Tuesday, March 31, 2009
$89 bandage
An investigation by the Baltimore Sun has discovered that the U.S. Army rushed the use of experimental medical treatments for troops injured in Iraq, only to recall many of the risky therapies after results showed them to be ineffective or dangerous. The expose reported that high-ranking Army doctors not only authorized medical innovations without rigorous review, but in some cases altered or ignored findings by Army scientists. In some case, wounded soldiers were among the first humans to ever receive an unproven treatment.
Other discoveries by the Sun included the shipment of a new blood-clotting therapy to Iraq that was later found to cause potentially deadly complications in animals, and the distribution of an $89 bandage to every soldier in spite of two unpublished studies by the Army’s research lab that showed it was no more effective than gauze.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Army Medicine: Untested in battle
(by Robert Little, Baltimore Sun
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