http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/07/21/military.perks.reut/index.html
Between 2000 and 2003, military doctors performed 496 breast enlargements and 1,361 liposuction surgeries on soldiers and their dependents, the magazine said.
The magazine quoted an Army spokeswoman as saying, “the surgeons have to have someone to practice on.”
Practice what? Lipo and breast augmentation?
The military has plenty of plastic surgeons on staff to deal with wartime casualities. If they aren’t busy trying to rebuild a disfigured soldier, what’s the problem? Like the article said, they need to practice.Shrug Seems like an efficient use of a resource to me. If you are gonna pay them, may as well use them.
As long as no additional military doctors were hired to assist in this endeavor, it didn’t actually cost the taxpayer anything with regard to labor costs. Given the choice of having surgeons stay sharp by disecting rats and frogs or helping members of our armed forces achieve a sense of confidence in their physical appearance they likely couldn’t otherwise afford, I personally like the rational component of this decision.
Kudos too to the CNN journalist coming up with this gem… “Bigger breasts offered as perk to soldiers”.
first snorts, then wipes booger from keyboard
Maybe an even more efficient use would have been having them “practice” on, say, reconstructive surgery for medicare patients? Save the government the cost of paying a civilian surgeon to do the job.
I’m not really outraged by this, but at the same time I have a hard time believing that “practice” is the real motive behind making bigger boobs and flatter stomachs.
And military doctors have such a grand reputation…
If I ever see a woman with three breasts (one on her head, one on her back, and one on her chest) I’ll be sure to ask her where she served.
The change in policies would probably be a major pain in the ass. Why fuck the Army personel out of one of the very few perks that they might get? Not to mention that the Army shouldn’t get itself into the malpractice game.
Leave well enough alone. The Army is maximizing on its investment in these docs, and good for them.
Not that there is some nefarious boob job for promotion scandel going on, but I’m hard pressed to believe this isn’t being abused somehow.
If they were doing breast reductions would the line be
Perky breasts offered to bigger soldiers.
/struggles to think of Iraq/“a rack” puns.
I agree with Brutus here. Our military already gets paid shit, let’s let them have a perk or two.
I have no dog in this fight, being a Canadian, but I’m with Brutus and Lord Ashtar. Any occupation where being shot at is part of the job description, every little perk has got to help.
Ok well I guess the question boils down to if there are better ways to practice? i.e. different procedures that might be more usefull for injuries from the battlefield?
Perhaps in the trauma center of a big city hospital? I’ve heard it claimed that the higher survival rate of shooting victims is partially due to the skills that Viet Nam field surgeons brought back to the US.
Oh this is nuts. If you don’t think soldiers are being paid enough, then the solution is to pay them more, not give them free boob jobs. What about the soldiers who don’t want them and have no need of this “perk”?
I can’t believe my tax dollars are wasted on this crap. If this was medicare people couldn’t get worked up into a lather about this fast enough, but since it’s our Holy Military, we could give them gold plated shoelaces and no one would think twice, apparently.
Meh. That’s not all that many. If a few military types get nicer asses or bouncier breasts, well, I don’t really care. I mean, Jesus, it’s not that much money. And our soldiers are pretty much getting shat on with regard to medical benefits (I say this as a lefty pacifist flower-power make-love-not-war kinda guy, but it really sucks the way we treat the soldiers.) Why take away what little they do get?
They do those too, on soldiers and dependents hurt in car crashes and other accidents.
Remember, now, these are plastic and reconstructive surgeons who just happen to be in the military. They have to keep their qualifications current in all aspects of that branch of surgery, or they become useless.
My reply was addressed to World Eater.
How about a compromise; boob jobs for medicare patients! Grandma’s kinda been pointin’ at the floor for a long time…
Rack up a rack while in Iraq…
If all this cost were the plastic surgeon who would otherwise be picking his nose, it would still be wrong. But last I checked, surgery involved other expenses - other personel, an OR, recovery room, anathesia, medications to stave off infection.
It isn’t that big an expense, but it isn’t one that looks good.