In the early 1960s they were using dogs. Strays from the pound etc. until it hit the papers and there was universal horror and revulsion which is when they switched to goats and pigs. All animals are given pain management/anaesthesia and are euthanised immediately after treatment. Or so they told me. They say the barbeques at Ft. Sam Houston are regular thing at the end of the training cycle when the medics eat their patients.

The army is a very conservative organization for a reason, it has a high turnover of personnel even in peacetime (remember that? lol) so tradition is valued as a way of preserving useful technique and skills. If it aint broke, don't fix it.

You're probably right, it's time they started using human simulators but I thought you could use some background in that it was a Vietnam era improvement not some new horror show. Arguable some animals in slaughter houses suffer more for less good reason.

(From the article)...This kind of animal cruelty is unnecessary.-- it could actually make medics less prepared to treat human injuries.

According to Dr. Santos, "Goats and pigs are much smaller..their skin is much thicker, and the anatomy of their organs, blood vessels, skeletons are drastically different"

These differences can mean that medics actually have to spend time unlearning what they know about effectively treating animals, or waste time translating from animal to human anatomy in the middle of life and death situations.
Whereas human-patient simulators breathe, bleed and even have bones to break--and allow trainees to practice treatments again and again, until they get it right, and are as prepared as they can be to save real lives.

There is absolutely no reason why these animals need to be tortured...and, if you watched the video, it's obvious that they are not always given enough anesthesia
either.

There's no profit in reducing suffering. They're too busy speeding up the line and reducing labor costs to take the time to do so at all effectively, and sometimes they have unsupported notions that doing so is harmful to the slaughter process. Chickens often don't get their necks cut by blades on the line well enough to bleed out before being dipped in scald tanks, cattle facilities often turn down the pressure on captive bolt guns because they believe rendering the animal "too dead" reduces the quality of the resulting meat, pigs often go into scald tanks alive as well, etc.

Read Slaughterhouse. http://www.amazon.com/Slaughterhouse-Shocking-Inhumane-Treatment-Industry/dp/1573921661

"protocol", which minimizes the pain & suffering of the animals; and which supposedly also makes for a more efficient "kill" process for the slaughterhouses.
(Clare Danes starred in the HBO movie about her called "Temple Grandin&quot

The fact still remains that the U.S. Military does not need to maim and torture live pigs & goats anymore, since human-patient simulators are available now and are much better at teaching medics (for the reasons outlined by Dr Santos in the article)

I hope you and others will consider signing the Change.org petition.
They have more than 60,000 signatures already, and hope to get 75,000 before submitting it to the Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta.