Doomed pigs used to teach first aid

SignOnSanDiego.com ^ | August 8, 2009 | Kristina Davis

[missycocopuffs]

As the blood began to surge from a femoral artery, Lance Cpl. Chad Pham dug his hand into the gaping wound to stanch the flow.

Fellow Marines were doing the same all around him, trying desperately to keep their pig patients from bleeding out and dying on stretchers in the dusty clearing of a Valley Center avocado grove.

Working as though the pigs were comrades who had just taken a blast from a roadside bomb, the members of Camp Pendleton's 1st ANGLICO unit realized a tourniquet would do no good on this kind of wound, inflicted by a scalpel. Instead, they packed the holes with gauze and leaned hard on the arteries.

“This was a guy that was standing next to you five minutes ago,” an instructor barked. “Make it work!”

As the training progressed, the sounds of battle blared through a loudspeaker and the pigs were shot with 12-gauge shotguns and rounds from a 7.62mm rifle, causing more grotesque injuries.

Though it has received little publicity, the training has become standard on numerous U.S. military bases and off-site locations across the country during the eighth year of war in the Middle East. It is intended to prepare front-line troops and corpsmen for the gore and pressure they will encounter treating wounds on the battlefield.

Military officials and Marines who have received the “live tissue” training maintain that nothing else could prepare them as well for battle.

[missycocopuffs]

Thanks. My bad :-)

[freema]

Yer on yer own after this, missy : )

[Still Thinking]

Sometimes I wonder if it’s ‘agenda reporting’ or just plain reporter laziness...or maybe journalism training doesn’t stress fact and source checking anymore?!

Well, why would J-school de-emphasize adherence to facts? Because it would get in the way of.....agenda reporting, which they ARE trying to teach. So whether on an individual or systemic level, the culprit is the same.

[Still Thinking]

Thought ya’ll might want to see how signsonsandiego is picking a fight with saving lives. Comments following the article are mixed. Just for the record, mechanical simulations can’t match live for this kind of teaching, IMHO.

But then when troops are killed in action they complain about THAT. Then again, maybe objecting to the pig training is more clever than it looks.