Pop Medicine: Dolphin therapy is booming (WaPost)

[Guest guest]

Dolphin therapy is booming despite concerns about efficacy and animal cruelty By

Ellison. Special to The Washington Post Tuesday, February 23, 2010.

Do you or does your child suffer from cerebral palsy? Down syndrome? Autism? A

knee injury? General ennui?

If you do -- and you have a week or two and a few thousand dollars to spare -- a

growing and controversial group of global entrepreneurs claims it can help you

feel better by putting you in close contact with dolphins.

The strategy is known as dolphin-assisted therapy, and the basic idea is that

even brief exposure to these charismatic creatures -- swimming around with them,

petting and kissing them, watching them do tricks and hearing their clicking

calls in tanks, lagoons or the open ocean -- is so uniquely rewarding that it

produces benefits all by itself and/or jump-starts a patient's receptiveness to

more-conventional therapy.

Emory University neuroscientist Lori Marino, who has spent more than a decade

tracking the trend, estimates there are now more than 100 organizations offering

therapy with dolphins. They're found in such widely scattered places as Florida,

Hawaii, Mexico, Israel, Australia and Ukraine, and a study cited in 2007 by the

international Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society said a typical charge was

$2,600 for five 40-minute sessions.

Their approaches vary widely: At one end are relatively conservative nonprofits

such as Island Dolphin Care, which operates programs for " special needs "

children out of a $2 million facility in the Florida Keys; its Web site

acknowledges that " there is no scientific proof that [dolphins] heal nor is

there proof that they do not heal " and attributes most children's progress to

being in " an environment that is highly motivating. "

At the other end are more imaginative operations, such as the Dolphin

Connection, based in the small Hawaiian town of Kealakekua, where Joan Ocean,

described on her Web site as a " psychologist, shaman, and authority on the

subject of Dolphin Tel-Empathic Communication, " charges $1,995 for week-long

swim-with-dolphin programs offering " cellular communication and healing " and

" intergalactic journeying. "

The dolphin-therapy business has been booming, fueled in part by the rapid

growth in diagnoses of childhood mental disorders such as autism. Desperate

parents in search of cures have flown to the facilities, as if to a seaside

Lourdes, when all else has failed.

The practice, however, is fiercely criticized by researchers and marine mammal

conservationists, including the educational anthropologist widely credited with

having invented it, retired Florida International University researcher Betsy

. These critics charge that it is no more effective and considerably more

expensive than skillful conventional treatment, while potentially harmful to the

humans and the animals.

, who was originally inspired by watching a dolphin interact with her

mentally disabled brother in the 1970s, offered the therapy free of charge for

more than a decade, before abandoning the work out of ethical concerns in the

1990s. She now maintains that dolphin therapy boils down to " the exploitation of

vulnerable people and vulnerable dolphins. "

" When I started this whole thing, I had no idea what we were unleashing, " she

said in a telephone interview.

Even Ric O'Barry, who won fame in the 1960s as the trainer of TV's Flipper, has

since become what he describes as a " dolphin abolitionist, " opposed to all forms

of dolphin captivity and domination, and leading efforts to end dolphin hunting

and return captive specimens to the wild.

" It's a fascinating paradox, " said Marino, who along with two colleagues

described concerns about dolphins in a presentation they made in San Diego

Sunday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science convention.

" People are wacky about dolphins, and yet they're becoming the most abused of

animals. "

Dolphin therapy is not regulated by any U.S. government authority overseeing

health and safety standards for either humans or dolphins.

The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society has urged that the therapy be

abandoned, citing reports of serious injuries to people who swim with dolphins,

including bites and broken ribs, and the potential for disease transmission and

stress for captive dolphins that are obliged to interact with a continuous

stream of strangers and may be scratched by fingernails and jewelry.

Dueling researchers

Marino has published reviews of the scientific literature that rigorously

dispute claims of any unique therapeutic benefit from contact with dolphins.

Even so, the Autism Society, the nation's leading grass-roots advocacy group for

the illness, describes dolphin therapy on its Web site, without caveats, as one

of several treatment approaches that " can help by increasing communication

skills, developing social interaction, and providing a sense of accomplishment. "

The Autism Society's Web site notes the research of retired Florida

International University psychologist son, who, it says, " in a

number of studies . . . found that children with disabilities learned faster and

retained information longer when they were with dolphins, compared to children

who learned in a classroom setting. "

son, an ebullient entrepreneur, has been selling dolphin-assisted therapy

for more than 20 years. His Web site describes him as head of Dolphin Human

Therapy, " an international consulting company . . . dedicated to helping you

establish, on site at your facility, the highest quality professional

rehabilitation program for children (and some adults) with disabilities,

depression or other special needs. " He promises prospective clients that DHT can

help them " significantly increase revenue " and " receive positive, international

media attention " while helping children and families. In an interview and

subsequent e-mails, son said he is planning to open a major new dolphin

therapy center in the Cayman Islands this summer.

In 1997, son published research in the journal Anthrozoos, based on his

findings from working with children with disabilities including Down syndrome,

autism and brain damage. He concluded that two weeks of " dolphin human therapy "

could achieve " significantly greater improvement and more cost effective

treatment results " than six months of conventional physical or speech therapy.

Marino, however, has singled out son's research as " thoroughly

unconvincing " and methodologically flawed, lacking adequate control groups and

suffering from researcher bias. She and other researchers question whether any

benefits noted are directly attributable to the dolphins, apart from the

stimulation that a disabled child might experience from being brought to an

exciting new place with his parents, showered with attention and taken swimming.

" He uses the dolphins like M & Ms, " says . " These are vulnerable, vulnerable

families. They take the child to see the dolphins, and it's one of the few times

the family is together, and the child is getting all this attention, and it

becomes wonderful to them, while someone is ka'chinging a cash register in the

background. "

In an interview, son defended his studies and his business enterprise,

adding, " Anyone can be a big shot, and sit back and talk. It's another thing to

hold a child in your arms. " His critics, including Marino, he charged, are

motivated mainly by their opposition to keeping dolphins captive, which he

branded " a philosophical argument. "

" Who says being in the wild is a bed of roses? " son demanded. " What about

oil spills? I live in something called the real world, capisce? "

'This is the only place'

Dolphins have fascinated humans since ancient times with their extraordinary

grace and intelligence, and those seemingly frozen smiles. Some dolphin-therapy

advocates attribute special powers to their sonar, which they use to scan the

water around them. (son, who acknowledged there was " no hard evidence " of

therapeutic benefits from sonar, said he was nonetheless " perfectly willing to

be open to possibilities that use of sonar has effects on well-being and even

breaking down tumors. " )

On Hawaii's Big Island, Star (formerly Paradise) Newland says swimming with a

dolphin healed her chronic knee pain. She has since co-founded the Sirius

Institute, which promotes the " dolphinization of the planet " and has plans for a

program whereby women can give birth in the ocean, surrounded by the charismatic

creatures. " The idea is to have a group of dolphins and humans born together and

living together for a period of time, " says Newland's collaborator,

Hyson.

More-conventional testimonials abound from parents who say contact with dolphins

helped their children when other treatments failed.

Sharon , a retired pharmacist from Oklahoma, says her daughter Jacklyn, who

had a diagnosis of autism and pervasive developmental delay, had yet to say a

word at age 6, when she first brought her to Island Dolphin Care in Key Largo.

" I'd been told by doctors and educators that she was pretty much a lost cause, "

said. Yet after just three days with the dolphins, combined with what she

described as extraordinarily skillful attention from the center's therapists,

said, her daughter said her first word. She has since returned with Jacklyn

every year for the past 12 years and recently moved to Florida to be closer to

the dolphins. At 18, Jacklyn still has only a limited vocabulary, said.

" Each time we came, she'd gain six to 12 months' worth of development in two

weeks, but then she'd come home and there'd be no follow-up, " she said. " This is

the only place where she gets what she needs. "

disagreed with conservationists who charge that dolphins are being

mistreated. " Hundreds and hundreds of people come through here just to swim and

interact with them one-on-one, and they love the interaction, " she said.

" They're like a dog. They're very social. They love greeting people. "

Granted, humans generally treat dolphins much better than animals such as

cattle. A major difference, say dolphin advocates, is our determined belief that

dolphins enjoy interacting with people. As Flipper's old trainer, O'Barry, has

pointed out, captive dolphins perform their antics (including therapy) in return

for fish -- i.e., to survive. He calls the dolphin's smile " nature's greatest

deception. "

Jayne LeFors, a resource management specialist at the National Oceanic and

Atmospheric Administration in Hawaii, agreed that people commonly misinterpret

dolphins' behavior to the dolphins' detriment.

For instance, the dolphins that frequent Kealakekua Bay, where Joan Ocean runs

her business, use the shallow waters, where predators are easy to spot, to sleep

and nurse their young. Approaching them there is like entering their bedroom,

she said, and when they leap in the air while being pursued by swimmers or

kayakers, they may be expressing annoyance rather than playfulness. Or they may

be genuinely playful and curious to their own detriment, like children staying

up to watch videos after bedtime. " They don't necessarily know what's good for

them, " said LeFors.

As concern has grown about mistreatment of dolphins captured for therapy, some

people have been seeking substitutes.

A Southern California outfit called Virtual Dolphin Therapy offers clients the

experience of lying on water-filled mattresses and watching images of swimming

dolphins on an overhead screen. son, in Florida, has been experimenting

with a dolphinlike robot. In research published in 2007, he concluded that

interaction with the robot " provided the same or more therapeutic benefits as

interaction with dolphins, without the environmental, administrative/legal and

practical limitations, including high cost associated with dolphins. "

Even so, son said, his new facility in the Cayman Islands will be using

live dolphins.

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