Veritas, Vol. 31, No. 16, June 1991

              Physical therapy professor tries treatment on whales’ tails
At the Miami Seaquahum, Sherrill Hayes uses an electrical stimulation instrument to straighten the tail of one of the whales found beached in Key West.
If humans respond to physical therapy, why shouldn’t whales, right? Well, it wasn’t exactly something that had been on Sherrill Hayes’s mind at the time she received a call from medical school dean Bernard J. Fogel in April. But it has been on her mind ever since.
Fogel himself had just received a call from Public Health Trust board member and Wometco chief Art Hertz. He was looking for someone to help six whales, who had beached themselves on the shores of Key West and had been brought to the Miami Seaquarium.
Among other problems, the whales had curvature of their tails, caused by lying beached on their sides. A curved tail would slow down their swimming, putting them at a disadvantage in escaping from sharks. Would the electric stimulation treatment used
on humans with muscle paralysis also work on the whales?
Hayes, director of the Division of Physical Therapy in the Department of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation, agreed to try. With
members of the local and national press gathered around, Hayes used a portable, high-voltage pulsed galvanic stimulation unit on the whales, as Seaquarium veterinarian Greg Bossard pointed
out the applicable muscles. It appeared to be working.
“We put the electrodes on the muscle, and we felt a very strong, visible, and palpable contraction,” says Hayes, who instructed Seaquarium trainers on how to continue treatment in her absence.
Since that time, two whales have responded to treatment, and two others have died from other injuries. It is still too early to tell if this treatment will ultimately cure the whales’ tails. But for Hayes, it has been an opportunity to experience something unparalleled in her field, and she would be willing to try it again.
“It furthers the scope of physical therapy,” says Hayes, who will now conduct further research in this area. “It is a great example of taking a basic therapeutic principle and a little problem solving and then applying them in a unique situation.”
North-South Center report: U.S. must lead way in free trade
Center hosts first major conference on U.S.-Latin American relations
The United States must get off the sidelines and take the lead in establishing free trade in Mexico and throughout Latin America, according to a recent report by Siegfried Marks, senior research associate at the University’s North-South Center, the international research center on United States, Latin American, Caribbean, and Canadian relations.
Marks says Latin America countries are committed to removing all restrictions to regional trade by 1994-96. “The United States has the choice to participate or sit on the sideline,” he says.
According to Marks, United States participation would stimu-
late competition, lower prices for consumers, and increase production and distribution efficiency. The move also would reactivate Latin American economies—their ability to export more would result in a greater ability to import more from the United States.
Marks disagrees with some of the key arguments against free trade in Mexico and Latin America, particularly that jobs would be lost and that industries would emigrate to Mexico. In fact, Marks says, the United States already essentially has its own free trade areas of sorts—high-wage areas like Chicago and low-wage areas such as Puerto Rico and Mississippi—in which this
type of predicted massive emigration has not happened.
“We have not seen that kind of movement in our own country,” Marks says. “We’re not likely to see it in these other countries.”
Agriculture, in particular, would benefit in most areas, Marks says. “Latin America is becoming increasingly more deficient in many food production areas. And the United States increasingly is becoming their primary food supplier.”
Marks challenges that the private sector and the government policymakers should develop plans and strategies on how to fully benefit from regional free trade in the future.
In other news, the North-South Center hosted its first major international conference June 13-15 at the Hotel InterContinental. “U.S.-Latin American Relations in the 1990s: Setting the North-South Agenda” brought more than 100 international, national, and local scholars and policymakers together to address the strategic areas of concern identified by the North-Souh Center as central to the North-South relationship. They include trade, investment promotion, debt, democratization, narcotics, trafficking, and the environment.