Of course that subject will cause many wars, of all sorts from all angles. Also lots of deleted posts and maybe some banning.
But to me, both of the major sides are off. Holding verse not holding. My experience(long and varied) allows me to understand some of this.
Handling in itself does not bother a healthy monitor. So the first goal is to attain health. If you gain health, then holding them will not harm them. Of course, it could harm you.
Positive reinforcement will indeed "tame" monitors. If you want to feed them stuff from your mouth, go ahead, ITS YOUR MOUTH. Just don't complain when you lose your lips. Same goes for any part of your body, including hand feeding. Its your hand. Monitors are kinda smart, just impatient. Even tame monitors can accidently remove or crush human small parts.
Negative reinforcement can be used, but if not done expertly, will cause harm to the monitor. So if your an expert, good on ya, and lets hope you do not hurt the monitor. But if your not expert, you have no business practicing on a living animal. There is a point here. You can easily tame a monitor with positive reinforcement(reward) so there is absolutely no need for negative(punishment) reinforcement. This brings up a real question, why do something you do not need to do. Particularly punishment.
Negative reinforcement has a different type of reaction with reptiles. They do not practice a tier system. They practice an equal system in group behavior. So if you stress them(dominate), they internalize the stress and do not show it outwardly. This causes lots of damage. Often causing various common maladies.
My personal opinion is, keepers should have a choice as to whether they can hold the monitors. They just need to understand how and when. Not, no you can't, or yes you can. You CAN do either without problem. If done properly.
More on taming. In my experience, you do not have to do anything to tame them. Once they trust you, they ARE tame, and nothing more HAS to be done. Of course, that is a generality and some individual monitors need some positive reinforcement. Some species have more of these individuals then other species. And gender plays a big part in that too. Males of larger species, can be a handful. Particularly teenage males. In monitors, a young adult male is not more then a ball of testosterone. All they want to do is, copulate and feed, thats it, anything else appears to be a waste(at least with the healthy individuals) These can be a pain, but because feeding is a big part, they can be moved or manipulated with the use of food. In otherwords, they will jump off a cliff if you throw food off the cliff.
So I say, BOTH SIDES learn the animal and stop making barriers. There are no barriers between holding and not holding a monitor. Yes, you can do either poorly and the monitor will suffer. Cheers
Sometimes my finger....but she is only 8-10 inches, so at least she isn't taking off parts. 