I can't respond to your conversation so I'll reply here.
That list is put together by a company (I'm purposely not mentioning them) who has continually tried to bring a rebreather to market. Their contention is that all rebreathers (except theirs of course) are intrinsically death traps, and take every opportunity to point out perceived design flaws is every other unit except theirs. In order to advance their agenda, they take rebreather fatalities and invent faults, generate wild speculation without any shred of evidence, and use their inflated evidence to promote their own product. A diver could evacuate their own skull with a shotgun sitting on their couch and they would find an excuse to blame their rebreather even if it was sitting in the closet.
The owner of the company has, on more than one occasion, been called on as an "expert" witness to testify against rebreather manufacturers in litigation. In each case his testimony has been shown to be incorrect, blatantly misleading, an extreme conflict of interest at best, and has been caught outright lying on the stand. His latest smack down was in the case of Terry Skiles (Wes Skiles' widow) against Lamar Hires and Lamartek, the parent company of Dive Rite. His compatriot, during the trial, attempted to manufacture evidence by way of posting on several forums to try and demonstrate that the rebreather was defective in design. They further tried to "prove" their evidence by sinking an iPhone in a plastic bag to the bottom of a pool with an unmanned unit to film a manufactured failure state. The outcome of the case was Terry Skiles owing Lamar Hires a literal boatload of money when all of the "expert" testimony was fully and forcefully inserted so far up his rectal cavity that he could taste it on the back of his teeth. You can see some of this discussion in the annals of this very forum. Keep in mind the deceased diver had never trained on the unit, had a verifiable pharmacy coursing through his blood stream, carried no bailout, was task loaded during the dive, and was diving without a buddy in range.
Transcript:
"We, the jury, return the following verdict:
Was there negligence on the part of LAMARTEK, INC., which was the legal cause of injury or death to WESLEY SKILES? NO
Did LAMARTEK, INC., place a rebreather on the market with a defect which was a legal cause of injury or death to WESLEY SKILES? NO
Did LAMARTEK, INC., fail to warn WESLEY SKILES of a dangerous defect that was a legal cause of injury or death to WESLEY SKILES? NO"
They try and use the very document that they have themselves produced to demonstrate that all rebreathers (except their own) have serious design flaws and would like to see every manufacturer put out of business. If you can't produce a better product, just litigate your competition off the market essentially. It is a gross conflict of interest in the very least, incredibly self serving, and generally a detriment to the industry.
The sad thing is that one of their products, their BOV, is an excellent design with some worthwhile features. The rest of their rebreather doesn't exist in a configuration that meets the standard they want to force on the industry, they have accepted money for units and haven't delivered in over a decade, and continue to push their product by denigrating others. They claim to have an ethical high ground but engage in pretty insidious behavior. It brings into question every incident in their database as suspect, and makes it worth exactly how much you paid for it. Really the only verifiable facts that exist in their database are the names and general dates of the incidents. Every other conclusion that isn't backed up by independent investigation is suspect.
