The Wall Street Journal reports that “top military doctors are warning that medical advances won on Afghan and Iraqi battlefields might be lost unless Secretary of Defense Ash Carter orders the Pentagon to make these techniques, drugs and devices mandatory for military physicians, nurses and medics.”  

“Fourteen years of combat gradually produced a system that generated survival rates unprecedented in modern warfare, from front-line first aid to helicopter medevacs. The Pentagon, these doctors say, has failed to institutionalize many of those practices.”  

“’Things are as good as they have ever been anywhere in combat-casualty care,’ said Dr. Frank Butler, a former Navy SEAL and leading advocate of improved military trauma treatment. ‘And we need to understand what was done in the recent conflicts and do what we can to preserve it.’”