PETA is going hog wild over leaked video footage involving pigs being used as medical devices, following an “eyewitness investigation” into a military contractor training company known as Deployment Medicine International.
The video, titled “Pigs Shot in the Face and Ripped Open,” shows camouflage-clad instructors and trainees working on live pigs in order to refine their life-saving skills.
In the video’s description, the over-the-top organization claims that the video portrays “shocking cruelty to animals, racism, homophobia, and reported drugging and sexual assault of military servicemembers, illegal invasive human experimentation, and other alleged gross misconduct.”
While the military has begun to discontinue the use of live animals for medical training (much to the displeasure of medical personnel who have learned a considerable amount from the training itself), many private companies continue to use the animals for training purposes, due to there being little in the way of a true non-living replacement for the training.
In addition, the “patients,” though inevitably doomed to expire, are under anesthesia and continuously monitored to ensure minimal to no suffering as they are sacrificed for the greater good.
When shown the video by USMCLife one former medical-trained warfighter felt the video was not only taken out of context but that PETA needs to “cool their jets when it comes to trivial matters they don’t understand.”
“It’s kind of funny how crazy they’re going over this,” the source said, speaking under anonymity due to professional constraints. “Sure, there are simulated casualty training dummies, but nothing is like the real thing, especially when it comes to moving and treating a casualty under hostile conditions. You can’t “feel” a GSW (gunshot wound) the same way with a dummy. Pigs are very similar to people in terms of sinew, skin, and organs.”
The source added that the loss of a pig is a small price to pay for the good that can come from the training.
“They’d be thinking differently if they were the ones bleeding out,” the source said. “A trained-combat trooper, who is already an expensive investment, has more invested in him than your average guy and a man is obviously worth more than a pig.”
As far as the claims of sexism, homophobia and racial slurs, the source claims this is just part of warfighter culture.
“You gotta understand, these guys operate under levels of stress that your average paramedic will never know, let alone some Joe on the street.” He said. “They’re on a totally different level and such humor is a coping mechanism. Is it politically correct? Of course not. Neither is war.”
However, commenters on the video didn’t see it that way.
“From what we see our trainers of our military servicemen are no better than ISIS,” Marcus Mattau wrote.
“Barbaric and evil,” Levi Genes added. “Well suited sadism for a psychopathic militarized death culture serving a psychopathic executive class forwarding dehumanizing policy of global domination by force.”
One user -identified by his handle of Chris Bey- offered some insight to a similar DMI course he attended.
“I have been to two of these courses with live, sedated pigs,” he wrote. “I have also taken another course with DMI where these alleged “misconducts, drugging, and sexual assaults” as a junior personnel.
“First the pigs, they are sedated (just like you would be if you were getting surgery). The wounds inflicted on these pigs are exactly the same as are inflicted on your sons and daughters at war. (guns shot wounds, lacerations, amputations).”
In closing, Bey added some insight for those who may not be aware of the gravity of this kind of training.
“Many of the people taking this course in addition to being trained to treat battlefield trauma are also trained to kill people and inflict of these injuries on people,” he added. “This is cruel, yes.
God designed you to eat meat as part of your diet. To eat meat you must kill animals. To kill animals is cruel. God is cruel, your country is cruel, life is cruel. No one in this training is there to hurt animals. They are there to learn to save the lives of your sons and daughters.”
PETA -and the vegan lifestyle promoted by the organization- has a small following in the US military, though by no means a minority voice within the Armed Services.
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