Science fiction has had its share of sci-fi characters with impressive futuristic features, including a six million dollar man, a bionic woman and a bionic dog. Now, get ready for The Bionic Vet – only this character isn’t fictional. He’s Dr. Noel Fitzpatrick, director of Fitzpatrick Referrals, a state-of-the-art specialist hospital in Surrey, outside London. Also the star of the soon-to-air television pilot The Bionic Vet, Fitzpatrick came to the attention of reality-TV producers when he performed a pioneering two-hour operation on a canine amputee.
Fitzpatrick outfitted the dog, a Belgian shepherd named Storm, with a unique prosthetic paw. The artificial foot connects to a titanium rod that’s implanted directly into the bone of Storm’s foreleg, and is the first metal-skin interface to form a resilient seal against infection. "The holy grail of prosthetic surgery is to have skin grow into metal," Fitzpatrick says. "Storm is the first creature to have this type of implant put in successfully."
The operation was a success: Since recovering, Storm has been so active, he’s worn out no fewer than four prosthetic paws; in response, Fitzpatrick has enlisted the aid of Formula One mechanics to fabricate the ultimate in high-performance fake feet.
The historic surgery took place in July, but Fitzpatrick, 39, had spent his entire life working toward it – and he didn’t perform the operation just to prove that sci-fi marvels can happen in real life. "Animals are sentient creatures, with needs and wants," he says. "Doing a procedure just because it can be done is not ethical. I’ll only do it if the perceived outcome improves the animal’s quality of life. At the end of the day, if I feel we’re on ethically and morally strong footing I’ll do it, but if we’re on thin ice we’re not even going to start skating."
Fitzpatrick’s goal is to celebrate the dog-human bond at its most basic, complicated level: flesh and bone. Behaviorists work toward a shared, unspoken language between dogs and people; Fitzpatrick envisions "the dream of one medicine" that will benefit humans and canines alike. His approach to veterinary surgery accents the medical challenges common to both species. Storm’s procedure, in particular, could have untold benefits for humans. "The technology will act as a model for human amputees in the future, and provide hope for people without feet or hands," Fitzpatrick explains.
When veterinarians collaborate with human doctors – as during Storm’s operation, when Fitzpatrick invited a plastic surgeon to join the patient’s skin with the metal prosthetic – such partnerships create an invaluable dialog that benefits all creatures, human as well as canine. "We’re not that dissimilar," Fitzpatrick points out.
He came to this realization early, while growing up on his family’s farm in Ireland. "My job was to look after the sheep that were lambing," Fitzpatrick recalls. "I got the shift between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. And here’s why I wanted to become a vet: One night it was very cold, and a ewe was giving birth to two lambs. She was in a drain, half-submerged in water. I was only 11, but I only had the strength of a small moth, and I took out one of the lambs, but I couldn’t save the other one. I promised myself then that I would know how to deal with the situation better the next time, and do differently."
He’s a study in contrasts: a globally renowned scholar who lectures internationally; a onetime actor who appeared in a few movies and on the same Irish soap as Colin Farrell; a country vet with a city-slick practice that’s fully loaded with the latest in high-tech equipment. Fitzpatrick jokingly describes what he does as "Wolverine meets James Herriot" – referring, of course, to the mutant X-Man with super healing powers whose skeletal system is bonded to retractable metal claws, and to the very real, very beloved vet who authored All Creatures Great and Small.
Since its founding in 1998, Fitzpatrick Referrals has become a destination for colleagues seeking experience in cutting-edge surgical techniques. A brand new facility is now under construction to encourage even more crossover between the fields of animal and human medicine; it’s scheduled to open in the spring of 2008. Fitzpatrick’s inspiration in planning it, he says, was Kevin Costner in the movie Field of Dreams: "Remember, he promised, ’If you build it, they will come.’" On the similarity between the roles of vet and actor, Fitzpatrick adds, "The operating theater isn’t that different to the stage; an actor takes broken words and breathes life into them, and a surgeon takes broken tissue and allows it to breathe again. They both just try to create something special that only they can."
