Goats Tossed from U.K. Navy Dive Tests

Diver decompression sickness -- also known as "the bends" -- can be really, really painful. Especially if you're a goat, the Animal Liberation Front and other critters' rights groups say. They're urging the British Ministry of Defence to stop running diver experiments on the cloven-hooved creatures. And the MoD appears to be complying -- suspending the tests last March, and contemplating a permanent ban.

"A review committee of six experts is now examining alternatives such as computer-modelling techniques" instead, *The Herald *reports.

The tests, previously carried out by defence research company
QinetiQ at a facility in Gosport, involve subjecting goats to various pressures in a hyperbaric chamber.

The results are used to help improve escape drills and equipment for
Royal Navy personnel in case a submarine is stranded on the seabed.

The effects of decompression sickness, brought on by rising too quickly to the surface from the intense pressure encountered at depth, include joint pain, visual disturbances, loss of balance, breathing difficulties, paralysis and death. The animals which survived initial tests at Gosport were often used in a series of painful experiments for up to five years before being culled and undergoing post-mortem examination of their spinal cords and brain tissue.

Goats were used because their respiratory physiology closely resembles that of humans.

Some Pentagon researchers are trying to give Navy divers the same "dive reflex" that sea lions have. Maybe they could just give it to the goats, instead?