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Posted: 7/22/2006 1:01:35 PM EDT
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I know about testing with calibrated ballistic gelatin (scientists) and pot roast (RCBS), but why don't any of the cartridge makers test their final designs with cadavers? Since other industries use them for scientific purposes, it makes sense that they could be used to render valuable cartridge research data. Any ideas? |
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prolly cause when people donate their body to science, it goes to med students. and if the deceased did not declare what they wanted done with their body, then the family prolly just buries it. Also, keeping and setting up a cadaver for ballistics testing would most likely be rather difficult due to a lack of musscle tone, btw, that would also impact the tests. I have often wondered why they dont embed pork organs/atrificial skeletons into BG to see how rounds would respond to changing conditions in the body |
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Cadavers are expensive these days. Med schools are moving the VR as much due to shortages and costs as anything else. Also, cadavers still wouldn't give you the kind of accurate data you are seeking. A dead body is not the same as a live one and the differences increase exponentially with every minute past death: reduced or no real blood pressure for example. skin (and other organs) lose elasticity. muscles and tissues do not contract around the wound. a cadaver doesn't bleed out, have a heart attack, or go into shock. Some of these things can be extrapolated based on wound size and tissue damage, but the same kind of extrapolation and estimating can be applied to semi-transparent, cheap ballistic gelatin. |
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Quoted: Cadavers are expensive these days. Med schools are moving the VR as much due to shortages and costs as anything else. I can just see it now. The price of dead bodies will go up. Some will blame it on the gold market rise (tooth fillings.) But the real reason will be because some of us are buying more than we need and hoarding!!! 
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| It's my understanding that a bullet's performance in 10% ordnance gelatine is then validated by it's real world performance. For instance, the performance of Federal's EFMJ (expanding full metal jacket) line is quite similar to it's performance in real world situations. |
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I saw where a company developing body and vehicle armor WAS imbedding bone into BG to demonstrate and study the effects of blast and fragmentation. Why can't we use live, convicted felons? There are plenty of child molestors, rapists and other useless human trash that could be put to good scientific use. Oh, that's right, we are the good guys. We can't do that. Nevermind. Devil Dog |
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Didn't the Thompson/LaGarde(?SP) tests in the early 1900's hang cadavers and shoot them? They measured how much the swung after being shot, though, not at the tissue damage. So they were looking at momentum. +1 on the issue of tissue--dead tissue isn't the same as living tissue. And depending on what the person is doing (inhaling or exhaling) when getting shot--a bullet in the same area can still hit--or miss--important structures. I don't think a cadaver test would really add anything to most of the shooting info as it's such a dynamic and variable process from one to the other. Why doesn't somebody shoot something nobody cares about (insert your favorite lawyer joke here...  ) or maybe some French Alpine Goats....I bet anybody can find a few hundred that are +/- 5 lbs of each other....
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Speechless!
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I seem to remember that one of the old OSS guys (Applegate? Fairbairn?) did some cadaver testing of various calibers very early in the 20th century. I think I read it in one of Cooper's articles. prolly 20-25 years ago. The data may even be on the 'Net! Scuse me, my fava beans are boiling now. |
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This is something that comes up all the time, and which I've tried to answer in the Ammo Oracle (but if people won't read it, it doesn't do much good). Scientists all acknowledge that it is impossible to design ANY model which will accurately predict how a given bullet will perform (and by "perform", I'm talking about the likelyhood of rapid incapacitation) in every situation. There are simply too many variables in a shooting. You can't know exactly where a person is going to be shot, nor the angle of the shot, the distance from the gun to the body, what exactly the bullet will do if it strikes bone, etc. You simply can't come up with one single answer that will always be right. So, that isn't what the testing is attempting to do. What the testing is for is to evaluate the performance of various bullets against a KNOWN, CONSISTANT MEDIUM that has been shown, again and again, to reasonably replicate human tissue. Because the medium (calibrated 10% "ballistic" gelatin) is consistant, you can get repeatable examples of a given bullet's performance, and thus gain enough data to make educated comparisions between various bullets and loads. If we put bones into ballistic gelatin for testing, you wouldn't be able to get repeatable results. How would you compare the performance of a bullet that hit dead center on a pork rib imbedded 2" into the gelatin vs. one that only caught the edge of the rib? How would you account for the fact that the ribs weren't identical? Etc. Gelatin testing gives us remarkably accurate BASELINE performance of the bullet. It is understood and accepted that the actual damage to the tissue in a human body in a real-world shooting won't always be identical. That's why the folks who perform testing for a living have worked to expand and refine those tests based on thousands of real-world shootings. That shooting data tracks remarkably close to the predicted performance of the various bullets involved the majority of the time, and in cases where things weren't as predicted, such as shootings through barriers, additional tests have been added to gauge the performance against those barriers. Over the 25 years or so since Dr. Fackler began his comprehensive studies of wound ballistics, scientists have learned a lot about real-world ammo performance, and that data goes right back into the testing protocols. By constantly validating the viability of the tests against real-world shooting data, it is possible to be quite confident in the current testing protocols. If they were invalid, the data from 20+ years of real-world shootings would have shown them to be so. Nothing will ever be 100%, of course, but by removing the variables that, overall, have proven not to matter significantly, the current testing protocols have been show to be remarkably accurate. Testing on cadavers wouldn't tell us nearly as much as a ER surgeon's report already does. -Troy |
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I'm about to complete a course in Gross Anatomy - which means dissecting cadavers for medical training - and there's a lot of difference between a cadaver and a living body. First, cadavers are bloodless. Without the blood mass, a body acts differently and it settles and becomes sort of flat. While this doesn't change the arrangement of muscles and organs, it does change the character of what's left. It doesn't feel like living tissue at all. And these cadavers are embalmed, too, which also changes everything. There's also the question of proper handling of human remains; we got a whole lecture on what we're supposed to do with tissues we have to remove to get at the structures we need to study. Every state has laws about this, and you can get in TONS of trouble for a mistake. Finally, to be useful, wouldn't testing have to be done on the kind of body that you'd be most interested in using the ammunition on? Like a soldier-type body? Well, as my whole class found to our chagrin, young, healthy, fit people don't keel over with a will that says "donate me to science." Nope. It's OLD, infirm people that do this. I've read of testing done with sides of beef and other beef parts; this should be more effective than cadaver testing because they don't "preserve" beef, and you can model your target on whatever part of a human body you want. Gotta get back to studying now... Bye! |
I've studies cadavres for along time and I feel we are at peak cadavre now. 
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They still do this today. Also there are still some studys being done regarding wounding, mostly blast injuries, on cadavers. There are some specific requirements to using cadaveric specimens for any type of research and education use. I work in medical education and have some for a number of years. I work very closely with one of the nations largest willed body programs and they supply specimens for both of these activities. I also know some of the military people who have done this work. It is all handled and approved by the State Anatomical Board, but every state is different so things vary from state to state and what is allowed and what will be approved. Ballistic media is great for some things, so are computer simulations and other forms of testing but in some cases you do need "real" tissue and real anatomy. All these different types of testing is put together in the end to hopefully give the most accurate information. Yes tissue does change post mortum but not as much as most people think, as long as things have been prepared and handled properly of course. |
Agree, but everyone forgets (on purpose, it seems sometimes) that in the case of terminal ballistics testing, we get information back from hundreds of human live-tissue wounds every year for study and comparision to the labritory testing. They're called surgeons' reports and autopsy results (as well as after-action reports from the shooters). Why some folks (and I'm not talking about you here) can't seem to get that, I don't know. But, as you said, all of those various pieces of information come together to give us a pretty good understanding of how bullets wound and what type of wounds accomplish our goal (near-instant incapacitation) the best. -Troy |
how about Death Row inmates,Child Molesters live flesh |
AMEN BROTHER |
Are you talking about............ Peak Cadavers?!? Oh Noes1!!!!! ETA: Shit. Frank_The_Tank beat me to it.
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I'm glad I got in before prices went up,my wife thought I was crazy 
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I can't stop laughing... I love gun humor... |
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