BEIJING, March 12 (Xinhuanet) -- For some physically or mentally handicapped children taking a swim with Flipper is a dream come true that is shared by a multi-million dollar industry that provides dolphin-assisted therapy for several thousand dollars a session.

    Dolphin-assisted therapy emerged in the 1970s as a possible treatment for depression and later as a means to help children with autism and other mental and physicals disorders. It is a therapy founded on good intentions.

    One of the earliest advocates was Dr. John Lilly who, after heavy doses of LSD, claimed to communicate not only with dolphins but also aliens. Although Lilly hoped the slaughter of whales would end once humans understood how smart the creatures were, his work ultimately nurtured a feel-good industry that now supports the violent harvesting of dolphins from the wild — which kills many in the process and forces the survivors into captivity where they perform tricks for  aquarium audiences.

  　Anecdotal evidence abounds on the Internet of dolphins making children feel better. Only one peer-reviewed study, however, from 2005, supports dolphin-assisted therapy, and this was a weak study at that. Published in the British Medical Journal, the study documented 25 adults with mild depression who were flown to Honduras for two weeks to either enjoy the beaches and play with dolphins, or just enjoy the beaches.

    Remarkably, all the patients felt less depressed, but the 13 patients who played with dolphins were slightly less depressed than the 12 patients who enjoyed a free vacation.

    Anna Baverstock and Fiona Finlay of the Community Child Health Department in Bath, England, conducted the review of the study because a mother was seeking medical support for her son, and they needed to determine whether swimming with dolphins had any health benefits for children with cerebral palsy. The answer was no, or at best, dolphins were as equally effective at making children feel better as puppies, warm beaches or clowns.

    Two legitimate studies, however, provide some evidence that dolphins can affect human health, in theory. The more recent one comes from a Japanese group, published in the Journal of Veterinary Medical Science in 2006. The scientists found that dolphins increase their vocalizations when interacting with people and that this form of sonar, called echolocation, can penetrate the human body.

    This complements work by a German group, published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology in 2003, which found that echolocation could have an effect on biological tissue under some circumstances if repeated over several days or weeks. Just what the effect would be is unclear and, nevertheless, 80 percent of the dolphin-therapy sessions the scientists analyzed didn't reach this level of interaction.

    (Agencies)