Priorum non nocere. First do no harm. Its not actually part of the Hippocratic oath, though it seems to have replaced it in some sectors.

The Army has tested lots of things on troops (Agent Orange isn't really one of them, since its a herbicide). But it has tested chemical weapons on troops and various diseases (yellow fever for instance) as well as radiation. Sometimes with consent (informed or otherwise), sometimes without. Some of this testing is very clearly wrong, some of it (like this for instance) less so. The army tried out new $90 bandages in the interest of saving lives, instead of continuing to use the same $5 bandage I had in ROTC in the interest of saving money.

A book that relates to this only obliquely is "The Soldier's Load and the Mobility of a Nation". Its all about the logic of logistics and one of the statements it questions is "Nothing is too good for our boys" which it argues leads the army to spend more resources on frivolity and ultimately less on the business of fighting, putting more people into danger and making the Army less effective. I think this is one of those situations. Someone says, "I have a new bandage!" and people respond "We'll buy a million, nothing is too good for our boys!" not "Does it work?"

Change is not the same thing as progress. Progress consists of picking apart old things and new things and taking out the working pieces from both to make the next new thing. Change is just new things. They can be hard to tell apart.