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---- Microsoft Mail "VMS Mail" message ---- From: HeimannJ on Tue, Feb 23, 1993 6:44 PM Subject: Put Another Dollar In? To: techdiver Dave Waller's note, which identifies him as a YMCA instructor, reminds me of an unrelated issue. That is, to what extent do readers feel that the profit motive (which is presumably important in for-profit organizations like PADI, NAUI, and now IANTD and ANDI, but less so in nonprofits like YMCA, NSS-CDS, and NACD) detracts from the safety of technical training? I have particular concern in the case of IANTD and ANDI. Whereas PADI, NAUI, etc. are not for profit, they used to be non-profit. Moreover, the standards they adopted for recreational diving came from the nonprofit time, when the principal motive of these organizations seems to have been to establish some self-policing within the industry and thus avoid government regulation. Moreover, the standards these groups adopted was more or less consistent with Navy and commercial practice. Of course, some of the reasons behind these standards were lost (e.g., the Navy prefers not to have divers do planned deco or >130 fsw dives on SCUBA because, when on Navy missions, surface supply is usually more practical), but that's another posting. IANTD and ANDI, on the other hand, seems always to have been for-profit. Moreover, although what they teach in nitrox and technical nitrox is consistent with NOAA and commercial standards (Dick Rutkowski was the father of NOAA nitrox diving before he founded IAND and passed it on to Tom Mount as IANTD), their trimix program is not like anything done by anyone in the commercial or military diving world. Commercial and military divers typically use either rebreathers or surface supply when doing mixed gas diving. Now what concerns me is that most of the information available on trimix diving as practiced by sport divers, and in particular the safety of this technique, has come from those who promote it and stand to make some money from it. Although the basic principles of mixed gas diving have been around for decades, sport diving on mix has been pretty much limited to a few people until quite recently, and most of the mix veterans are now IANTD or ANDI instructors. Does anyone else feel uncomfortable about this? I must admit that I am not well plugged into the cave community, so if the the NACD Journal has run dozen of mix acccident analysis reports, please pardon my ignorance.
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