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Battlefield Medkits Improve

Posted by michael on from the sulfa-powder dept.

ApharmdB writes "CNN has an article on the US military's fielding of a bandage containing clotting agents that can stop blood flow within two minutes. Obviously, the hope is that they will save a lot of lives. What's next straight from your favorite FPS? Who has an estimate on how long it will take for the Army to outfit its troops with anti-personnel rocket launchers?" Those have been around for quite a while.

12 of 314 comments (clear)

  1. That is a anti-tank weapon. by forrestt · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...not an anti-personnel weapon, but I'm running out of hairs to split.

    1. Re:That is a anti-tank weapon. by susano_otter · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Assuming that war is not always wrong, but also that it is sometimes unavoidable, the Geneva Convention (and similiar treaties), attempt to preserve the humanity and humane-ness of the combatants as much as possible. They're also a method for the signatory nations to assert their commitment to humane-ness, even (especially!) in the brutalizing context of war. Laughing at it seems kind of foolish. Or do you think that soldiers should be given carte blanche to induldge the worst kind of behavior they can imagine, since war is already pretty brutal to begin with?

      --

      Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.

  2. Antipersonnel by amigaluvr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Who has an estimate on how long it will take for the Army to outfit its troops with anti-personnel rocket launchers?

    We don't really need more anti-personnel equipment

    War nowadays is more about accuretley knocking out specific enemy targets. Communications and flight and aircraft and the like

    Not just killing everybody

    America had developed small antipersonnel nukes during the cold war. These are well known of, but they don't see the light of day

    Some things are better left unbuilt.

  3. Today we teach /. editors "personnel" vs "armor" by Entrope · · Score: 2, Insightful
    "Who has an estimate on how long it will take for the Army to outfit its troops with anti-personnel rocket launchers?" Those have been around for quite a while.
    Which part of anti-personnel did Michael not understand, that led him to link to an anti-armor rocket?

    Quake and cousins would be so much more boring if you could only use the rocket launcher against enemy vehicles -- there are a lot fewer of those than enemy troops :)

  4. Someone call the ASPCA by corwinss · · Score: 1, Insightful
    Laboratory animal tests show that when the bandage is applied for just two minutes, the clotting agent stops the bleeding.

    Am I the only one who is wondering if the government is cutting the limbs off of rats, monkeys, sheep, and other animals to see if the clotting agent works or not? I mean seriously - what about the clotting agents that didn't work.
    Bob! We got another dead monkey! Oh - You IDIOT! Don't spank it, it's not alive anymore!
    --
    "Who am I" and "Why are we here" are not the problems.
    The problem is when someone asks "Why are they here."
  5. anti-personnel rocket launcher by GooberToo · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Who has an estimate on how long it will take for the Army to outfit its troops with anti-personnel rocket launchers?

    It's called an M203, law, vlaw, and rpg. ;)

  6. User friendliness by dynayellow · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Here's my question... can they be applied using only one hand? This has been a big problem with personal first aid kids for quite some time.

  7. Hope we get the GPS effect by cbuskirk · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Durning the final couple of months in the last War with Iraq, several companys built hundreds of thousands of Personal GPS's to supply one to every soldier. When the war ended they were stuck with most of their inventory and the public got the GPS's at affordible prices 5 to 10 years quicker than normal military trickle down. I hope the same thing happens with those bandages, otherwise they will be quite expensive for local ER's to stock them. Hell in a few years we could all have them stocked in our home.

  8. AP rockets? by Guppy06 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Who has an estimate on how long it will take for the Army to outfit its troops with anti-personnel rocket launchers?"

    Why? In real life, assult rifles hurt a lot more than they do in some popular FPSs (Half-Life comes to mind).

    Besides, FPSs have the advantage of the Incredible Shrinking Ammo, the ability to carry dozens of reloads for that rocket launcher with no detrimental effects.

    Oh, and then there's the ability to fire (accurately!) what is essentially a support weapon while walking/running/jumping. And people/objects behind you don't need to worry about backwash...

  9. Re:Cut Stop Powder by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Well, as a former medic (1989-1997) I can say, with authority, that I know nothing about any such stuff. ;) A few posts back, someone was talking some spray called "Tropostat," which was apparently something along those lines, but it sounds like it may have been pulled from the market. Probably caused cancer in rats that would otherwise have bled to death, or something ...

    Some userful things never get approved by the FDA for "NIH" (Not Invented Here) reasons. When I was stationed in England, we worked with the British hospitals a lot, and they had some cool epoxy-like bandaging stuff -- basically, you'd pour it into thw wound, and it would form perfectly to the shape of the wound, and then get slowly absorbed by the patient's body as the wound healed. Now, British medicine is just as good as US; I see no reason why we couldn't have trusted the stuff for our patients. But we couldn't use it because it hadn't been approved by the FDA yet -- and since that was over ten years ago, I suppose it probably never has been or will be.

    --
    The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
  10. Re:topostat by geekoid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    the fact that it is 2003, and you can say:
    "When I first got cancer in 1980 they applied paper tape to my back after a bone marrow asperation."

    says more to me about the advance in modern medicine then the original post.

    Congratulation.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  11. This... by Peterus7 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Could be a godsend of hemophiliacs.

    I wonder if there are any allergies associated with it, or if you have to use a patch that corresponds to your blood type...