Experimenting with Young Lives Does Not Show Good Judgment
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The US Army has taken to using a drug, used to coagulate blood, in combat field hospitals. The drug, Recombinant Factor VII, is designated for use with rare forms of hemophilia. Hemophilia is a disorder that can cause patients to literally bleed to death from something as incidental as bumping against a table.
The drug was the subject of an FDA warning last December in which the FDA said that giving Factor VII to patients without hemophilia can cause strokes and heart attacks. FDA Researchers published a study in January blaming 43 deaths on clots that developed after use of Factor VII.
Yet, even in the face of this evidence, our federal government continues to sanction the use of this drug on American GI's. The Army medical command considers Factor VII a medical breakthrough, as evidenced by the statement of Col. John B. Holcomb:
"When it works, it's amazing," said Col. John B. Holcomb, an Army trauma surgeon and commander of the Army's Institute of Surgical Research. "It's one of the most useful new tools we have."
"I've seen it with my own eyes," said Air Force Lt. Col. Jeffrey Bailey, a trauma surgeon deployed this summer as senior physician at the American military hospital in Balad, Iraq. "Patients who are hemorrhaging to death, they get the drug and it stops. Factor VII saves their lives."
According to CBS news, here is what other military physicians reported:
However, doctors at military hospitals in Germany and the United States have reported unusual and sometimes fatal blood clots in soldiers evacuated from Iraq, including unexplained strokes, heart attacks and pulmonary embolisms, or blood clots in the lungs. And some have begun to suspect Factor VII, The Sun reported.
Experts in the field of feel differently from the military physicians:
"It's a completely irresponsible and inappropriate use of a very, very dangerous drug," said Dr. Jawed Fareed, director of the hemostasis and thrombosis research program at Loyola University in Chicago and a specialist in blood-clotting and blood-thinning medications.
I guess that when it comes to our young military men and women, should we be using treatments that US experts feel are "irresponsible and inappropriate" to treat them or should we do something else to keep them from dying?