The whole concept of Chevy mechanic working on a Ford, and vice versa, and
which is better, is pretty silly and has no practical application.
Nevertheless, to play the game...if you are talking about birds or turtles,
then I concede that your typical general surgeon would have no clue.
However, bird anatomy is irrelevant to human anatomy so the ability to
operate on a bird is in no way germane to this thread. If you are talking
about variation in mammalian anatomy and physiology, then I contend that a
veterinarians experience of operating on dogs, cats and pigs certainly
doesn't make him or her any more qualified to operate on a human than a
general surgeon's human training and experience makes him qualified to
operate on dogs, pigs or cats. Those variations don't represent as wide a
gulf as one might think.

One should also bear in mind that the vast majority of general surgeons
complete their training having operated many times on various mammals,
whereas I sincerely doubt that any vet has ever operated on humans. I have,
many times over the years, done various operations on dogs, pigs, cats,
goats, sheep.

General surgeons typically spend 6 years learning their trade after medical
school (including a year in the animal lab), as opposed to veterinarians who
go into practice right out of school. The most disparaging remark a surgeon
can make to another surgeon relative to technical skill is to ask them where
they got their veterinary training. This is because the lack of formalized
surgical training leads to deviations from the technique standards taught to
general surgeons.

The original question would have more of a point if there was standardized
formal programs for training veterinary surgeons. As it is, the number of
veterinary surgeons competent to do major operations on animals, let alone
humans, is very low, especially outside of the relatively few vet schools
around the country. If you *were* able to find a veterinarian with equal
training AND experience, then I would agree that he or she would very
possibly do just as competent a splenectomy on a human as the general
surgeon could do on a dog, pig or cat.

HMc

*My answer would in general probably be the human doctor, not because of the
*doctors skills but because of animals greater ability to withstand trauma
*and cope with surgery better than humans. At least I feel this is true for
*cats and dogs. If the patient were a bird however I believe the doctor would
*be in trouble!

...

You have a point.

This reminds me. I was at a county-health-department-sponsored CE meeting
recently, and the MD director of the department made several comments to
the effect that if a disaster should arise, he's calling us all (referring
to the vets in the room of course) to act as physicians, because we won't
have enough physicians in the event of true emergency. He went on to
specifically state that if his arm were hanging off, and the MD surgeons
were all off doing brain surgery, he would want one of us to sew his arm
back on (because we're all SOOOOOO skilled with microvascular surgery,
right?). He further exclaimed that as a young, new graduate physician in
Vietnam, he had no business removing bullets and such from people's lungs,
but he did it because he was there and no one else could, and it went
fine, and if we had to step up to the plate and do it we could too. I'm
not sure all of us were entirely comfortable with this thought :).

Dr. Dubin can confirm, I'm sure :)

Damn, that's what I wanted to say! Dogs, cats, even rabbits recover
more quickly than humans during routine spaying and neutering. I'm not
saying their pain thresholds are any greater, I'm just saying that
there seems to be less recovery time.

Therefore, it would make sense that animals are able to recover more
quickly after surgery, and as such, be able to withstand more
traumatic injuries, pound for pound, than a human. Although I wouldn't
dream of letting a MD operate on my rabbit, because their choice of
anesthetics might end up killing the little fella.

Children are also more able to withstand trauma, from my
understanding.
--

candeh

Well, of course it's a dumb question!  But on sci.med, where 80% of all
posts are from people whose haldol needs to be increased significantly, it
at least has some entertainment value.  

Oh, and Superman would definitely kick Batman's a.s.