Dolphins More Useful Than Ever Before

Every great biological discovery relies in some part on the animal kingdom. Hippocrates - that inventor of medicine and catchy oaths - used pigs to model the innards humans. Mendel had his pea plants and Fleming had his penicillin molds.

As for tomorrow's great cancer breakthrough ... well, how about Flipper?

Thanks to recent research out of the University of Florida, there is a new reason to take interest in dolphins and porpoises. Dolphins, it seems are the only other animals beyond humans that can contract multiple-type genital papillomavirus. That's the virus that can lead to cervical cancer in women. Other, more lab-friendly, animals can get HPV, but not the multiple-type that plagues humans.

"No one is suggesting we turn dolphins into lab animals," said Hendrick Nollens, the veterinary medicine professor who presented the results at a recent scientific meeting. "But is is very interesting."

Even more interesting is that in dolphins it doesn't appear to cause cancer. This is just one of a number of interesting recent findings dealing with dolphins and human health. In another, scientists found that dolphins appear to get diabetes just like humans - except that they have a gene that seems to turn it off during the night.

The scientists were careful not to read too much into the work, but it's possible that the nifty trick might be could be recreated in humans. The same scientists are also looking at the astroviruses that play an important part in gastrointestinal disease and appear to have strong links to ocean viruses.

It's estimated that a third of pharmaceuticals were derived from some kind of wild plant life. This is unquestionably one of those statistics like "every day, 150 species go extinct" that nobody really knows is true. But the simple fact is we need the flora and fauna for innovation. Dolphins are relatively well-studied animals, yet we are just now learning that they get diabetes. Certainly they might be hiding other secrets that could inform modern medicine.

It's not clear why dolphins, which are more closely related to cows than humans, are suddenly turning up with these previously human diseases. The fact that they have large, sugar-hungry brains may account for the diabetes. As for the HPV, Nollens could only guess.

"Well, dolphins and humans," he said, "are some of the few species that seem to like sex."

Photo Credit: J. D. Ebberly