Mike
Contributor
One of the DAN physicians that spoke at DEMA made a great point. People keel over all the time. When someone drops dead during a tennis match, we don't call that a "tennis accident." When it happens when they're diving, we seem very intent it being a "diving accident."
If D. Dillehay's info is accurate, a person with a known condition and a recommendation from a physician NOT to dive, went diving and had a bad outcome. Quel surprise, as they say.
Yes, if the info is accurate. However, 'heart attack' in dive op world = "Get of Jail Free Card", or "just a heart attack folks, nothing to see here, nothing to talk about... move along... move along.. the poor SOB had a heart attack, end of story."
I'm not saying this guy did or didn't. But I'd sure like to know if when these dive death autopsys are done that they are complete and actually do go far enough to find convincing evidence to support a cause of death. I've never read anything that would lead you to believe they do, on the contrary I've seen report after report that "the island doesn't have proper equipment even to make that diagnosis" and such to that effect.
I'm not saying anybody is covering anything up, even though there is another dive death in La Paz being declared death by heart attack and a dozen divers reported a CO problem shortly around the same time. All I'm saying is "heart attack" is a nice clean way to wrap up these things in a nice bow, and move them along.
I believe CO wasn't even on the radar in Mexico up until a year or two ago when some scubaboarders here made it an issue. Were CO alarms even installed at the tank filling operation prior to that? There has been known incidents in the last year of the divers having CO poisoning diving with that dive op down south at the AI and the cave diver here recently, if any death on Cozumel doesn't raise an eyebrow to you, that's fine, to me it does. If a death easily written off as "eh, he was a fat bastard, he had a heart attack" doesn't raise an eyebrow to you, that's fine, to me it does. With Cozumel's unfortunate increase in people finding out about CO deaths, every dive related death there to me is something to be concerned with unless positively proven other wise. This is the age of Bernie Madoff, I'd like to believe that everything is perfect as roses all the time, and everyone is magically looking out for my best interests every moment, however I'll stick to Ronald Reagan's motto of trust but verify.