The Music Of Dolphins

When rescuers find Mila off the coast of Florida, they fully believe that they are helping her when they bring her back to human society. They do not consider her welfare beyond this point, however, and treat Mila with increasing disrespect and abuse going forward. She is forced to live in a place where she feels she does not belong. She is slowly and ironically dehumanized as she is made to learn What it Means to Be Human. What she learns is largely a disappointment, as she finds that being human means falling prey to dark emotions and lacking the Freedom to Be True to the Self.

Mila is initially brought to a hospital where she cannot go anywhere or do anything except what her doctors ask her to do. Their intentions seems altruistic: They hope to learn to communicate with dolphins and solve some of the impending climate problems that are rapidly sweeping the world. Still, their good intentions cause Mila and her friend, Shay, immense physical and emotional suffering.

Mila and Shay come from different circumstances; while Mila was raised by dolphins and is old enough to retain vague memories of an earlier life with a human family, Shay was kept in a dark, locked room her entire life. Both girls have a great deal to teach the researchers in terms of language acquisition and the importance of early social interaction, but neither is mentally or emotionally prepared to live as an object of curiosity. Mila’s strong and sometimes violent reactions to being controlled, which include swimming away in the Charles River and banging on the walls after discovering she has been locked in her room, are solid indicators that she is being treated unethically. Rather than allowing Mila to thrive as herself, Dr. Beck and her colleagues attempt to force Mila to become more like them. In the end, their experiment fails and Mila is allowed to go free. Most children found in a feral condition live short and difficult lives or, like Shay, do not make “progress” and are sent away to group homes.

In ethical research, children have the same rights as adults. Researchers are required to ensure that children’s physical and mental safety are not harmed by the research process. This has not always been the case: The first Code of Ethics was not developed by the American Psychological Association until 1952, and it has since undergone repeated revisions (Field, Marilyn J., and Richard E. Behrman, editors. “Introduction.” Ethical Conduct of Clinical Research Involving Children. Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Clinical Research Involving Children. National Academies Press, 2004). Even so, there were many decades during which researchers commonly viewed the people they were studying as objects, as subhuman, or as unworthy of the same dignities and rights as healthier or more socially powerful individuals. The American Psychological Association currently states that research involving child participants requires the continuous solicitation of informed consent from both the child and their guardian(s), that child participants must be provided with as much information on the study as is possible and appropriate for their age and developmental level, and that child participants’ assent must be requested again after all the details have been provided to them. Since children may sometimes agree to adults’ requests even if they do not want to, it is especially important to ensure that the children are offering their consent willingly (Dingfelder, S. “Report on Ethical Research with Children Released.” Monitor on Psychology, vol. 35, no. 7, July/August 2004, p. 19). Neither Mila nor Shay agree to live with other humans, much less offer their informed consent to be studied by them at a research facility. Consequently, they are forced to survive highly unethical research practices.