[HCIdivision17]

I think you can be reassured that the only better way is to place people in hard vacuum, which most would assume too risky. A bit of our knowledge was gathered the traditional industrial way (via reporting on people getting hurt), but it looks like the animal testing was likely timely and informed the risks at stake.

I wondered just how many dogs were involved, and I found the following link: http://triscience.com/Animals/Muscle/experimental-animal-dec... It notes the test group was 125, with tests done in groups of 6. My impression is that their experience wasn't a waste, and was a benchmark study for decades.

While trying to find the original study, I stumbled across another that goes into some further detail. http://cousin.pascal1.free.fr/AVMA%20etude%20decom.pdf I don't have the constitution to read much medical research, but the impression is that the experience is markedly short. Physiologically decompression is pretty awful, but the subject doesn't suffer consciously. Hopefully that's a bit reassuring that the animals did not experience any horror film-like agony before blacking out (though it would be uncomfortable, to be sure).