The US military will stop its practice of shooting pigs and goats to help prepare medics for treating wounded troops in a combat zone, ending an exercise made obsolete by simulators that mimic battlefield injuries.
The prohibition on “live fire” training that includes animals is part of this year’s annual defense bill, although other uses of animals for wartime training will continue. The ban was championed by Vern Buchanan, a Republican congressman from Florida who often focuses on animal rights issues.
Buchanan’s office said the defense department will continue to allow training that involves stabbing, burning and using blunt instruments on animals, while also allowing “weapon wounding”, which is when the military tests weapons on animals. Animal rights groups say the animals are supposed to be anesthetized during such training and testing.
Are they going to start shooting ICE detainees instead?
Iirc they’ll be using gell dummies again. Treating live animals was a way of desensitizing medics to trauma shock. Seeing a living thing in pain creates a startle effect that’s important to train out to save lives. I don’t like the idea, but it makes sense…
I mean ER doctors and surgeons get patients with the same wounds and as far as I know don’t shoot live animals in med school.
ER doctors and surgeons have the privilege of being able to watch live surgeries during training, and doing their first live surgeries with safe supervision. The first time a field medic is trying to save a life in a live situation, it’s rather likely that they don’t have any supervisor on hand, and that someone is actively trying to kill them.
Why wouldn’t a future field medic be able to do time in emergency rooms where they are almost certain to see a variety of injuries that would compare to many types of battlefield injuries?
Oh, that would absolutely be great!
However, it’s worth noting that the common field medic is a far less qualified surgeon/doctor than the typical doctor in training that’s doing surgery at an ER under supervision. A field medics job is to pack wounds, apply chest seals, and do other critical life-saving work, while possibly under fire, so that the wounded survive until they get to a place where actual ER doctors can treat them.
As such, you need to give them some form of live training at doing those things, without requiring the resources it would take to train them to a point where it’s responsible to let them work on civilians at an ER under supervision. Basically, field medics work in the interim where you definitely need them in the field (significantly more qualified at saving lives than the common soldier), while you very likely don’t want them working on civilians in an ER (significantly less qualified than actual trauma surgeons).
Paramedics and EMTs see things in the setting in happened in. Same lack of shock training before doing it live.
It’s about psychology under fire. The doctors that treat gunshot wounds in a safe, secure ER don’t have to be trained to do so in life threatening situations when the patient can’t be moved to a secure location.
EMTs -do- sometimes experience this, and as someone who knows a former EMT, the experience is psychologically devistating when you’re there on-scene watching someone die.
I would never advocate for causing harm or distress in the name of training. That said, if you needed to desensitize an 18yo wannabe doctor, sticking him in a field with a bunch of pigs, where a drill instructor shoots one right next to them and they have to stabilize the wound right away… Yeah, that’s probably really good training for that specific role…
Target practice is in the Caribbean Sea now
Probably not: the airlines providing flights for the unconstitutional deportation scheme are making a killing out of their deal with the regime. They won’t make any money flying corpses: they need living deportees to fly to foreign concentration camps.
So no,. The ICE detainees will live to see another day in Trump hell…
I’m not convinced they wouldn’t just charge ekstra for corpses.