> Much of Katie’s care is being paid for by the Department of Defense, because her youth and ballistic trauma make her a stand-in for wounded warriors. For the rest of her life, she’ll take powerful antirejection drugs with risks of their own, becoming a lifelong subject in the study of this still experimental surgery.
Kudos to the DoD for doing this. The military historically has been the driver for advances in surgery. This will not only benefit Katie, but the knowledge gained from this will also benefit many wounded soldiers in the future.
I think I remember reading that the DoD deserves credit for the entire field of plastic surgery, it was originally pioneered to help soldiers who had suffered disfigurement in combat. Only later did it become something for civilian augmentation.
Close - an Ally. It was Gilles at the Royal Army Medical Corps in WW1 who pioneered skin grafts and plastic surgery. He'd done thousands of facial reconstructions by war's end.
He set up a plastic surgery clinic between the wars.
A relative of his, McIndoe, became famous (the better known of the two today) for his work in WW2 for pioneering and inventing many treatments for burn victims. Burns had become a common injury for pilots and aircrew. He formed the Guinea Pig Club for patients and effectively pioneered rehabilitation. He convinced the locals to visit the hospital in Sussex regularly and befriend patients. They organised trips out to the town so they could feel "normal" again (that became so common locals no longer stared), allowing a bar in the hospital, regular clothes or uniforms not PJs and countless other touches. The hospital still specialises in burns and reconstruction.
McIndoe ended up with honours from most of the Allied nations if I remember right.
I recently managed to set fire to my legs, and can confirm that the unit founded by McIndoe is still going in Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead [1] Luckily, my wounds weren't severe and I only needed to be treated there as an outpatient.
Do you have any citations or history books you'd recommend? That flies in the face of everything I've ever seen or read, and is not mentioned, even briefly, on Wikipedia as far as I can see.
McIndoe gets extensive entries both for himself and under plastic surgery.
I don't know about the history of plastic surgery in the US, but in Germany apparently a lot of the plastic surgery for veterans was based on experience treating coal miners. Due to the frequent and horrific injuries, some coal mines had extremely good surgical teams and a lot of experience in reconstructive surgery.
Well, I’ll forgo the proper words to describe how the US treats it’s coal miners, but one suffering from black lung disease would often have to go through the court system just to get an appointment with a doctor.
I think it’s safe to say your experience in Germany does not apply here.
To clarify, the injuries were not always related to the coal itself. There were a lot of heavy machinery and unstable tunnels, i.e. amputations, crushing and disfigurement.
The area has a history of coal mining that goes back for almost a thousand years. However I'm pretty sure the goal for reconstructive surgery wasn't entirely altruistic: e.g. a disabled worker is a non-worker but with some prosthetics he might still be able to do light work.
That said, I'd strongly believe the culture created by a centuries long tradition of coal mining in a single region is very different from that of 20th/21st century mining in the US.
When I was at German military we saw similar videos for our first aid training. The video opened my eyes. In my view this should be required viewing for everyone to make sure they understand what war really is. With all the cool smart bombs, jet fighters and night vision goggles it's being portrayed as way too clean and fun.
And with war-by-remotecontrol it gets ever closer to looking and feeling like a video game where you go home to your family after killing a bunch of people on the other side of the world.
Or, you know, we could just stop sending our young people out to get blown up... Kudos to the DoD for funding these experiments but they're solving a problem of their own creation...
This list counts major wars until 2016. Some of the wars led in this time were of defensive nature. This list does not account for covert operations and other, similar acts that might be considered war.
Since 1955: The Korean war was never ended, and there was an active and continued military engagement with daily exchanges in Iraq from 1991 through 2003.
The mainland United States has not been attacked as a part of a military operation in the modern era, so the defensive claim is questionable.
Just on the topic of why people sign up: I think many people join because they really think they're doing something good - defending those that need protection or help from the 'real' bad guys. Obviously that's not 100% what's really going on all the time but it has enough truth in it to be attractive. And I think it's true that some real good is done by (most?) military organisations - ie disaster relief, some major engineering projects, policing in areas without effective security, etc, so some people do get to live those ideals out, and pass along that part of the military culture. It's not _entirely_ propaganda, nor it is all shooting guns at people.
Yeah, I recently met a guy in the engineering corps who was super proud of the humanitarian work he's done and the opportunities he's had to travel, learn languages, etc. Could be that he got lucky with his placements, though.
If this is really your mental model of people who join, I suggest you do some deeper research; or, you know, talk to them.
As a general rule of thumb, if your view of a group of millions of people with all education levels is that they can't think for themselves, it's wrong. It's a silly simplification that gains you nothing but bitterness and makes you look ignorant to people actually in the service.
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you may not be aware of what "!=" means. They are saying that "people who can't think for themselves" -- the original argument -- are not the same as "people who don't think just like you" -- which is their rebuttal.
I'm aware of what "!=" means, thanks. The rebuttal was saying that just because people think differently from OP, doesn't mean they can't think for themselves. OP never said that people who think differently from them can't think for themselves, they specified a type of people who can't think for themselves, a group much smaller than "everyone who thinks differently".
It is disgusting to watch military recruitment videos in the US. They are clearly designed to prey upon the immature, ego-filled fantasies of 17yr old boys.
It's supported by the media as well. The DoD is involved in Hollywood movies, and while they will supply military vehicles and such for movie use, that does mean they have to approve the script.
Likewise, movies aimed at the Chinese market often need to involve Chinese people or Chinese locations - something you can see in a number of big budget action movies recently.
Not everyone in the military is fighting wars all the time. Many people are getting educations and building careers in normal professions that just happen to be part of the military organization.
The front-line soldiers are a small percentage, and they deserve respect for their sacrifices regardless of why they chose to join. It's easy to take freedom and peace for granted without knowing just how much conflict and blood it requires.
Most people, in my experience, sign up to pay for college or because their parents kicked them out at 18 and they couldn't find a job. That's about all it takes; ideology doesn't really enter into it.
> I hate the glamorization of the military. I don't understand how anyone would actually join.
In many countries you do not have a choice; it is mandatory. And in those countries, at least in peacetime, it is usually seen as neither glamorous nor desirable. Somewhere between a painless but a wasted year and a miserable time you must mobilize to endure to avoid corrupting your brain.
Go visit Taliban controlled Afghanistan when girls couldn’t go to school. Visit areas of Afghanistan after the US cleared Taliban areas and built schools. The girls that can now go to school aren’t rich and powerful, but it’s a fact that fighting that war helped make that possible.
The CIA were happy to supply hundreds of millions of dollars in arms to the mujahideen during the 1980s. The US chose to support Islamist insurgents in a proxy war against the Soviet Union and the Afghan people have paid the price for that decision ever since. Many of the American soldiers who died in the war in Afghanistan were killed with weapons that were bought and paid for by their own government. If you believe that the American invasion of Afghanistan was a humanitarian gesture, you have been given an extremely narrow understanding of history.
...except that now (at least AFAIU) we're backing out of those areas and the Taliban are right back in control. Maybe that military-intervention-as-societal-revenge-plot wasn't so helpful?
Precisely because the war wasn't finished... political pressure led to the military being recalled and this is the outcome. Rebuilding a nation does not just happen in a few months, it takes decades of peace. The biggest problem is the lack of commitment, due in part to a public that has lost touch with what conflict is and the will it takes to fight.
Wouldn't it be great if it was just so simple? A single organization can just stop it all? Who would oppose that?
Humans create war. It is in our nature. Every tiny effort to improve lives and perform these miracles should be cherished and encouraged, regardless of military background. It is perhaps one of the few ways we have to overcome conflict and look towards a better future.
I can't be bothered to source this information and admit it may be wrong, but common sense tells me that the vast majority of loss of life in the past 20 years that is related to armed combat happened in places where there are US troops or governments whose defense spending is subsidized by the US government. Considering the ridiculous amount the US spends on defense I can't see how this wouldn't be the case.
And most good people concentrated in one set of countries and most bad people concentrated in another. It’s not grids of interests and interesting consequences, it’s just a distribution, man! All bad guys just happen to be over there hating you. Just because you’re better and know better. /s
Surprisingly, most of the times you don’t get bites by simply not sticking your nose into every wasp nest. Still, doing that creates enough chaos and green light to “protect by any means necessary”.
It’s not too hard to look up what kinda of childhood experiences create “bad people”. If your economy is 100x your target, you just pay to make those things happen more often. Wait 20 years and you have a bunch of bad people who hate us. Instant war. Billions to be made.
It doesn’t. Military and politicians can now control how much hate there is via slight moves here and there. The end seems when otherwise smart people would stop claiming things like “war is human nature”, “don’t look at the military background of good deeds” and would finally open their eyes to see what psychopaths they are electing on and on. Until then it is a positive feedback loop.
In particular the DoD. It's not like the Iraq war helped anybody except turning Al-Qaeda from 500 people on the verge of getting kicked out of Afghanistan into an army large enough to have it's own internal civil war in Syria. And there are a lot cheaper ways to accomplish that.
A country without a military (or a dependable ally with one) is very quickly not a country. The US could stop funding the military, but the world would be a worse place for it.
Even better would be not losing her face to begin with.
This was preventable.
Am I the only one to notice the events that led up to this?
1. Young girl moves multiple times due to her parent’s jobs, causing for stress and anxiety.
2. Girl finds stability and passion when she is granted an encouraging educational experience/environment at a private school where her parents both found contract jobs.
3. Parents both lost their contract jobs on the same day.
4. As a result of her parents losing their jobs, she could no longer go the school, because her parents could not afford it.
5. Her boyfriend who went to that school cheated on her.
6. She shot herself in the face.
Getting cheated on in high school happens. It’s a painful experience but it’s generally a pretty good time for it to happen, because (ideally) you’re in a secure place where you can experience pain without existential loss.
Moving is rough, but not nearly as rough as having your family morph between social classes. This sort of thing is just evil for a child. Either up or down is just awful. Neither you or your peers have any context for what is happening. You’re entirely misunderstood and feel out of place. I will not have kids unless I can be reasonably certain they won’t have to experience this. In her case, her family was never even in the social class she acclimated to. This is one seriously dirty trick, especially for a child. Obviously her family was doing everything they could for her. This was just out of their control.
To face those complex realities that define your entire world and have it thrown in your face by your boyfriend cheating on you with someone else, both of whom presumably had the security of surplus income supporting their education and social life, is really bad. But we forget how much worse this is for a child.
Children in high school are smart. They understand a lot of stuff, even the difference between rich and poor. But they should only be expected to be able to make sense of so much at a time. The whole idea of this stage is to develop a stable self-identity in an environment encouraging of education and confidence. She lost both in the blink of an eye.
And she had to face the reality that going to another school like the one where she had found passion and nourishment was all just short of not happening.
This is just one of the reasons these games we play with education funding and classism are sick. This girl did not have to be in her situation.
We love to talk about how competition motivates innovation, but it also motivates economic rollercoasters. Maybe adults can handle that, but children simply can’t. This is one disgusting way to live and kids all over America are riding this rollercoaster while their parents do everything in their mighty will to give them a stable healthy existence.
But we’ve created an America where an honest living means a shitty school and an existence no more stable than a contract job. Nobody thinks about what this does to the kids. All they see is innovation.
There isn't a drop of evidence that staying in the same school would have prevented this. Claiming "this was preventable" and then tying it to your pet political cause is gross.
I know someone personally that attempted suicide in high-school while staying in the same social class and not having anyone cheat on him. I know several army brats that had no depression problems at all despite their social life resetting several times throughout childhood.
The way to prevent suicide is to look for the signs of depression. It's not identifying one upsetting event in a victim's life and then trying to reshape society to avoid that class of upsetting event.
The problem with this argument is the simple fact that thousands of people attempt suicide every year even when they have all the stability in the world.
To assume that this was preventable is to assume that attempted suicides are always caused by your social situation, and not something inherently primal inside you.
> We love to talk about how competition motivates innovation, but it also motivates economic rollercoasters.
> But we’ve created an America where an honest living means a shitty school and an existence no more stable than a contract job. Nobody thinks about what this does to the kids. All they see is innovation.
Instability is natural. Disease is natural. Starvation is natural. Death is natural. Chaos is natural.
Innovation is what gives us the degree of stability we do have. Innovation in health care, in manufacturing, in communication, in a thousand tiny things that you or I have never even contemplated.
If the complaint is that we are moving too fast to more efficient, more advanced, more productive existence, then it is a valid but welcome problem to have.
Regardless of whether this analysis is correct or incorrect, I applaud you for thinking about the bigger picture and I rebuke anyone who criticizes you for going "off-topic" or argues this kind of thoughtful analysis of proximate causes is insensitive.
I do think that our current social system rewards the wrong things and drives human evolution in the wrong direction.
Traits like lying, cheating and hypocrisy are rewarded evolutionarily because they help people to accumulate more resources and produce more offspring; this works at both the genetic and environmental level.
The good news is that predators cannot exist without the prey to sustain them so there should always be more prey than predators.
The solution to the problem is decentralization of wealth; otherwise power becomes too concentrated in the hands of predators and it decreases their reliance on prey.
Kudos to the DoD for doing this. The military historically has been the driver for advances in surgery. This will not only benefit Katie, but the knowledge gained from this will also benefit many wounded soldiers in the future.