Dolphin-assisted therapy

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One of the privileges of living on the shore of a vast saltwater bay is the opportunity to see bottlenose dolphins in the wild. They play in the bow waves of tankers and cargo vessels transiting our ship channel, and they'll approach a small boat, swim close alongside for a few minutes, breaching and blowing, and then disappear.It's a remarkable sight that's probably good for the spirit and for the nerves. But dolphin encounters like these are always strictly on their terms. Sometimes they show up and sometimes they don't, and how long they stay is up to them.Of course, many people are willing to pay to get closer to dolphins on a more efficient, reliable and convenient basis. Therefore, dolphins are on display in our local aquarium, as well. Four of them reside in a 250,000-gallon tank -- make that three; one died in September. They perform a series of tricks three times a day and are rewarded with dead fish and medical care. The state of their health and their longevity are in dispute, but their positive impact on the aquarium's fiscal bottom line is unquestioned.In fact, the desire for even closer contact with these intriguing creatures has led to the development of a profitable industry based on their captivity. For $85, one is permitted to touch and feed them; for $250, anyone can be "Trainer for a Day." And "Swim with the Dolphins" programs have proliferated around the world. Around $150 will buy a half-hour or so in the tank with a few dolphins.Then there's something called DAT -- dolphin-assisted therapy. The border between Swim with the Dolphins programs and DAT is sometimes hazy, but its serious practitioners make remarkable claims for the salutary benefits of DAT.At the State Oceanarium Research Center in Sevastopol, Ukraine, for example, Dr. Ludmila Lukina brings adults and children together with "specially trained dolphins" in an indoor swimming pool to treat chronic fatigue syndrome, emotional distress, phobias, depression, autism and cerebral palsy.The cost of $5,400 covers 10 days of treatment, room and board. Lukina says, "It's a process thought out to a nicety."DAT programs are springing up around the world, claiming to provide therapeutic effects for patients with everything from speech disorders to spina bifida. In fact, you can even find dolphin birthing centers, some of which claim that children born in the water with dolphins nearby develop six months faster than their land-born counterparts and have "perhaps" 150 grams more brain weight. They're even said to be ambidextrous.But there are three problems with this growing interest in DAT.First, there's no scientific evidence that DAT programs actually work. In 2007, Drs. Lori Marino and Scott Lilienfeld of Emory University published a paper ("Dolphin-Assisted Therapy: More Flawed Data and More Flawed Conclusions," Anthrozoos) that examined five peer-reviewed articles touting the efficacy of DAT; Marino and Lilienfeld found that all of the papers suffered from serious threats to their scientific validity.At the very least, they concluded that the dearth of scientific evidence supporting DAT raises significant ethical questions about its proliferation. This paper is available online; anyone considering DAT should read it.Second, DAT programs are profitable largely because they exploit the hopes of victims of chronic diseases, often capitalizing on the vulnerabilities of the parents of children afflicted with autism and other serious disorders. Their desperation makes them easy marks for an industry that smacks of snake oil and charlatanism.Finally, all captive-dolphin programs encourage a market for the capture, breeding and confinement of new dolphins, which is generally a grisly and inhumane business. After all, it's one thing to kill and eat animals, which can be done with a certain amount of respect and humanity. It's another thing to violate the natural order of their existence by maintaining intelligent, far-ranging, seagoing animals like dolphins in cramped and unhealthy conditions in order to serve commerce.So, if you're considering DAT, consider instead a domesticated beast like a dog. Or a trip to the seashore, where wild dolphins may let you have a look at them, on their own terms.(John M. Crisp teaches in the English Department at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas. E-mail him at jcrisp(at)delmar.edu.)