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I was present at a short talk entitled "an Introduction to Diving and
Hyperbaric Medicine" presented at a Sydney (Australia) hospital.The
presenter was a "diving doctor" visiting from the USA. The talk was
intended mainly for anaesthetists and other medical staff who may be called
upon to treat DCI cases.
Accompanying the talk were slides, one of which, by way of intro and to
break the ice was a shot of the doctor himself in full (sports) diving
regailia standing in the dirt with fins on and knife drawn (a bit of a
geek, I'm afraid). Immediately following this was a shot of a "tech" diver,
complete with two slung bottles and back-mounted twins. The doctor's talk
when explaining the "techie" was something like this:

"You may see more and more divers like this. If you look in the dictionary
under 'idiot', you'll find a description of this guy. These guys do all
sorts of calculations and swim around in caves and hope like hell their
calculations work out."

Now, that may describe SOME of the divers around lately, but what bugs me
was that this doctor was presenting as an expert of sorts, and lecturing to
people who may have to deal with a sick diver. I've seen this a few times
over the years... diving doctors and hyperbaric experts used to tell us
that Nitrox should be banned because we'd all end up toxing, and if we DID
get bent instead of toxed, we'd have used-up all our UPTDs and OTUs, and
couldn't be safely treated in a chamber.
I thought that the attiude of "divers shouldn't be allowed in the water
since they don't understand what they're getting into" of some medicos was
disappearing, but it seems it's alive and well...

BW.

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