University of California, San Diego Urged to Scuttle Cruel Navy-Funded Decompression Experiments on Animals

For Immediate Release:
November 4, 2025

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

San Diego –

In a letter sent today, PETA urges University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla to prohibit new cruel, U.S. Navy-funded decompression sickness/oxygen toxicity experiments on animals and follow the lead of the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and others by pivoting toward cutting-edge, non-animal research.

Public records show that UCSD experimenter Peter Lindholm spent more than $1 million in tax funds forcing rats to run on treadmills under threat of electric shock and confining them in a hyperbaric chamber at pressures up to 700 kPa for up to 45 minutes before making them inhale various gases, including radioactive nitrogen. These archaic experiments were allowed to continue to the conclusion date in 2023, despite the U.S. Naval Medical Research Center admitting that test results from animals don’t mirror human results due to major physiological differences between species.

Efforts from PETA and other allies contributed to the early termination of similar Navy-funded experiments on animals at other institutions. State-of-the-art, non-animal research methods, including in vitro studies and analyses of human diver data, are widely available, cost-effective, and significantly more applicable to humans.

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. — A rat in a hyperbaric chamber. One of many used by University of South Florida experimenter Jay Dean to supposedly study oxygen toxicity in humans, despite the wide availability of human-relevant methods.

“Archaic experiments on animals are a sinking ship, and the Navy must stop wasting time, money, and animals’ lives on junk science that benefits no one,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “PETA calls on UCSD to join the national shift toward scientifically superior human-relevant research.” 

Since 2020, the Navy has wasted more than $5.1 million on decompression sickness and oxygen toxicity tests on thousands of animals at UCSD, Duke University, the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and the University of South Florida.

More than 100 U.S. Navy veterans previously joined PETA and nearly 90,000 PETA supporters in calling on the military branch to ban these cruel and wasteful experiments.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.