PETA to Navy: Ban the Use of Animals in Cruel Decompression Tests

UN LAB Middleware Label: Title Ends

Update (May 29, 2025): PETA thanked the Trump administration for its ban on Navy-funded dog and cat experiments announced this week and continues to urge a broader ban on all animal testing across all military branches in letters to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of the Navy John Phelan.

PETA specifically calls for a comprehensive agency-wide audit aimed at rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in cruel and outdated animal experimentation. PETA urges immediate action to:

Ban the use of animals in U.S. Navy decompression sickness and oxygen toxicity tests
Prohibit the use of dogs, cats, nonhuman primates, marine animals, and other animals currently permitted in Army weapon-wounding tests
Ban the currently permitted DOD funding of tests on animals at foreign institutions. (For instance, an experimenter in Canada at the University of Alberta has received nearly $430,000 from DOD to use dogs as “models” of a muscle wasting disease. In Australia, the DOD paid a James Cook University experimenter $600,000 to burn rats’ bodies with scalding water and inflict “[u]ncontrolled hemorrhage.”)

Please add your voice to ours by taking action below.

This doomed animal in a hyperbaric chamber is one of the countless rats who University of South Florida experimenter Jay Dean has used to supposedly study oxygen toxicity in humans, even though human-relevant, animal-free methods are widely available.

Original post:

The U.S. Navy is squeezing the life out of animals in gruesome and often deadly decompression sickness/illness (DCS/DCI) and oxygen toxicity experiments (commonly referred to as ‘the bends’) that are as pointless as they are out of step with international standards. In 2024, after PETA urged then-Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro to stop carrying out these experiments on sheep at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the tests were stopped two years ahead of schedule, sparing sheep the agony of cardiovascular collapse, spinal cord injury, and paralysis.

But we’re not finished yet.

The Navy is still carrying out similar grisly experiments on pigs and other animals and funding other deadly tests at numerous universities around the country. PETA has sent letters to the schools’ leaders and top Pentagon brass—previously teaming up with more than 100 Navy veterans—urging them to sink these wasteful and irrelevant tests. Here’s what the Navy funds at these four universities:

Duke University

The Navy spends $845,00 for experimenter Heath Gasier to induce seizures in young mice, subjects them to high-pressure oxygen in hyperbaric chambers, forces them to run on a treadmill using electric shocks, and gasses them to death. The experiment is scheduled to continue through August 2025.

University of California–San Diego

The Navy gave experimenter Peter Lindholm more than $1 million to lock rats in pressure chambers, force them to inhale radioactive gas, and electroshock them if they fail to run on treadmills, aiming to study nitrogen gas uptake and excretion during simulated diving. Lindholm also proposed experiments on sheep without proper approval.

University of Maryland–Baltimore

The Navy gave $1 million to experimenter Stephen Thom, who has subjected more than 2,100 mice to high pressures, restrained them, applied chemicals to their eyes, used high pressure chambers, inserted probes into their rectums, cut and drilled into their skulls, injected chemicals into their brains, and bled them to death. The experiment continues through September 2025.

University of South Florida

The Navy gave experimenter Jay Dean $1 million to induce seizures in rats without pain relief, and implant recording devices in their abdomens with wires on their backs and necks and electrodes fixed to their skulls. All the rats are killed at the end. The experiments aim to mitigate oxygen toxicity in the central nervous system. They are scheduled to continue through December 2025.

This rat, with drastically different physiology from humans, was locked in a hyperbaric chamber and forced to undergo an agonizing decompression test conducted by University of South Florida experimenter Jay Dean.

Posada-Quintero H.F., Landon C.S., Stavitzski N.M., Dean J.B., Chon K.H. “Seizures Caused by Exposure to Hyperbaric Oxygen in Rats Can Be Predicted by Early Changes in Electrodermal Activity,” Frontiers in Physiology 2022;12:767386. CC BY

In this distressing test, University of South Florida experimenter Jay Dean inserted electrodes into sensitive rats and subjected them to the harrowing conditions of a hyperbaric chamber, even though rats are not biologically accurate stand-ins for humans.

Navies in France and the U.K. have already scrapped similar animal testing programs, making the U.S. Navy an outlier. And the Naval Medical Research Center has publicly acknowledged that tests on animals are unhelpful for humans: “animal DCS in many cases is more severe than that in humans and, therefore, appears ‘different’ from the average human case.”

What You Can Do

Please politely urge the Navy, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), and four universities to end these deadly and pointless tests in favor of superior, human-relevant, non-animal research methods.

You can contact university officials and DOD with one message—just copy and paste this block of e-mail addresses in the “To” field of your e-mail:

[email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

You’re welcome to use the following talking points, but putting them in your own words will be more effective:

Please immediately stop all U.S. Navy–funded decompression sickness and/or oxygen toxicity tests on all animals, the U.S. Army’s weapon-wounding tests on animals, and the DOD’s funding of foreign experiments on animals.
The navies of France and the U.K. have banned decompression sickness tests on animals. The U.S. Navy should follow suit.
More effective, ethical, and economical animal-free research methods are available.

Then use the form below to contact officials at the Navy.

View Message +

John

Phelan

Office of the Secretary of the Navy

Message to {contact_data~firstName} {contact_data~lastName}:

I’m writing today to thank the U.S. Navy for its recent decision to ban the use of dogs and cats for tests on animals. Building on this important step, I urge the Navy, the U.S. Department of Defense, and universities to take further action by banning the use of all animals in cruel decompression sickness and oxygen toxicity experiments.

In 2010, the Navy pulled its funding for these gruesome and pointless experiments on sheep at the University of Wisconsin–Madison after PETA and other animal rights organizations filed complaints and brought massive public attention to this cruelty. After similar tests on sheep subsequently resumed there and PETA advocated against them, the university terminated the crude experiments in 2022, years ahead of schedule.

Unfortunately, the Navy is still wasting taxpayer money on similar decompression or oxygen toxicity tests on animals at other universities. The military branch is paying nearly $1 million through 2025 to University of Maryland–Baltimore experimenter Stephen Thom, who has conducted decompression tests on more than 2,100 mice and subjects the animals to excruciatingly high pressures and central nervous system injury. The Navy sponsors other ongoing decompression and oxygen toxicity tests on animals at Duke University, the University of California–San Diego, and the University of South Florida.

Sheep, mice and rats who have been subjected to almost unimaginable pain, cruelty, and often death in these experiments are not miniature humans. And results from these tests are not directly applicable to humans.

There are better ways to advance human health without harming animals. In vitro studies and reanalysis of existing human-diver data have already returned promising results. Machine-learning and computer-modeling methods also hold more promise than dicing up animals, and their results are directly applicable to humans.

Moreover, the British navy stopped using animals in decompression experiments way back in 2008. The French navy has also abandoned this archaic practice. The U.S. Navy, the U.S. Department of Defense, and universities should follow this precedent and commit to good science by banning decompression and oxygen toxicity tests on all animals immediately.

Additionally, I urge the Pentagon to ban the use of dogs, cats, nonhuman primates, marine animals, and other animals in weapon-wounding tests currently permitted by the U.S. Army, and to disallow currently permitted U.S. Department of Defense funding of tests on animals at foreign institutions.

Thank you for your time and attention to this important matter.

Sincerely,

{user_data~First Name} {user_data~Last Name}
{user_data~EMail Address}

Take Action Now!

Fields with an asterisk(*) are required.

First Name

Last Name

E-Mail Address

Sign me up for the following e-mail:

PETA News

Get texts & occasional phone calls for Action Alerts, local events, & other updates to help animals with PETA! (optional)

Mobile Phone

PETA Mobile Opt In

By clicking, you agree to receive automated texts and calls from PETA and accept our terms and conditions. Message and data rates may apply. U.S. mobile users only. You can opt-out anytime.

IMG Source

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510
757-622-PETA (7382)
757-622-0457 (fax)

PETA is a nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) corporation (tax ID number 52-1218336)