[Odd Job]

Good day, gentlemen

I must declare first of all that I am a member of tacticalforums. I have not been a member there for long and I do not know any of the members there or here personally. I don't have any vested interest in a company, individual or product. The only interest I have is in projectiles and projectile injuries.

Let me start by saying that there are two issues here:

1) The debate about gel vs tissue as a test medium.
2) The debate about the validity and verifiable details surrounding the Le Mas bullet as a product.

As regards number (1) my stance is that ballistic gelatin cannot ever replicate the human body as a target medium exactly. I don't think anybody is going to dispute this. The three most pertinent points here are:

a) The body is composed of multiple densities and is not homogenous like the gel.
b) The range of clothing and intermediate targets in a real life shooting is not something that can be replicated or predicted before the fact.
c) The angles of incidence and range of fire in a real shooting are highly variable.

So if a question comes up about the use of gel to exactly simulate the human body as a target, we must all agree that this is not possible. My view at the moment is that we are all in agreement, even those who use gel daily for testing.

Now, this does not exclude gel entirely as a valid testing medium. For just as Dr Vail and I have seen projectiles that have been recovered at surgery which do not match typical expansion or deformation parameters in gel, we also have (I am assuming you have, Dr Vail, if your experience is similar to mine) examples of surgically-recovered projectiles that have expanded or suffered impact deformations that are at least similar to those observed in gel (or even water tank) firing. Some of these configurations have been exactly the same. This means that there is some overlap in the final expansion/deformation configuration of gel-fired projectiles and real life human shootings as is borne out by our experience in the hospital. There isn't any ammunition that I have seen and handled that has not at some point, because of the unique real-life shooting variables involved, expanded or deformed in a manner that has been demonstrated in gel or in water. Of course the exact percentages are a subject for a separate debate, but what I am saying is that there is demonstrable overlap (depending on circumstances) between gel firing and human firing, as regards all the ammunition that we have encountered to date. If I have seen this in my relatively small sample of cases (when compared to the number of shootings globally) then the number is significant and cannot be ignored. I have been provided various projectiles from ballistics laboratories in SA and in the US and I have compared these to retrieved projectiles in the hospital. Their features macroscopically, radiologically and in terms of behaviour in a magnetic resonance scanner have been comparable and similar in many cases.

Now, I understand that the bone of contention here is that the manufacturers of the Le Mas projectile claim that no such overlap exists in the behaviour of the projectile in living tissue versus a homogenous medium, for example gel. This means testing of the projectile by conventional means is not going to reveal the properties of the projectile upon impact with living tissue, according to the manufacturer's advertised claims.
Now I must point out here (and you must surely agree) that if this is indeed the case, then the Le Mas projectile is unlike anything that has ever been developed before. It must either have a unique construction, or unique materials, or a combination of both: after all, those are the features that will set it aside from competing ammunition. I am sure you will agree that velocity is a variable that is easily matched by a competitor, so we can exclude that. I would like a declaration that no Le Mas projectiles incorporate discrete components of any other ammunition being produced today.

The critical part of my post has arrived. I put it to you that the failure to demonstrate the properties of the Le Mas projectile in conventional laboratory testing does not absolve the manufacturer from conducting tests (or developing new tests if needs be) to consistently and scientifically quantify the properties of the projectile upon impact with the target, whether the 'ideal' target is specified as being tissue of a certain temperature or not. Basically you have to provide me details (assuming I was a potential buyer) of the ideal parameters of the use of this projectile and I have to be able to validate that with testing procedures on my own.

This may seem obvious to you, but in fact there is more to this than that simple statement. At present, the argument for the effectiveness of the Le Mas projectile is based on reported tests on hogs. In those tests (as far as I can tell, because I don't have data from the manufacturer detailing all the parameters of the test firings, which is not an unreasonable request) the terminal trajectories have involved multiple body areas on the hogs, and therefore there have multiple degrees of inhomogeneity (if I may put it so clumsily). There have been thoracic hits, hind quarter hits, mixed tissue densities and target thicknesses. Now, do you think it is unreasonable for an unbiased outsider such as myself to ask how the manufacturers can claim consistent results in these highly variable circumstances when Dr Vail and I have already declared that we have seen 'deviation' from the norm in the configuration of retrieved projectiles from human bodies and when we both agree that this is due to the inhomogeneity of the living target? I guess what I am saying to you all is that there must be at least some failures of the Le Mas projectiles, even when shot against living tissue of the required temperature, and the cause of these failures must surely be quantifiable and documented, preferably by non-destructive means. This holds true even if the manufacturer claims that the Le Mas projectile behaves like no other. One universal unshakeable factor is "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" and I want to know what the circumstances are when shooting living tissue, where I will not get a 'free lunch' with the Le Mas projectile. This is the starting point for determining how the projectile works.

For the purposes of describing the effects of the projectile upon impact against living tissue, and in the absence of a partially lucent material such as gel, what steps have the manufacturers taken to provide alternate imaging of the targets that were shot? There has been some mention of X-ray imaging. Are these images available for analysis? I would be interested in seeing those. What sort of controls have been put in place as a reference for that imaging? I have already suggested to Dr Vail some basic procedures I would put in place if this was my product or if I was attempting to demonstrate the effects of the product in a medium that does not lend itself to the same analysis as a lucent medium such as gel. If this truly is a revolutionary product, is it unreasonable to ask for pre and post X-ray imaging to document the distribution of projectile and bone fragments and is it unreasonable to ask for pre and post cross-sectional imaging to document tissue disruption? If I have been able to do ballistics-related CT scans on home-made jigs here in London as a radiographer, surely Dr Vail as a trauma surgeon must have the wherewithal to get scans of the target meat in question.
These questions are just related to the target testing of the Le Mas projectiles: I will get on to Mr Bulmer's advertising and marketing statements in due course (and Dr Vails's stance on those as a medical professional).