intensive care consultant, began an investigation into how animals survive after inhaling objects, which has led to medical advances such as in-vitro fertilisation success rates, asthma treatment, and hypothermia treatment. Better understanding of how our species coexists with millions of others can lead to untold medical advances and improve the world for all creatures.

Format: Hardback
Length: 288 pages
Publication date: 02 March 2023
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd

It all began with a Hob Nob. As Dr Matt Morgan, an intensive care consultant, examined a patient who had suffered a cardiac arrest after inhaling some biscuit crumbs, he saw a flock of birds fly past the window. He wondered, how do they survive? He embarked on an investigation that spanned continents, species, and millennia.

For animal science has so much to teach us about human medicine. While some of the overlaps and parallels are obvious – we know how much DNA we share with primates, the first pig heart has been transplanted into a human – there is so much more that we have learnt from the animal world.

For example, studying kangaroos, in particular the females' three vaginas, has improved in-vitro fertilisation success rates. Watching how a giraffe breathes can help save the life of someone struggling with asthma. Investigating why birds that live in the frozen Arctic circle don't freeze to death led to advances with treating hypothermia. Getting an ECG on the 150kg heart of a humpback whale was instrumental to keeping patients with cardiac failure living longer.

We owe animals so much; it's time to focus on examining how they live and what we still have to learn from them. A better understanding of how our species coexists with millions of others can lead to untold medical advances, help both humans and animals, and improve the world for all creatures, from single-celled bacteria to a 30,000 kg whale. Who knows, maybe a kiss from a frog will save your life?

Weight: 410g
Dimension: 143 x 225 x 28 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781471173073