Sue Blaine
25 February 2008
Johannesburg — MIRACLE cure or expensive sham, the jury is out on the Dore P rogram -- which promises "astounding" and "long-term" results for learning difficulties from dyslexia and dyspraxia to autism -- that has reached SA.
While Dore convert Dr Peter Velloza and his team impress desperate parents and teachers with promises that 20 minutes of daily exercises will help struggling people overcome their learning disabilities, the scientific community remains sceptical.
The Dore Program, which claims a 93% "objective" success rate, is a drug-free course of treatment comprising a series of exercises such as threading beads, standing on "wobble boards" and catching bean bags, designed to develop the functions of the cerebellum.
This is based on the principle that the cerebellum co-ordinates brain functions and so plays a vital role in the learning process.
"We've made a very big difference to a lot of people, from age seven to 83," says Velloza, a former trauma doctor, who says he "came to Dore at a turning point in my life".
Faced with a toddler he believed suffered from attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and worn out by nine years of burning adrenaline in his trauma work, Velloza "came across" the Dore Program, travelled to the UK to meet the Dore people, and came back to SA to spread the word.
It is estimated that 16%- 20% of South Africans have some degree of learning difficulty, but that only 4% are correctly diagnosed. Less than 40% will grow out of their problem by adulthood, says Velloza.
"We can help these people become much more productive," he says.
Not so fast, says Prof Andre Venter, chairman of the Paediatric Neurology and Development Association, who teaches at Free State University.
"It's not a panacea, and it costs the earth. People should be suspicious if there's a cure propagated by one unit, one guru somewhere overseas who sends his disciples out to spread the word," says Venter.
The cost is R23000 a patient, which includes an initial assessment and reassessments every six weeks. Adults finish the programme, on average, within a year, while children average 12-18 months, says Velloza.
The Dore guru is British multimillionaire Wynford Dore. Dore made his money inventing non-inflammable paint, retired early and then turned his attention to helping his dyslexic daughter, Susie -- who also exhibited signs of attention deficit disorder and dyspraxia, a disability which involves difficulty with gross or fine motor co-ordination -- after her third suicide attempt at 22.
Having found the cure for Susie, who is now married, Dore wrote Dyslexia -- The Miracle Cure, and trained his considerable talent on marketing his method.
Now Dore Achievement Centres are springing up worldwide, with SA added to the UK, the US and Australia.
While the medical fraternity says the research backing up Dore's hypothesis is "bad science", Velloza says the criticism does not necessarily invalidate the programme's successes.
"Lots of the criticism was appropriate, but that does not invalidate the programme ... (the medical fraternity) is resistant, they don't like change.
The research is compelling, logical and the proof is in the pudding," Velloza says.
For parents battling to tame an child with ADHD, or trying to penetrate the mists of autism, any "pudding" must seem worth biting into, and the Dore websites abound with personal success stories, backed up with published research.
But these published studies are "seriously flawed" and have deeply embarrassed the scientific community, says Prof Dorothy Bishop of Oxford University's experimental psychology department.
The publication of two peer review articles on the method led, in 2006, to five editorial board resignations from the journal Dyslexia.
The board members were concerned over the rigour of the study and the close links of those behind it with Dore. The author of the study was paid £30000 by Dore for carrying out the research and Dore has sponsored PhD students taught by the co-author.
"Yes," says Velloza, "But now The Lancet ... has come out with a sort of middle of the road opinion. They say we'll have to wait and see."
The problem with the peer review articles in Dyslexia is that there was no placebo double-blind study, the programme does not have many patients -- in SA 420 patients have been signed up and 24 have successfully completed the programme -- and there was "not much science" in the tests, says Venter.
A double-blind test is a control group test where neither the evaluator nor the subject knows which items are controls.
Bishop goes further, saying that where control data are available there is no credible evidence of the significant gains in literacy associated with the method, and the intervention has not been evaluated on the clinical groups for which it is recommended, says Bishop in an article in the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health.
"The gaping hole in the rationale for the Dore programme is a lack of evidence that training on motor co-ordination can have any influence on higher-level skills mediated by the cerebellum.
If training eye-hand coordination, motor skill and balance caused generalised cerebellar development, then one should expect to find a low rate of dyslexia and ADHD in children who are good at skateboarding, gymnastics or juggling.
Yet several of the celebrity endorsements of the Dore programme came from professional sports people," she writes.
The truth is that exercise does have some good effect on children with learning disabilities, says Venter and Prof Lorna Jacklin, neuro-developmental paediatrician at the University of the Witwatersrand.
"There's quite a lot of research that shows that the cerebellum helps with concentration and helps you learn ... exercise will develop the cerebellum, but it won't cure ADHD, autism and all the things I wish it would cure," says Jacklin, who practices at Johannesburg Hospital.
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