Consultant in Intensive Care Medicine | Honorary Professor at Cardiff University and Curtin University | Author of One Medicine | Patron of Humanimal Trust
I work in intensive care. Much of my job is spent surrounded by machines that beep, flash and alarm, each demanding attention. Yet some of the most important lessons I’ve learnt about medicine didn’t come from technology, textbooks, or even other doctors. They came from animals.
One night, while trying to save a man who had choked and suffered a cardiac arrest, I watched a flock of birds fly past the hospital window. Birds inhale debris constantly as they fly, yet they rarely choke. I remember thinking: why don’t they die the way my patient nearly has? That simple, slightly odd question was the beginning of what became my book One Medicine – the idea that human and veterinary medicine are not separate worlds, but deeply connected ways of understanding life, illness and survival.
For most of human history, this connection was obvious. Our ancestors lived alongside animals, depended on them, watched them closely. Somewhere along the way, modern medicine became siloed. Human doctors looked inward, vets looked outward, and the space between us quietly widened. The problem is that biology didn’t get the memo.
What animals teach us about health
When we study how kangaroos carry premature young, we improve neonatal care. When we understand how giraffes manage extreme blood pressure without stroke, we learn how to protect injured human brains. When ants farm fungi, disinfect their nests, and mix antimicrobial compounds, they show us strategies to fight antibiotic resistance that we are only just beginning to appreciate.
This isn’t about romanticising animals or downgrading scientific rigour. It’s about humility. Nature has been running clinical trials for millions of years. Evolution is not always elegant – giraffes still have a nerve that detours four unnecessary metres around their neck – but it is relentlessly practical. What works, survives.
Shared challenges in a connected world
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the cracks between human and animal health widened into chasms. A virus that crossed species boundaries exposed how artificial our divisions had become. Zoonotic disease, Antimicrobial resistance. Climate change. Food systems. None of these problems respect professional silos. They demand collaboration, curiosity, and a willingness to listen across disciplines.
Thought leadership in One Medicine, to me, isn’t about having louder voices. It’s about asking better questions. It’s about clinicians being curious enough to learn from vets, vets being empowered to shape human healthcare conversations and researchers being supported to work across boundaries that were never biological to begin with.
Reciprocity between humans and animals
It’s also about reciprocity. One Medicine is not simply about what animals can do for humans. It is equally about what humans owe animals – in welfare, in ethics, and in how we design research that benefits both. Health should never be a zero-sum game.
I’ve seen patients survive because of insights borrowed from animals. I’ve also seen how fragile life is, human and non-human alike. The lesson that runs through all of this is simple: we are not separate from the living world. We are part of it.
If One Medicine has taught me anything, it’s that progress often starts by paying attention to what we’ve been overlooking. Sometimes the most radical thing a leader can do is listen – to colleagues in other disciplines, to different species, and to the quiet evidence written into nature itself.
You can hear more from Dr Matt Morgan in the next session of our One Medicine Webinar series as he presents ‘The Art of Evidence’ with Julie Askew on Friday 27 February at 12.30pm. Together they will explore how creativity can transform science communication. You can register for the webinar here.