Feb

Victory for Goats: MoD Ends Decompression Sickness Tests

posted at 11:08 AM
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The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has announced that they will stop using live goats in decompression sickness tests for the Navy. It is a great victory and one long awaited – this has been going on for over 50 years, with more than 400 experiments carried out since the year 2000.

The sickening deep-diving tests were to see if in an emergency it would be safer for submarine crew to abandon ship or wait for rescue. And what did the goats have to go through for this? Apparently, decompression sickness causes ‘excruciating’ pain with other symptoms such as vomiting, confusion, memory loss, nausea and vertigo.

But the battle is not over and the MoD continues to experiment on rats, mice and monkeys, including trying to infect monkeys with anthrax and other cruel tests.

It stands to reason that these tests have been going on for so long and it’s clear that animal tests are a waste of time, money and precious lives. What the MoD didn’t find out in ten years in these goat tests they weren’t going to find out in 50, and the same goes for all animal experimentation.

Tags: animal experiments, goats, Ministry of Defence, MoD

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posted by rojo on February 11th, 2008 at 8:13 am

Just wondering how it is clear the experiments were a waste of time? I don’t think that can be gauged until there are no more submarines, and hence no submarine accidents.

posted by Steve Dean on May 12th, 2008 at 3:47 am

This campaign was run (and won) by the Southern Animal Rights Coalition (SARC).

They used research papers from the facility to demonstrate their ineffectiveness. In one experiment, designed to demonstrate the correlation between brain damage and deep diving, there were three times more instances of brain damage in the control goats (who were left in a field), than in the goats exposed to hyperbaric conditions.

In another five year study, costing thousands, and killing 17 goats, the final conclusion was: “No significant correlation was found between age, years diving, DCS or exposure to pressure with MR-detectable lesions in the brain, or with neuropathological lesions in the brain or spinal cord.”

the tests had been conducted for over 100 years, and the primary reason for using goats was that they are an approximate size of adult humans. Pigs used to be used to simulate over weight divers.

All of the goats from these tests have now been rehomed thanks to SARC’s hard won campaign.

For more information about the tests and other animal rights issues in the south, contact SARC:

www.sarconline.co.uk
info@sarconline.co.uk
0845 458 4673

http://www.sarconline.co.uk