Talk:Onychectomy

"Recovery, health and behavioral effects"
The cited research from Yeon et al.(2001) was misrepresented. The study only compared different declawing methods and there is no basis for using it to evaluate the behavioral effects of declawing. 99.6.60.38 (talk) 06:13, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

The statement "in a survey, 34.8% of 320 veterinarian surveyed reported long-term complications" is very likely misleading. I strongly suspect that the survey in question, which was reported in an article by Landsberg from 1991, only states that 34.8% of veterinarians have seen long-term complications from declawing at least sometime during the years that they have practiced--whereas to the uninformed reader, the statement in this Wikipedia article might be viewed as suggesting that 34.8% of declawing procedures result in long-term complications. The reason that I have not cleaned up this language, which is almost certainly misleading and biased, is that I have been unable to obtain a copy of the 1991 Landsberg article to confirm my suspicions regarding what the survey says. If anyone has access to the Landsberg article, it would be greatly appreciated if you could confirm what the survey says and revise this statement herein. Pgordon2 (talk) 23:52, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Good morning. I am a retired veterinary technician and I worked for several practices in my long career (about 30 years before medically retiring). In my experience, and ONLY my experience, it would depend on how many onychectomy/declawing procedures a given practice or vet would do as to how many complications were seen, and the percentage. That is, a vet that performed many declaw procedures in a year, and who was proficient, might have "more complications"... that is, more cats that had a problem after surgery... but a lower percentage. A vet who performs 100 declaw surgeries a year and has 4 cats with a problem has a 4% "complication factor", while a vet that performs only 25 such surgeries a year but still has 4 cats that come back with a problem would have a 16% "complication factor". Was this taken into account when the long-term complication statistics were calculated? Did the complication factor vary with the method used: laser versus scalpel, versus the 'guillotine-clipper method'? (My experience says yes... but I am only one little tech, and a Sample of One is hardly definitive.) Are there differences in the complications and behavioral problems associated with front-only declawing versus "four point" front and rear declaw surgery? How about excluding those vets who do not perform such surgeries? There are quite a few vets who refuse to declaw. I've worked for one, a feline practitioner. In the essence of full disclosure, I am anti-declawing and will neither declaw my own cats nor work for any veterinarian who performs routine declaw surgery that is not medically necessary. However, I also generally question statistics and percentages as a rule-- not just re. declawing, crime stats, or whatever. How were these numbers calculated? -from Schrödinger in Dallas 2602:306:CD93:1700:684C:BA3C:567:5FE (talk) 13:13, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Declawing illustration
Hi all, I made an illustration showing the declawing process before and after. Can anyone tell me if this looks correct? If it does I can add it to the article. --Turn685 (talk) 12:07, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Images of Infected Animals?
The image of an disgusting, infected paw is a clear political statement that (I would argue) violates both neutrality and the least-surprise principal when it comes to images. This is equivalent to showing human organs suffering from an STI in an article about human sexuality in order to advance an abstinence agenda, or "Death on the Highway" clips in an article about the automobile because you think people should ride bikes. It's excessively violent and not appropriate in this context.

Unless I hear an objection I am going to remove this image. Gerweck (talk) 08:10, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Removed Gerweck (talk) 14:28, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Bias
Bias tends to creep into this article over time. I have been monitoring the article off and on for years and sometimes remove the most blatant POV violations. However, problems keep creeping back in. I have, again today, taken the time to remove some of the most obviously slanted phrasing in an attempt to restore the phrasing, at least, to something akin to neutral POV. I wish that I also had the time to go to the libaray and review the journal literature so that I could cite some of the statistics in a neutral, unbiased way, but alas, I do not currently have the time to do this research. Pgordon2 (talk) 03:05, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

I notice that the article lists every country where the procedure is either illegal or severely regulated but does not mention any of the other countries that allow the procedure. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.181.62.247 (talk) 04:34, 4 September 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree that this article is quite biased in POV, almost in line with the rest of the internet on this issue. I once attempted to look up pro-declawing resources in order to play devil's advocate, but I found very little. I have personal anecdotes that go both ways, but that sort of thing isn't acceptable as reference on this site. Perhaps those on the anti-declawing side simply have much more resources and/or time to devote than those who don't. (and those that don't care at all won't spend the resources to fight it anyway, since, y'know, they don't care). But those in favor of declawing dare not speak out, lest they be virtually lynched. 75.134.42.70 (talk) 09:21, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
 * hopefully physically 50.110.252.119 (talk) 08:25, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

Sweeping changes made by Monk of the Highest Order
To Monk of the highest order: You recently made some sweeping changes to this article on grounds of alleged bias. Many of your changes related to tone, but you also deleted some citations to studies. I have been editing this article for several years, and I will agree with you that we have had some issues with bias, i.e. editors who oppose declawing and insert their personal POV into the article. I myself have on several occassions in the past gone in and cleaned up the article by eliminating both biased phrasing and misleading citations to sources. That being said, your changes in the recent edit were extensive and changed the article significantly. Some of them related to the way things were being phrased, and in some cases, you actually appear to have deleted citations to studies on declawing. I disagree with some of your changes, whereas others I might be able to live with. The problem is, however, that you rolled so many changes into a single edit that it is difficult to discuss them individually. It's only a bit of an exaggeration to say that your edit was tantamount to a rewrite. I would ask that, if you'd like to make major changes to the article, you go back and justify each of the changes you'd like to make, and preferably make them incrementally so they can be discussed and consensus can be reached. Also, where there are sources that discuss the effects of declawing, I would ask that you not remove the discussion of and references to these sources unless you can cite a good reason for doing so. ChicagoDilettante (talk) 06:29, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Reasons
The article talks a great deal about what the procedure is and how it is done, but there's not even a sentence on why anyone would perform such a ghastly procedure, as if it should be self-evident. Would be nice if someone could add this either to the introduction or to a section of it's own. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.168.248.172 (talk) 17:15, 24 June 2013 (UTC)


 * I do find it hard to understand why anyone who wishes to have a pet should also wish to have it mutilated as a routine exercise. Can the article be extended to explain why declawing is culturally acceptable in the USA, but not in most other societies? Stub Mandrel (talk) 18:27, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I found an article from the BBC https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48528968 that makes some suggestions as to why declawing is culturally acceptable in the USA, but not in UK, but I wouldn't want to just cite one source for something that big.
 * Instead, assuming the question of why anyone would perform such a ghastly procedure was asked in good faith, I've done my best to answer in the "elective Onychectomy" section. I tried to help people understand how Canada & the US got the stats we have without implying anything about whether things should stay or change now, so hopefully that's the neutral tone WIKIPEDIA is looking for.
 * FYI, In order to do that I moved a bunch of stuff in the page related to N.A. around. I tried very hard to save changes incrementally, so I am really hoping any mistakes and dumb ideas are easy to pull out without all my work getting tossed too.  (Assuming at least some of the work is good!)  I think that there are some readability & redundancy issues created by my putting the pieces together as I've done, but as I've spent about ten hours on this and am quite tired, and in case all my work is about to be tossed, I don't want to spend a bunch more time editing other people's words.  Instead I'll give things a few days and then give it a read over before deciding how to proceed.**
 * OK, Hope that this (and the actual page) mostly makes sense and seems fair :)
 * Maybe at that point there will be an obvious place for this line:
 * Although he now describes the procedure as “gut-wrenching,” one vet has said that when he got out of veterinary school (in the 1980s), “Declawing was OK… and no one thought anything about it.”  https://www.denverpost.com/2013/10/31/cat-declawing-once-routine-procedure-now-draws-fire-as-harmful/  StemsonStacey (talk) 06:05, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Gross Misrepresentation of Scholarly Articles
The section on Recovery, health and behavioral effects contains a number of gross misrepresentations of scholarly articles. In some cases what's stated in the article here is the complete opposite of the findings of the journal article they cited.

For example, the Onychectomy article states "Inappropriate elimination (housesoiling) has been reported as being twice as common in declawed (52.4%) as intact cats (29.1%).[23]" The journal article they cited by Patronek, Glickman, Beck (1996) states "Frequency of inappropriate elimination and aggression toward people were not associated with declaw status, but these behaviors were more common among sexually intact cats, compared with sterilized cats."

There seems to be a number of other dubious claims on here as well, but I don't have time to fact check everything on the page. I hope someone else with journal access can take up the torch or even just someone who knows how to look up articles as some of these things can be verified just in the abstract.

Also, for the record I'm strongly against most if not all elective onychectomy procedures, but the solution is to educate people about alternatives, not to spread misinformation. FantajiFan (talk) 20:52, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Legal Status in Canada
So, I find the lack of sources for

''Declawing has been banned by the Veterinary Associations of all provinces except for Ontario. .... All Canadian prohibitions still allow for declawing-type procedures in the case of medical necessity to treat an injury, deformity or pathology affecting the animal. That being said, these cases often only affect one digit, not all digits on all paws.''

deeply unsettling, and want to do something about it... sometime. It's bedtime now, and all I've got so far is one article, so I'm saving it here: https://globalnews.ca/tag/cat-declawing/

StemsonStacey (talk) 06:47, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

External links modified
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