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Okay, everyone always talks about divers who don't contribute anything to this
List, so here is my feeble attempt at contribution.    At least later when I
express a contrarian thought no one can say, "What have you contributed Tod?
We searched the archives and found nothing!"    :-)

From studies being done at the Naval Medical Research Center, article "This
Little Piggy Can Beat the Bends"

     "It was more than 35 years ago that Lutz Kiesow told a gathering of
colleagues how he proposed to combat the bends -- by feeding bacteria to divers.
The response?  Kieslow's fellow researchers laughed and walked out of the room."
     Now, Kiesow might get the last laugh.  Following Kiesow's lead, researches
at the Naval Medical research Center earlier this year placed a group of pigs in
a hyperbaric chamber that mimicked decompression ascents from as deep as 950
feet.  Some of the pigs had been injected with 'Methanobrevibacter smithii,' a
hydrogen-consuming bacteria.  Of this group, only half got the bends, compared
to nearly all the pigs not given the bacteria culture.
     Although no similar trials are scheduled on human divers, researchers
believe the finding hold great promise,    'If we give this bacteria to human
beings diving very deep, we will likely be able to reduce the total gas load in
your body and reduce the occurrence of bends,' says Susan Kayer, head of the
research center's decompression program.
     Kayer believes that research and commercial divers who use hydrogen gas
will soon be taking bacteria pills to offset the effects of the deep.  And she
hopes biologists will be able to adapt nitrogen-consuming bacteria to minimize
the risk of getting bent on recreational dives, where nitrogen from compressed
air forms bubbles in the blood or body tissues -- the most common type of bends.
     For Lutz Kiesow, now researcher at a hospital in Portland, Oregon, the work
of Kayer and her colleagues is particularly gratifying.  'It still proves that
science works, he says, 'even though sometimes slowly.'"
                                         -----Source: "AQUA," November 1999, pg
22.

Comments; thoughts; informed opinions?

Regards,
Tod


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