Is Heartworm Prevention a Scam?

By Caroline Coile Ph.D.

Not a year goes by that somebody doesn’t post a link to an article “exposing” the money-grubbing conspiracy that is supposedly behind heartworm prevention. At first reading, their claims can be pretty convincing. Are we really being duped into dosing our dogs with expensive medication against a disease that barely exists? Let’stake a look.

Claim: The American Heartworm Society’s goal is to sell more heartworm preventive.

Critics point out that the American Heartworm Society (AHS) is sponsored by companies that produce and make a profit off of heartworm preventive or tests. But what other companies would you expect? Wal-Mart? And while it’s true they make money from drug sales, providing a beneficial product and making a profit are not mutually exclusive. For most of these companies, heartworm preventive sales are a relatively small part of their business. These accusations imply the researchers and veterinarians involved are either so immoral or so gullible they cannot be trusted. Yet you are instead expected to trust the layperson critic who has no data and usually no medical or scien- tific training, but in fact also has sponsors and profits from their books, websites and holistic or homeopathic products.
Claim: Heartworm incidence is exaggerated.

About 250,000 dogs in the United States test positive for heartworm every year. That’s out of about 50 million dogs, which translates to about one in every 200 dogs–less than one percent! That sounds low, but did you know that your chance of being diagnosed with cancer this year is less than one out of 200? If you could take a drug once a month and prevent cancer with 100 percent certainty, would you do it? The odds in dogs are not actually as low as one in 200, though, because these numbers come from veterinary hospitals where a good percentage of dogs test negative because they’re already on a preventive.

The rate is much higher if you just test untreated dogs. For example, 58% of the Turks and Caicos island are positive compared to 8% of owned dogs, presumably largely due to heartworm prophylaxis. Some estimates state that as many as 70% of dogs coming into shelters in the Southeastern United States are heartworm positive. The AHS collects incidence data every three years. The most recent, 2016, showed that every state had at least one case at multiple clinics diagnosed. At least 12 states had multiple clinics with more than 100 heartworm cases diagnosed. Again, these statistics greatly underreport the true incidence because most dogs that receive no prevention also receive no veterinary care so are not diagnosed.

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Posted by Alex on Sep 2 2020. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.