The Attack
What was the attack? Why were the little non-profit tax-exempt institutes attacked so violently by the medical establishment? Was the attack effective? Let’s take a look at the entire situation as it occured in 1968.
The Doman Method had evolved into being a home program. Parents were taught how and why it was possible that they could develop their child’s brain at home. The parents became the therapists and the home became the treatment center. My father’s program had demonstrated that parents could effectively treat their children and get far better results than conventional medical therapy.
This was an enormous threat to the medical industry which was paid by the government and insurance companies. If neurologists, pediatricians, and physical, occupational, and speech therapists were not necessary, then the entire industry would collapse and millions and millions of dollars would be freed to provide the parents of the children with brain injuries effective treatment. Moreover, my father and his medical staff had determined that anti-epileptic medications did not work. Often, children would be put on two or three medications and would continue to have seizures. Scientific studies began to appear, proving that anti-epileptic medications lower IQ. How crazy and illogical was it that children with seizures had been diagnosed as “mentally retarded”? And they were being given medications that had been proven to lower their IQ and make them more mentally retarded! Big Pharma made billions of dollars on these medications. Other medications such as Ritalin began to be prescribed to children with brain injuries in huge quantities. These medications were the equivalent of “uppers and downers”. Children who were hyperactive were given “downers”. Children who were hypoactive were given “uppers”. However, children whose brains didn’t work like average people’s brains would respond very differently. Children who were given “uppers” sometimes responded by being more hypoactive. Children who were given “downers” sometimes became even more hyperactive. Like the anti-epileptics, the “cure” was worse than the disease.
My father had created with his medical staff, an effective “detoxification” protocol to very carefully and gently eliminate these powerful brain-altering medications. They were effectively removing the medications while decreasing and eliminating seizures at the same time. One doesn’t contradict the international Big Pharma industry with impunity.
My father was very innocent and couldn’t believe that by helping little children with brain injuries and their parents who were desperate for help, he would create such a backlash by the monied interests which felt threatened by his work.
In addition to my father’s effective work with parents, there was the fact that the philosophy behind his work went in the opposite direction of conventional medical therapies. Conventional medical methods were and still are based upon pathology. Pathology is the study of abnormal conditions of the body or, in the case of neurology, the brain. Children with brain injuries who are profoundly and severely injured can have lost millions or even a billion brain cells in the course of becoming brain-injured. This is pathology. For decades neurologists and pediatricians preached and pushed the idea to parents that when a brain cell is dead, it is dead and nothing can be done about it. They were emphatic and this effectively squashed parents' opinions and determination to help their children. My father was vehemently criticized for claiming that his children and adults with brain injuries made remarkable progress. This progress was only possible if their brains were growing and developing in some way. The conventional methods are based upon pathology.
The philosophy of the Doman Method is 100% based on physiology which is the study of normal development and growth. Pathology proposes that there are millions and millions of cells that are dead and gone and there is nothing you can do about it. Physiology asks, what about the billions of healthy brain cells that are left functioning in the brain after the brain injury has occurred?
How many neurons are there in the human brain? There is some consensus that there are about 86 billion neurons in the brain. Remember that some of the most profoundly injured children with brain injuries may have lost as much as a billion brain cells or neurons. What about the other 85 billion healthy, surving neurons? If we looked at this from a purely financial view point, let’s say you had $86 billion, something happened and you lost $1 billion, would you really be very upset considering you had $85 billion left? This is what happens to thousands and thousands of children with brain injuries. A billion neurons are killed during the process of the brain injury and they have 85 billion healthy cells remaining. This is our work and it is all about physiological development.
During the heavy and difficult years that my father, his work, and the parents who proved him to be correct were being suppressed, there were those professionals who stood beside him including his own medical staff, Dr. Edward LeWinn, Dr. Evan Thomas, Dr. Roselise Wilkinson, and of course, his own brother, the Medical Director of the Institutes, Robert Doman. These MDs stood tall next to my father. There were many doctors who had brought their children to us, had done a very effective home program with their child with brain injuries and had proved my father was right. They too defended my father.
Interestingly, doctors of osteopathy, chiropractors, naturopaths, and doctors of homeopathy never attacked my father’s work. On the contrary, they supported it and often referred families to us. Or, if they had a child with brain injuries, they would come onto our program like any of our other wonderful families. Of course these healthcare professionals also have philosophies more akin to physiological development as opposed to having an ideology of pathology.
Very prominent neuroscientists and neurophysiologists also joined my father. From their own research with laboratory animals, they knew that the brain could grow and develop. One of the first in the field to prove this was Dr. Boris Klosovsky, the head of neurorehabilitation at the USSR Academy of Medical Science in Moscow. David Kretch and his team at Berkley became steadfast friends of my father’s. These pioneering scientists knew from their own scientific research that the brains of experimental animals could be developed by supplying stimulation to the sensory areas of the brain with frequency, intensity, and duration. They knew that they could develop the motor areas of the brain by providing extraordinary opportunity for mobility, communication, and manual skills. This is exactly what my father was doing for children and adults with brain injuries.
The neuroscientists had a problem. They couldn’t take their experiments with animals and practice them on children. Human parents don’t like the idea of having their children’s heads opened and having their brains looked at for scientific reasons.
Glenn Doman
My father and his medical and clinical team had a problem. They couldn’t take their effective program for adults and children with brain injuries and prove the brain growth and development. For the same reason as the neurophysiologists, parents dont’t like the idea of working hard, treating their child with brain injury at home, and then have the child’s head opened up in surgery to show that the brain had grown and developed.
The MD’s who were making a career of debunking my fathers work constantly harped for “proof” that the brain was growing and developing. The hypocrisy was self-evident. These same doctors then and now continued to pour millions and millions of dollars into physical, occupational, speech, and drug therapies for people with brain injuries yet do not require them to show any proof of results.
My father and his team were always struck with the ridiculousness of the argument. A family would come to him desperate that their three, six, twelve, or 24-year-old could not understand, walk, talk, or use his hands better than an average eight-month-old baby. After years of successful work with the Doman Method, some of these children were able to graduate and go to school and compete successfully with average children of the same chronological age. The child had gone from being neurologically way, way, way below average, and now after the Doman Method, were way above average. The child is the proof of the results! One does not need to look at his brain, the only thing that matters is the child’s success.
The naysayers had an answer for this. They would tell the parents, “the child would have gotten well anyway.” Often the same doctor who had said the child was hopeless and should be institutionalized, once my father and his team and the parents had worked hard for years so the child would succeed, would say, “it wasn’t the Doman Method and the parents’ hard work. If they had done nothing the child would have gotten better spontaneously.” We and our parents have listened to this kind of nonsense for decades.
Years ago, a family came to us with their severely-to-moderately brain-injured child. The father was a pediatrician and had tried everything, including the conventional methods without success. Mother was a nurse. We couldn’t have asked for better-qualified parents from an educational standpoint. Most importantly, like all of our parents, they were both a fabulous mother and a fabulous father.
Our father, the pediatrician, was in practice with his best friend, an obstetrician. When the time came for their baby to be born, the best friend obstetrician delivered the baby from our mother, the nurse. The entire birth was a disaster. Despite mother’s best efforts, it was very difficult. Mother did her best. The obstetrician did his very best. He was very distressed that his best friend and his best friend’s wife had had such a difficult birth. The baby had suffered greatly.
The obstetrician emphatically apologized to his best friend and partner for the mess of the birth. No one blamed him. He had done his best under the circumstances. As the years passed, the obstetrican saw his friend go through many therapies that were unsuccessful for their child who was very developmentally delayed. Once the parents began to work with my father, the obstetrician noticed how hard his friend and his wife worked to develop their child with brain injury.
After years of our program, the child graduated and went to school and successfully competed with average children of the same age. We were thrilled. The parents were thrilled as were the child’s teachers. The kid was happy he was in school and had friends. Everybody had won! The family threw a big party for the friends and neighbours who had helped during the time of our program. At the party, our father, the pediatrician began to chat with his friend the obstetrician. The obstetrician said, “You know it would have happened anyway.” The pediatrician was furious. He said, “You were at the birth. You saw my son and his brain injury!” Our dad, the pediatrician, had been told by my father years before how often he had heard this. Now the father experienced it.
Upon the 25th anniversary of my father’s Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential, the staff gave him a beautiful stained glass window for the glass wall of his office. It was made by Willet Stained Glass Studios. This is the famous Philadelphia company that did the stained glass windows in the National Cathedral in Washington. My father’s window says in Latin, ‘Hic quae facienda sunt fiant’. In English, this means, ‘This is the place where the results that would have happened anyway happen!’
Back in 1968, like now, children and adults with brain injuries are institutionalized. Wherever you live in the world, I dare you to go find the nearest institution for children with brain injuries and ask for a tour. If this is a state institution, you’ll be appalled by the conditions of the facility and the conditions of the children you find in the facility. If you happen upon the most expensive private institution, you will find an expensive, clean facility, but bored or drugged-to-boredom children with brain injuries.
No loving parent ever happily institutionalizes their brain-injured child. It only happens because the parents die, are no longer capable of caring for the child, or run out of money to care for the child. Hundreds of our parents from all over the world have been told by their physicians “Get rid of him before you fall in love with him.” This is what parents of children with profound and severe brain injuries are often told when the severity of the injury is diagnosed. This means put the child away in an institution for life before you get to love him. Every one of the hundreds of our parents that are told this are shocked and appalled by the advice. First of all, it’s too late. Mother has loved him from the moment that she realized she was pregnant. Father, at the latest, has loved him from the moment he was born. As soon as parents know that their child has a serious neurological problem, they want to get going and do something about it. In effect, they want to save their child’s life. Not incarcerate him like a convicted criminal for life!
If you look at the finances of institutionalizing an adult or a child with brain injury, it is unbelievably bad and horrrifyingly expensive. In the United States, institutionalizing a child can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Let’s be conservative and guess that it costs $200,000 a year to institutionalize a three-year- old child with brain injuries. The federal government, state government, and local government will all pay to raise the $200,000. If the child lives for 82 years it will cost $16,400,000. This does not account for inflation which could double or triple this amount! Everybody loses. The family hates to institutionalize their child. Siblings, parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents, all constantly suffer knowing that one of theirs is locked up forever. Not only that, but one of their family’s most vulnerable, least able to defend themself is alone and living with strangers till the end. The federal, state, and local governments lose a fortune. They are not considered heroes but incarcerators. Don't forget yourself, the taxpayer. You’re footing that unbelievably crazy bill.
One does not need to be a genius or a visionary to see the entire situation is insane. For a tiny fraction of the cost, the parents and family could be helped to at least make the quality of the child’s life better. At best, to give the child a fighting chance of becoming well. With the children who make it to wellness, they will end up making the taxpayers money as opposed to being a huge financial burden on society.
For more than sixty years, our parents around the world have understood the insanity of the situation. Our Italian parents, bless their souls, were the first to do something about it. By the early 1970s, as a result of the pressure parents put on the system, the Italian media was supporting the parents by widely publicizing the huge cost of the system to basically incarcerate the child, or to hold the child down by claiming nothing could be done for his dead brain cells. This forced politicans to support the parents, rather than the expensive conventional methods that didn’t work.
More and more Italian parents came onto our program because the cost of our program was being paid in full or 80% by the regional government. We began to send a team of our clinical and medical staff to Italy twice a year. Obviously, it was easier for us to go and see forty families as opposed to having forty families travel to Philadelphia. We have been dreaming our entire lives that other governments could become so sensible.
The world of children and adults with brain injuries is loco. I remember visiting the Italian region of Sardinia. Back in the 1980s it was paying 100% of our services for our families from Sardinia. The regional government was communist. The communists has figured out they could save a bucketload of public monies by supporting our families of children with brain injuries. This cost nothing compared to locking the children up in institutions in Sardinia. The communists had become better capitalists than the capitalists!
As it has been for more than seventy years, the world of our parents and children is chaotic. In the 1960s there was conventional therapy and there were the Domans in Philadelphia. Parents had their choice. The parents who refused to believe that their child was hopeless were determined to prove the system wrong. They landed on our doorstep. In those days, the family was strong. Mothers and fathers stuck together even if the only reason was to give their child a chance of having a happy life. We found those parents forgot about their personal differences and celebrated their child’s victories with great love and enthusiasm.
Today the situation is much more difficult. The chaos prevails. Nowadays, everybody and his brother has some therapy for children with brain injuries. These come and go like fads. It’s very difficult for families to find us through the smoke. The parents who managed to find us have become hardened veterans. Usually, they have tried the conventional methods and have found them a waste of time and money. They try other fad therapies that don’t work. Through word of mouth, our books, our extensive website, newsletter, or social media, they find us.
In the 90s the nation of Norway followed Italy and began to reimburse our families 100% of the cost of our program, including travel to our European center in Italy or our headquarters here in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.
Sadly, during the last fifty years, the family has been under attack. The culture and the media that have been at the forefront of this attack could not have done anything more destructive to our children with brain injuries. Remember, we have worked shoulder to shoulder with more than 400 families from more than 100 countries and all continents except Antarctica. These parents represent every race, religion, ethnicity, and culture representative of humanity and our planet. All the results that have been achieved with the Doman Method during this time have been done by mothers with help from fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts and uncles, and grandparents. We have never succeeded graduating a single child with brain injuries who was not fixed by their families, mostly their mothers. Mothers are the heart and soul of the program and everything we do. There is no doctor, therapist, healthcare professional, or even Doman Method coach that is even vaguely in league with the same determination, love, and hard work capable of any of our parents.
There is no question that certain cultures are better suited to our program than others. It’s simple. If it’s a culture where the family is strong, that is where we will get the best results. Our European Doman International organization is in Italy because the family is strong. The family is strong in all of Latin America. Our institute in Asia is in India because the family is strong. Families can be very strong in the Russian-speaking countries. We go to Russia twice a year when we are allowed to. In Japan, our work has always been highly regarded. Mothers and the family are strong.
When the world gets saner, all cultures, religions, and governments will support mothers and families. Let us hope the media will join in this move towards sanity.
Written by: Douglas Doman