ABSTRACT
The issue of “cure” versus “care,” with the latter often taking a back seat to the former in veterinary, as well as human, medicine is also central. In critical care medicine, as in veterinary medicine in general, the most problematic moral/conceptual dimension confronts is the issue of whether veterinarians owe primary moral obligation to the animal and its interests or to the client. Control of animal pain, suffering, and distress should be a primary and articulated ethical imperative across all of veterinary medicine and should be made an unequivocal top priority in the Veterinarian’s Oath. The issue of clients who cannot afford to pay for CCU fees is that leads to pervasive problems across veterinary medicine. Virtually no literature on animal analgesia, for example, could be found in veterinary medicine until after the federal laboratory animal laws of 1985 mandated that animals felt pain and that it needed to be controlled.
