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The Life Scientific

Noel Fitzpatrick on becoming a supervet

The Life Scientific

BBC

Technology, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Science

4.61.4K Ratings

🗓️ 30 October 2018

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For all his success as a Supervet on TV and as a pioneering orthopedic surgeon, Noel Fitzpatrick insists that his life has been full of failures. He didn’t enjoy studying for his specialist vet exams and spent ten years working as an actor before setting up his veterinary practice, Fitzpatrick Referrals. Determined to offer animals access to medical treatments and facilities that are more commonly reserved for humans, he has pioneered several new surgical procedures for small animals, specialising in spinal injuries and creating bionic limbs. The prosthetic leg he made for a German shepherd dog Storm was the first of its kind, inspired by the method that was used to rebuild the arm of one of the victims of the 7/7 bombing in London. And he built the world’s first prosthetic paws for a cat called Oscar whose feet had been crushed by a combine harvester. Now he’s on a mission to break down the barriers between human and veterinary medicine so that both animals and humans can benefit from cutting edge research, without the need to do experiments on animals. Producer: Anna Buckley

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey, it's Doleepa, and I'm at your service.

0:04.7

Join me as I serve up personal conversations with my sensational guests.

0:08.8

Do a leap interviews, Tim Cook.

0:11.2

Technology doesn't want to be good or bad.

0:15.0

It's in the hands of the creator.

0:16.7

It's not every day that I have the CEO of the world's biggest company in my living room.

0:20.7

If you're looking at your phone more than you're looking in someone's eyes, you're doing the wrong thing.

0:26.0

Julie, at your service.

0:28.0

Listen to all episodes on BBC Sales.

0:31.0

Hello, this life scientific, is for anyone anywhere who's ever felt inadequate.

0:38.0

Ever since a lamb died on his watch, age 10, in a frozen field on the family farm in Ireland, Noel Fitzpatrick, known to many,

0:46.6

of course, as TV Supervet, has had an acute sense of failure and of death. Today, he's the author of dozens of research papers and is professor

0:55.6

of orthopedic surgery at the University of Surrey. What many may not know is that he's worked

1:00.5

as an actor as well as a vet starring in several films and TV dramas

1:04.9

before setting up Fitzpatrick referrals a veterinary practice specializing in hard to cure ailments

1:11.2

and orthopedic surgery for small animals.

1:14.0

Determined to offer animals access to facilities more commonly reserved for humans

1:19.0

he's constantly pushing at the boundaries of veterinary science,

1:22.0

treating spinal injuries and

1:24.0

creating bionic limbs. He's built the world's first prosthetic pause for a cat

1:29.5

called Oscar whose feet had been crushed by a combine harvester, and has invented several first of their

1:35.8

kind surgical procedures for dogs. He wants to break down the barriers between human and

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