Is dolphin therapy a myth?; Dolphins are said to have changed children's lives, but sceptics claim their powers are mythical, not mystical.
YESOver the last 10 years, desperate Scots parents have spent tens of thousands of pounds to take their handicapped children to Florida for expensive dolphin therapy.
The children are reported to have had startling improvements to their speech and mobility after working with therapists who use a simple reward system - if the children do well they get to swim or pet the dolphins.
But recently a backlash has started against the technique, whose leading exponent is "Dr Dolphin" - Glasgow-born Dr David Nathanson.
Some critics complain that Dr Nathanson charges dollars 3500 a week for his dolphin-human therapy when it's no scientifically proven, giving false hope to families who can ill afford it.
His detractors say any results are more to do with the individual attention his therapists give the children, and to the benefits of a holiday in the sun, than with any healing powers dolphins may have.
Others say his controversial therapy may be harming the dolphins, which are confined in a large petting lagoon.
Dr Betsy Smith was the first therapist to use dolphins for handicapped children, carrying out the first experiment in "dolphin-assisted therapy" in 1978. But the dolphins she used were wild, not captive, and she believes the mammals are not unique to this type of therapy.
She said: "I believe dolphins allow you to go beyond behavioural therapy, but for behavioural therapy you don't need dolphins.
"For what Dave does, you could use M&Ms. There's no evidence that shows working with dolphins is better than working with domesticated animals.
"I teach animal-assisted therapy at a graduate level, and out of 16 weeks only one week is devoted to the dolphin.
"I put out a challenge. You take two dolphins that you don't know, I'll take two wonderful golden retrievers and an ocean, and we'll see if there's a difference in our results. Dr Nathanson's results are no better than the results people get working in any one-on-one programme."
Environmentalists condemn keeping dolphins in captivity for the therapy. Critics say it's impossible to justify keeping a wide-ranging marine mammal captive for human use.
Another of Dr Nathanson's critics, Doug Cartlidge, spent 10 years training dolphins and killer whales at Windsor Safari Park and in Australia. He left the industry after he swam with wild dolphins for the first time.
He said: "Only then can you feel the frustration of captive dolphins, which should never be captive.
"They are 600lb mammals. Some can become violent in captivity - like Rocky, from Morecambe, who killed every dolphin put in the pool with him.
"You put an autistic child in the water, and the child moves quickly - well, dolphins don't like that. If the child catches the dolphin in the eye, or by the blowhole, look out."
The dolphin-human therapy industry is now looking for alternatives. One answer is a virtual dolphin experience.
David Cole, who runs Aquathought, a US organisation studying human- dolphin interaction therapy, has created Cyberfin, a virtual-reality dolphin swim simulator. Cole hopes to make it realistic enough to substitute for the real thing.
Even Dr Nathanson is considering alternatives - he certainly doesn't want to see every outpatients' department with its own dolphin pool.
He said: "I might specialise in work with dolphins, but I'm a big supporter of all animal-assisted therapy. The advantage of domestic animals is that they are available, cheaper and you can set up a programme anywhere. But, with dolphins, you can significantly assist the motor functioning of the kids because they are such powerful motivators.
"Other animals just aren't as attention-grabbing for children. They're not in lovely warm water - the hydrotherapy is a big part of it. And they can't do as many clever things as dolphins.
"The dolphin is an intelligent mammal with properties that can be used to increase the attention span of children."
BETSY SMITH reckons Nathanson, who recently moved his centre back to Florida from Mexico, is now planning to build a Dolphin Therapy Land.
"Put up hotels," she says, "put up restaurants. Bring the parents in - then take money for therapy, money for swimming, money for hotels and money for food.
"Whenever I hear about a village raising money to send a child to dolphin- human therapy, or a father taking out a second mortgage, my stomach just turns.
"How can you charge vulnerable parents for a standard behavioural programme when those people could better use that money to get real long-term treatment for their children?
Scope, the charity for people with cerebral palsy, is also sceptical about dolphin-assisted therapy.
Its research manager, Richard Parnell, said: "Mainstream medicine hasn't been able to demonstrate the efficacy of dolphin therapy. Its effects are anecdotal.
"Every child with cerebral palsy is different. Children with similar lesions on the brain will still have completely different functional patterns. So it's difficult to measure change as a result of any therapy in a quantitative, scientific way.
"Then there's the Pygmalion effect - the idea that children have the potential to perform better depending on the amount of attention they're given.
"If they're surrounded by people who are encouraging them to do better, think better and work better, then chances are they're going to do better. The problem we have is measuring outcomes in a way that is evidence-based."
Orthodox practitioners offer an equally sceptical view of dolphin therapy.
Dr Graham Lucas, consultant psychiatrist at King's College and Maudsley Hospitals, said: "I cannot piece together any medical advantage out of it other than the benefits you might get from, say, staying at a health farm.
"What is happening is that people are being removed from their normal environment, but I can't see how this links with some phsyiological improvement."
And Professor Vincent Marks, vice- chairman of Healthwatch, a voluntary body which tests treatments and promotes higher standards of health care, said: "Swimming in nice warm water with a nice, friendly animal might actually do you the power of good.
"If anything it is to be encouraged, although I remain unconvinced of the specific effect induced by dolphins."
Recent studies in Hawaii suggest dolphins can respond to basic sign language and perform new tricks on demand, but there is little scientific evidence to support the New Age theories of the 1980s crediting dolphins with everything from healing powers to telepathy.
Dolphin lovers also insist the mammals enjoy human contact. But how do you know?
THEY may look happy but scientists point out that they have a "physiological smile''. A classic case of anthropomorphism - or grafting human traits on to animals.
They also make cute noises, but despite years of research into dolphin intelligence, experts still can't agree on what those noises mean, if anything.
What about all that leaping out of the water?
It's called breaching and it may be part of a complex social ritual, or perhaps a way of rounding up prey before an attack.
Our love affair with dolphins may be based on deep-seated mythical reasons, rather than on scientific fact. Man has always been drawn to these friendly, inquisitive mammals.
The Minoans dedicated temples to them, the Greeks wrote poems for them, the Romans made mosaics about them. And the claims about their powers are legion.
But there's still no conclusive proof.
NO
One family totally convinced by dolphin treatment are the Gowans, who took their five-year-old son Christopher to Dr David Nathanson's Dolphin Human Therapy Centre in Florida last July.
Christopher, who has cerebral palsy, managed to speak his first proper sentence after only a few hours spent with the mammals. It was the second time the family had taken their son for the controversial therapy.
Mum Irene, from Kirkcaldy, said: "I saw a huge improvement in Christopher, and one which has been long-lasting.
"We had tried every therapy going, but it was the dolphins that helped him make the breakthrough.
"I believe there is a something special about dolphins which can't be explained by science. They reach children like Christopher where conventional therapies don't."
The Gowans spent more than pounds 14,000 on their trips to Florida. This included dolphin therapy fees, flights and accommodation for husband Tony, Irene, Christopher and for their other son Darren, eight.
Irene added: "We raised the funds, and it was tough. But it was worth every penny to see the change in Christopher."
Dr Nathanson began dolphin-human therapy at Ocean World in Florida in 1978, developing language experiments for children with Down's Syndrome.
His was a simple concept: If a child makes a correct response, reward it with a dolphin swim. The results were startling. Children retained more and learned four times faster.
Nathanson qualified as a clinical psychologist specialising in neuropsychology. Since he started working with dolphins, he has treated more than 1000 children. He claims that 97 per cent registered an improvement.
Nathanson hit upon the idea to use dolphins to help disabled children while he was doing his doctorate in educational psychology at the University of Minnesota.
In his research, he observed how well disabled children focused on animals, music and water.
"When I moved to Florida, I put dolphins and water together with the children," he said. "Voila! Increased attention span, greater motivation and faster learning."
He has now gone from a one-man show, two mornings a week, to a full-time operation with two therapists, three interns and a secretary.
The Ryder family, from Aberdeen, also swear by Dr Nathanson's methods.
They were so delighted with mentally- handicapped son Daniel's progress that they took him to Nathanson's centre twice, and are now trying to raise funds for a third trip.
Daniel, nine, was only six when he was first taken to swim with the dolphins.
Mum Janice said: "He only knew three words when he first went to Florida. When we came back from the first trip, his vocabulary had stretched to 30 words.
"His last trip taught him how to form whole sentences, and now he can say hundreds of words. That's from a boy whose doctors told us he would never learn to speak.
"I don't know what it is about the dolphins, but it works for Daniel, and that's good enough for us."
Her husband, oil engineer Peter, said: "I don't think there is a special mystical quality to dolphins, but I believe children love them so much and are hugely stimulated by the experience.
"Reward therapy using dogs or guinea pigs or rabbits just wouldn't work - they are too ordinary. I believe the results come from a combination of exposure to the dolphins, the intensive one-to-one therapy at the centre, and the warm sea water and Florida sunshine."
In answer to protests from dolphin lovers, who claim the therapy is cruel to the mammals, Dr Nathanson says dolphins are naturally drawn to humans.
He said: "Just take a boat out into the Gulf of Mexico and see what happens. Wild dolphins come up to the boat - they're curious about people. Contact with human beings is something that they want, something they choose.
"Dolphins in `good captivity', where they use natural sea water, and with good veterinary care, do as well as -- if not better than - dolphins int he wild.
"In a world where the oceans are polluted, and we've got dolphins beaching themselves, being a wild dolphin is not necessarily the greatest thing."
Returning captive-born dolphins to the wild is a risky business. In most cases, the creatures are effectively condemned to death. Nathanson's defence is that confining dolphins is the lesser of two evils.
For Dr Nathanson's programme to work, the dolphins have to be confined, with no direct access to the open ocean.
He added: "When people are bringing their sick children from Britain, I can't say the dolphins may be here, but then again, they may not."
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| Title Annotation: | Features |
|---|---|
| Author: | Mallon, Margaret |
| Publication: | Daily Record (Glasgow, Scotland) |
| Date: | Oct 14, 1998 |
| Words: | 1956 |
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