Humans, Other Animals and ‘One Health’ in the Early Twenty-First Century

Cassidy, Angela

Despite these successes, it would appear that the consensus around what OH is, and, perhaps more importantly, what it should be, is still quite fragile. As we have seen, while the various groups described above have been able to develop and adapt each other's ideas, recrafting OH to fit their own contexts while also working together, multiple versions of OH remain in play. In particular, the two sides of the OH umbrella ( Fig. 6 .1) align not only with different fields of interest but also with different versions of human-animal relations. OWOH, the slogan originally used by the WCS group, can be broadly characterized as the left-hand side of the umbrella, involving veterinarians but also conservation, global health and development specialists. As we have seen with both the WCS and the STPH groups, OWOH sees humans, animals and environments as part of an interconnected network which requires care, decentring humans partially or completely. In contrast, the twenty-first-century version of OH/OM broadly but not completely aligns with the right-hand side of the umbrella: in something of a departure from Schwabe's original ideas it mobilizes zoonoses as a concern primarily because of the risk posed to humans. It then interconnects into clinical practice and human medicine via translational medicine, where it highlights the benefits of veterinary-medical collaboration for developing new drugs, gaining financial and symbolic support from pharmaceutical companies. 78 The emphasis on human health risks alongside veterinary-medical professional relationships creates a version of OH which appears to be significantly more anthropocentric than that seen in OWOH.