This requires the funding authorities to have the backbone to see what is best for the children and channel limited resources in the right direction. It is thus a risk, and not only for Norwegians, that they may fall prey to dubious operators who engage in undocumented, useless or directly harmful practices (8).įor exactly this reason, the key role of the health services should be to offer something different and better: genuine care, time and sufficient resources to provide the best evidence-based treatment and follow-up. For some desperate parents, the quite understandable solution will be to contact groups that can offer some hope that a major improvement is possible.
GLENN DOMAN DOWN SYNDROME PROFESSIONAL
Both the concerned parents and the professional communities themselves have pointed this out on many occasions (7). Treatment options for children with serious functional impairment due to brain injury, and need for habilitation, have been few and far between in Norway. Injuries to the nervous system can therefore be healed by bringing the individual back to the stage when the injury occurred (for example fish) to heal there, so that a normal development can be resumed (6).
Their theoretical basis consists of the bizarre and long-abandoned 'recapitulation theory' from the late 19th century, which postulated that in their ontogenesis, individuals 'recapitulate' phylogenesis by following a development trajectory from the fish stage via the reptile and mammal stages to a fully developed human. The activity in these centres is largely based on principles developed in the 1950s by the physiotherapist Glenn Doman. These centres belong to the cabinet of curiosities in the alternative-medicine industry and have an obvious commercial flair for children with serious diseases
GLENN DOMAN DOWN SYNDROME FULL
Of this, a full NOK 11 million went on travel, accommodation and fees to The Family Hope Center alone. This year, the 'treatment' incurred a cost of NOK 86 million to the Norwegian health budget (4). In 2015 alone, altogether 86 Norwegian children travelled to such centres at the government's expense. In spite of this, ever since 2002 Norwegian governments of varying political colours have (5) ensured that millions of Norwegian kroner earmarked for health are spent each year on sending Norwegian children with serious neurological disorders for treatment in these centres. Moreover, all Norwegian paediatric specialist communities warn against such practices.
Numerous independent reviews, including a comprehensive methodology assessment from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, find no evidence of the efficacy or safety of this treatment (4). Similar treatments are also supposedly effective in cases of cerebral palsy, dyslexia, ADHD, autism, Alzheimer's disease and generally for 'any condition where the brain fails to function in all areas' (1).Īnother American centre (The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential (2)) bases its activities on medical theories that were abandoned long ago and treats children with severe brain injury with up to 30 intensive daily sessions for years, using methods that the American Academy of Pediatrics has been warning against since 1968 (3, 4).īoth these centres belong to the cabinet of curiosities in the alternative-medicine industry and have an obvious commercial flair for children with serious diseases. In hour-long commercials on the centre's website he refers, for example, to child epilepsy as a symptom of 'toxification' of the child, and postulates that many of the functional impairments associated with Down's syndrome are caused by the children having crawled too little as infants, and that the treatment of Down's syndrome should therefore include diet and crawling on the floor. An American 'treatment centre' (The Family Hope Center (1)) has a founder and director with no traceable basic medical training.
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