If you had a stranded alien stuck on Earth in First Contact l scenario, who is sick or appears unwell (e.g. trauma injuries, unsteadiness, lethargy), would you think it better to try your chances with a doctor or the local vet? As a modern vet, if you were presented with an alien patient you up until that moment couldn't fathom existing, what would be the first steps you would take in trying to treat them quickly and with reasonable secrecy?
There are a few things to consider when choosing either a vet clinic or the doctor’s office for your extra-terrestrial visitor.
Be set up for smaller than human or larger than human sized patients
May have facilities for ‘exotic’ patients, i.e. non-mammals
Usually has a surgical suite, Xray, blood/urine analyzers and sometimes ultrasound on-site
Has medications on site, and a wide variety
Usually a non-specialist, generalist type clinic for their type of species.
Is set up to admit and hospitalize their patients.
May have a portable ‘home-visit kit’ already packed with lots of stuff
Is usually not staffed 24 hours.
Staff are used to dealing with uncommunicative and uncooperative patients
Has almost zero medications on site, mostly vaccines
Is set up for only one species
Is not set up to hospitalize patients
Often refer elsewhere for imaging, blood tests, etc.
has very nice surgical suites for human-sized patients
lots of entries and exits
Long distances between different facilities, eg Xray, blood analyzers, treatment rooms.
So if you want to be secretive and have as few people know about your alien as possible, choose the vet clinic. If your alien is not really human shaped, chose a vet clinic. If you want as much stuff in one place as possible, use a vet clinic.
Couldn’t fathom existing? My friend I think you underestimate just how many of us are sci-fi nerds. Does it exist in three dimensional space and is it made of matter? If yes, let’s give this a go!
For how I, or most vets, would approach a species of which we have no prior knowledge and no published knowledge is available, the thought process would look a lot like this post: First Principles.
As for ‘treating in secrecy’, depends on how sick or injured they are. If they’re not too bad, then bringing equipment to them might be the more prudent thing to do. If they are severely unwell, bringing them to the clinic at night (on on a public holiday) might be more effective, but you then need to move the cars so the general public doesn’t think anyone is there. I have frequently been stuck at the clinic when it is closed, feeding boarding cats or treating a patient, when somebody knocks on the door looking for pet food, just on the off chance we were open.
Clinics with security cameras may be an issue. More and more clinics these days have an alarm, but not every camera system will be monitored all the time.
Treating in the clinic is risky if more than one person has keys, but unless they see horses the Xray machine wont be portable, and who knows which car that might have been left in. Some ultrasound machines are portable with power. You may be able to bring some fluids back for analysis, though it’s anybody’s guess how useful that may be.
You can take a whole load of stuff to set up a makeshift hospital in someone’s house, providing you have a relatively cooperative patient. There’s less risk of an accidental observer on private property, but you are more limited in what you can do. The anesthetic machine and gas bottles are not portable, and expensive equipment will be quickly missed on days the clinic is open.
Some clinics, particularly mixed animal practices with branch clinics or a home visit component, will equip their vets with work vehicles which contain a huge variety of basic stuff for any potential call out, just not huge amounts of anything, nothing that needs refrigeration and no controlled drugs.
It’s worth mentioning that any clued in veterinarian treating an alien species is going to have two particular concerns sooner or later:
What diseases can I catch from this alien?
Is this the start of a world wide epidemic?
The thought will occur that maybe they should be recording or reporting this alien. At the least they will record what treatments have been used, what worked and what didn’t. This is part of medical record keeping and you need to know what you’ve already used to figure things out. It may be recorded as “Treatment for Squiddy the dog” instead of “Treatment for alien”. The knowledge may be useful at some point in the future, and at the very least helps prevent repeating mistakes.
A veterinarian may also decide to report this to the government. This is complicated and personal, and will depend on your character but it will boil down to “Obligation to the protection of Earth” versus “Obligation to your patient.“ How they resolve this conflict is up to you as the author.
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