Assistance animals – from guide dogs to psychiatric service cats – unlike computerised machines, animals can establish a natural symbiosis with the patients who rely on them. Could animals be transformed into medical devices?
Life Support is a project by Revital Cohan & Tuur Van Balen. The duo who occupy the space between art and design proposes using animals bred commercially for consumption or entertainment such as farm animals or racing dogs as companions and providers of external organ replacement. They describe the use of farm animals, or retired working dogs, as life support ‘devices’, as an alternative to what they call ‘inhumane’ medical therapies.
They create a friction between right and wrong. What are the implied ethics around animal and human relations?
Over the span of 4 years a pedigree racing dog will spend his days training or in a kennel, taken racing weekly to make profit for its owner. The converted Greyhound is saved from the eventuality of post racing euthanization and begins its second career as a respiratory device. The dog and its new owner “develop a relationship of mutual reliance through keeping each other alive” Cohan describes.
The greyhound is fitted with a harness that converts its lung movement into mechanical ventilation. “The harness is non-invasive and uses the dog’s rapid chest movement to pump air into the patient’s lungs” Tuur Van Balen. A greyhound brought up in racing kennels usually suffers from separation anxiety after retirement. The assistance dog is constantly connected to its owner by a tube and is never left alone.
Are these two practices fundamentally different?
Comments