http://www.hlntv.com/video/2012/07/...s-training

Video is graphic. A quick google search brings up the whole video if you really want to watch it.

Also, I feel the need to add that I haven't been able to find anything regarding if this was official CG training or CG members on their liberty time, or even military members at all.

I question the validity of everything on here. How many Coast Guard field training evolutions have you ever seen out of uniform? What in this video identifies anyone here as Coast Guard? Perhaps they are another country's Coast Guard, but they don't appear to be ours. People can get upset if they want to. It is pretty gruesome, but there's nothing in this video that shows me that these are Coast Guard members.

That was a straight up military hit-piece. I'm not condoning animal torture WHATSOEVER, but the breathless reporting on that was pretty lame.

Cooch, I completely agree with you. Hence the question mark in the topic and my additional post. I wonder why people think it is the CG at all. I've never heard of anyone torturing animals for trauma training.

Posted By FloridaGirl on 13 Jul 2012 09:09 PM
Cooch, I completely agree with you. Hence the question mark in the topic and my additional post. I wonder why people think it is the CG at all. I've never heard of anyone torturing animals for trauma training.

I have heard of animals being used to train people how to use Celox and other Combat Gauze for traumatic wounds. They are put under, and will have arteries cut so they can work arterial bleeds in a combat scenario (pigs specifically). It's certainly not to the level of hacking off limbs with a tree cutter. That's insanity.

This appears to be a related article from a more-reliable source. It ran last April.
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2...video?lite

That's too bad. I was hoping they were wrong that the CG was involved.

I didn't watch the video or re=read that article from MSNBC... I saw bits & pieces when the story first came out and I can't bring myself to watch something like that again. Horrible to think anyone is involved, CG, Army, any military, any human...

Thanks KD. Unfortunate indeed.

FWIW, on one related article, a commenter said he has worked with animals sedated with ketamine, and the drug itself has caused hoofed animals--like goats---to kick and moan, even when no one is touching them at all. It is possible that the video, to some degree, has been sensationalized and/or taken out of context.
It's unfortunate, but there are many surgical techniques and medical treatments that save human lives that were perfected on animals. The ethics of that may be debatable, but the truth of it isn't. :/

KD, that's very true. I guess part of me just wonders, if they wanted to see an arterial bleed, why not at a hospital? Where it's an actual person? Or ride along with a paramedic crew? I worked a *children's* hospital and I saw more than enough gory and trauma for a lifetime. Impalements? Check. Gun shot wounds to the face? Check. CO2 canister explosion? Check. Severe burn victims, dismemberments, disembowelments, car accidents, motorcycle accidents, deglovings, blunt force traumas? Check. Since I've clearly never been in a combat zone dealing with these things, I don't know the extent of the differences. But it's certainly more realistic than a goat or pig, right?

I just wonder how practical it is to be giving this training to Coasties. We have many Coasties in Bahrain, but Bahrain isn't a combat zone. For the Coasties that are working in conjunction with other services in combat zones, you would think that they could get the training through that respective branch. To me, this doesn't seem like good stewardship of the taxpayer's dollars, since there's no real return on investment.

Posted By FloridaGirl on 14 Jul <a class="inlineAdmedialink" href="#">2012</a> 06:45 PM
KD, that's very true. I guess part of me just wonders, if they wanted to see an arterial bleed, why not at a hospital? Where it's an actual person? Or ride along with a paramedic crew? I worked a *children's* hospital and I saw more than enough gory and trauma for a lifetime. Impalements? Check. Gun shot wounds to the face? Check. CO2 canister explosion? Check. Severe burn victims, dismemberments, disembowelments, car accidents, motorcycle accidents, deglovings, blunt force traumas? <a class="inlineAdmedialink" href="#">Check</a>. Since I've clearly never been in a combat zone dealing with these things, I don't know the extent of the differences. But it's certainly more realistic than a goat or pig, right?

Well, you won't have the same injuries everyday even in an ER. You might not have anyone come in with anything worse than a drug overdose or alcohol poisoning. You can't have a group of "students" waiting around all day for something to happen. On top of that, it's not just to watch someone else work on a patient (you won't remember the steps as well) but to actually work on something (can't use humans in experiments because it's unethical) with a wide variety of injuries you might face in your career. Since they are students, they can't work on patients as they come in without the proper certification (even if they did happen to have gotten lucky with an arterial bleed in an ER).

Although I haven't participated in or even seen this training, I've heard rumors of it. As someone else has said, it's greatly enhanced combat casualty care in all branches of the military. There was also a quote on there that said it helped Coasties responding to the earthquake in Haiti (was not there either to know if this was true). I do know that I have been trained and instructed on a wide variety of things I don't think I will ever use but because there is a small possibility of it happening, that's the rationale for training. Coasties in Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc have a possibility of facing these situations.