Investigation reveals Army's risky medical practices

[steven johnson]

This falls under the category -- 'trust us, we're from the government.' These are some of the same people who want to remake the US healthcare system.

From: Baltimore Sun
Sat 28 Mar 2009 09:30
By Robert Little

The U.S. Army in recent years has rushed a number of medical innovations onto the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan with little testing or data to support them, and then altered or abandoned them when they didn't live up to expectations.

Things like advanced battle dressings, a blood-clotting drug and alternative procedures for emergency blood transfusions were introduced into military hospitals without the rigorous review common in civilian hospitals, and Army officials sometimes changed or disregarded data from their own scientists that questioned their effectiveness, The Baltimore Sun found in an investigation.

In some instances, wounded service members were among the first humans on whom the treatments were used. And while virtually all of the Army's published research supports the treatments, some Army studies concluding that they are ineffective or potentially dangerous haven't been published.


• Roughly 17,000 packages of a blood-clotting substance ... quickly recalled when animal tests revealed potentially deadly complications.

• An $89 bandage given to every combat soldier... no more effective than gauze.

• Liberal use of a blood-clotting drug, injected copiously into wounded soldiers in 2005 ...largely ineffective in three unpublished Army studies and potentially dangerous in at least one, and is now used only in extreme cases.

• Transfusions of fresh whole blood, considered dangerous and unnecessary in civilian medicine, became standard treatments ... exposed 20 or more patients in Iraq and Afghanistan to hepatitis. Studies of the practice have since found mixed results...


Investigation reveals Army's risky medical practices

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. • An $89 bandage given to every combat soldier

Times how many soldiers?? That would make it hard to put a bandaid on the fiscal hemorrhaging at the DOD.

[Why Syzygy]

2. I first thought of this .

Biomedical use

Chitosan's properties allow it to rapidly clot blood, and has recently gained approval in the USA for use in bandages and other hemostatic agents. Chitosan purified from shrimp shells is used in a granular hemostatic product, Celox, made by Medtrade Biopolymers Inc. of Crewe, England<8> and in the chitosan dressings made by HemCon Medical Technologies Inc. of Portland, OR, USA <9>. Celox has been shown in testing by the US Marines to quickly stop bleeding and result in 100% survival of otherwise lethal arterial wounds and to reduce blood loss<10>. The Hemcon product reduces blood loss in comparison to gauze dressings and increases patient survival<11>. Hemcon products have been sold to the United States Army, who have already used the bandages on the battlefields of Iraq <12>. Chitosan is hypoallergenic, and has natural anti-bacterial properties, further supporting its use in field bandages.<13>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitosan

Science forum thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=228&topic_id=50226