Last week, at a webinar entitled “Dolphin Assisted Therapy, Autism and Pseudoscience,” Dr. Lori Marino of the Whale Sanctuary Project discussed how Dolphin Assisted Therapy (DAT) is a nonscientific practice claiming to be scientific. It carries considerable risks of injury and disease transmission to the patients and is exploitive and abusive to the dolphins who are forced to participate.
Lori’s special guest was Dr. David Celiberti, Executive Director of the Association for Science in Autism Treatment.
In this post, along with the full video of the webinar, Dr. Marino offers some background to DAT:
Over the past 40 years, dolphin assisted “therapy” has become a major branch of Swim-with-Dolphins programs, which are, in turn, a lucrative component of the overall whale and dolphin entertainment industry.
Many people describe their in-water encounter with a dolphin, whether captive or free ranging, as one of the most exhilarating and transformative experiences they’ve ever had. Some report feeling a sense of euphoria and intimate kinship with the dolphins; others assert that dolphins are aliens or angels with special healing powers. But none of these feelings have anything to do with real therapy.
In 1971, educational anthropologist Betsy Smith let her mentally disabled brother wade into the water with two adolescent dolphins. She noted that the dolphins treated him tenderly, and believing that they understood his situation, she established therapy programs at two facilities in Florida that she offered, free of charge, for many years. But she later concluded that these programs were ineffective as therapies and were exploitative of both the dolphins and the human patients. In 2003 she publicly denounced them, calling them “cynical and deceptive.”
The idea, nonetheless, had caught on, and the concept of Dolphin Assisted Therapy (DAT) was soon being promoted for profit at facilities around the world claiming to treat conditions of all kinds, in particular depression, motor disorders and, most notoriously, autism.
The use of dolphins in Dolphin Assisted Therapy and other Swim-with-Dolphins programs is contrary to our vision of a world in which cetaceans are no longer subject to any form of exploitation.Several peer-reviewed scientific papers have shown that there is no evidence that DAT has any therapeutic impact. Yet, it continues to be marketed to desperate parents and people seeking relief for the conditions that impact them. Families continue to visit these facilities and to accomplish little that they could not have gained from a change of scenery, from the close personal attention they receive from the people at these facilities, or from interacting with a puppy.
In our webinar, Dr. Celiberti, a practicing clinical psychologist with a focus on autism spectrum disorders, explained how parents of children with autism are presented with a dizzying array of pseudoscientific practices, DAT among them, all claiming to be therapeutic. Parents are often unable to distinguish real evidence-based therapies from quack practices, and the ensuing lack of results can be devastating for the parent and the child in need.
While not always promising a cure, DAT facilities clearly market themselves as offering real therapy as opposed to simply recreation. And even those who are skeptical of DAT’s scientific validity often just shrug and say “What’s the harm?” if a child who typically knows little enjoyment and accomplishment in life can find a few minutes of joy in riding or hugging a dolphin, even if the enjoyment fades away after returning home.
But there is real harm in that vulnerable patients and parents are led to believe in something for which there is absolutely no evidence: DAT’s therapeutic effectiveness. At best, there might be short-term gains attributable to the feel-good effects of being in a novel environment, along with the placebo boost of having positive expectations. But any apparent improvement in children with autism, people with depression and other medical conditions is as much an illusion as the ‘smile’ of the dolphin. And the harm can include severe injury to a child placed in the water with a wild animal who is being coerced to let that child touch and ride on her with food. Several young children have been severely injured by captive dolphins. One was almost drowned by two dolphins in a tank in Mexico.
Equally sad are the lives of the dolphins themselves. They spend their lives under tremendous stress as they struggle to adapt to an environment that, physically, socially and psychologically, is drastically different from the wild. (Even if born in a tank, they are not domesticated and are not adapted to a life in captivity.) The results are devastating: Chronic stress leads to infectious diseases, abnormal behaviors, and hyper-aggression. Most of these dolphins are medicated with anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs in order to control them.
For this reason alone, the use of dolphins in any kind of Swim-with-Dolphins program is contrary to our vision of a world in which all cetaceans are treated with respect and are no longer subject to exploitation.
During the webinar, we showed clips from a DAT session with a young child with autism, in which you can see how both child and dolphin are being coerced to participate despite the protestations of the child and the fact that the dolphin is “managed” by a trainer – neither having much interest in the other. At one point the child is made to put her hand inside the open mouth of the dolphin – a recipe for disaster that should never be promoted in a professional setting.
Dolphin Assisted Therapy is a classic example of the intersection between the exploitation of children and the abuse of dolphins. I urge anyone who is seeking help for a person with autism to visit the Association for Science in Autism Treatment for further guidance on authentic therapies.
And for our peer-reviewed papers and other information on Dolphin Assisted Therapy, go to the Deeper Dive section of the Whale Sanctuary Project website.