Recent research has shown that pets are healthy for us, whereas other studies show the opposite:
A 2006 survey of Americans through the Pew Research Center, for example, reported that life with a pet has not make people happier. In the same way a 2000 Australian study of mortality found no evidence that pet owners lived longer than anyone else. And last year Dutch researchers concluded that pet owners have no effect on their physical or mental well-being. Worse still, in 2006, epidemiologists in Finland reported that pet owners more likely than non-pet owners were to be suffering from sciatica, kidney diseases, arthritis, migraines, panic attacks, high blood pressure and depression.
This pattern of mixed results also applies to the widely heralded concept that animals can cure different physical misery. For example, a study of people with chronic fatigue syndrome found that while pet owners believed that the interaction with their pets reduced their symptoms, objective analysis showed that they were just as tired, stressed, worried and unhappy if patients in a control group that had no pets. A clinical trial of cancer patients that a radiation therapy also found that interaction with the therapy dogs no longer has to the participants morale than reading a book did.
