University of Maryland, Baltimore Urged to Scuttle Cruel Navy-Funded Decompression Experiments on Animals

For Immediate Release:
November 4, 2025

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Baltimore –

In a letter sent today, PETA urges University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) President Bruce E. Jarrell 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 UMB experimenter Stephen R. Thom spent more than $900,000 in tax funds confining mice to a hyperbaric chamber at 100 psi for two hours, restraining them with a nose cone and bit bar, placing them in carbon dioxide gas chambers, inserting probes into their rectums, cutting into their scalps, drilling their skulls, injecting chemicals into their brains, and killing them by bleeding them out.These archaic experiments were allowed to continue to the conclusion date in September 2025, 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 UMB 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 UMB, Duke University, the University of California, San Diego, 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.