Reef Fish wrote:
> >> As an avid scuba diver, I'm also interested in diving
> >>physiology, diving safety, and of course DCS theory.
> >> Therefore, I participate as a research subject in diving
> >>studies conducted by Divers Alert Network (DAN) and Duke
> >>University Medical Center (DUMC) at Duke's hyperbaric
> >> chamber.
>
> The "therefore" part doesn't logically follow. The "research
> subject" is an euphemism for "guineapig". If he is interested
> in "diving physiology and diving safety", he should have READ
> about those subject FIRST until he had a good grasp of what
> the risks ARE, and could have avoided what happened to him.
Your conclusion is fairly obvious within this group, but, perhaps not in the
group where I first saw the accident report, rec.scuba. In that forum, I
felt no need to comment, what was done was done. Your characterization of
this person, however, gave me food for thought with the following sequence
of conclusions:
I have trouble believing that DAN actually conducted the described
experiment without a full physical. It's hardly scientific to conduct such
a test without establishing as many factors as possible and a physical seems
like such a logical step that it's hard to believe that the test occurred
without one.
It's almost equally hard to believe that a physical would fail to include
test for PFO, something known even in the non medical part of the medical
community to represent a higher DCS risk or that a PFO test took place and
failed to find the reported condition.
If a physical was conducted and detected a PFO, then it's hard to believe
that DAN continued the experiment. Doing so under these conditions goes
straight past negligent, straight to criminal endangerment, particularly
since DAN can hardly claim ignorance of hyperbaric medicine.
This leaves me with only two choices for a final conclusion:
1. Dan's not the kind of organization I and most other divers have believed
it to be, or
2. The accident report is at least partly fabricated.
I suspect the latter.
Lee
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