Congress Dumps Veterans in Burn Pits

Congress Drops Burn Pit Exposure from Pentagon Research List
Military.com
Bryant Jordan
December 23, 2015

Senior Airman Frances Gavalis tosses unserviceable uniform items into a burn pit at Balad Air Base, Iraq, on March 10, 2008. Julianne Showalter/Air Force

Burn pit exposure as a cause of illnesses among veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan failed to make the 2016 list of peer-reviewed medical research programs that Congress requires the Defense Department to conduct.

The absence of burn pit exposure on the list was confirmed on Tuesday by a spokeswoman for the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

"Congress designates the topic areas for each fiscal year, and these topic areas change each year," Gail Whitehead told Military.com.

The research programs fall under the Department of Defense budget.

"There's nothing comparable," said Anthony Hardie, director of Veterans for Common Sense. "There's very little research inside the [Department of Veterans Affairs]."

Ron Brown, president of the National Gulf War Research Center, which has long advocated for more medical research into Gulf War Illness and now burn pit exposure, said he didn't know why the topic was discontinued.

It was added for the first time to the list in 2015, according to Brown, who took part in the peer reviewed process this year.
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PTSD Researchers already know how to forget with lab rats

PTSD Researchers already know how to forget with lab rats
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
January 31, 2014

New rodent lab at Detrick could advance PTSD research, but by even thinking it is new proves that too many researchers all ready know how to forget what they do not want to remember.

Center for Environmental Health Research’s newest lab. Called a vivarium, the 2,145-square-foot space will be used to house up to 4,000 mice or 900 rats for research and observation.

In an ever growing list of wasted funds the military is repeating what has already been done. This time at a cost of $2 million to start another rat study on PTSD. Rats? Yes, rats. In one of the first studies reported since the Afghanistan and Iraq wars there was this report.

Last year, in a landmark experiment in rats, LeDoux opened a path to doing just that. He showed that it's possible to obstruct the memory of a specific traumatic event without affecting other memories. He also demonstrated that when the memory was stifled, the fear it roused vanished as well.

When was that report released? 2007!

Even that research was a repeat of what was done before.

"United States and China announced last week that, for the first time, they had found a means of selectively and safely erasing memories in mice, using the signaling molecule αCaMKII. It's a big step forward, and one that will be of considerable interest to the military, which has devoted efforts to memory manipulation as a means of treating post-traumatic stress disorder. But some military research has moved in another direction entirely.

In the 1980s, researchers found that even low-level exposure to a beam of electrons caused rats to forget what had just happened to them (an effect known as retrograde amnesia — the other version, anteretrograde amnesia, is when you can't form new memories). The same effect was also achieved with X-rays. The time factor was not large — it only caused memory loss about the previous four seconds — but the effect was intriguing."

They tried this in 2008

Cognitive restructuring, which entails rebuilding the thoughts and responses to a traumatic event to be more accurate and beneficial for the patient, is one common form of therapy to help prevent PTSD in those with acute stress. Exposure therapy is another therapy used to this end in which the patient is re-exposed in some way to the source of the trauma, in the hopes of habituating the patient and thus decreasing the response. There is some evidence that many clinicians do not use the latter form of therapy because it can cause distress for recent survivors of trauma.

Magnets to treat PTSD was yet another research project. "The treatment could blunt the effects of PTSD by strengthening the synaptic connectivity between patients' prefrontal cortex -- the region of the brain responsible for more logical thinking -- and their amygdala -- the region of the brain that processes the deep emotions associated with PTSD, Zangen said."

This also came out in 2008

"The Army and the National Institute of Mental Health have begun a five-year, $50 million research program into the factors behind soldier suicides and how to prevent them, Army Secretary Pete Geren told reporters at the Pentagon yesterday. Geren said the new partnership with NIMH, the Army Science Board and the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs would build on work that already is under way to conduct the most far-reaching and comprehensive research project ever undertaken on suicide and its prevention."

Studies using Ecstasy trials for combat stress came out in 2005 but studies using LSD started long before. Treating trauma connected to war is not new and has not improved enough simply because researchers failed to use findings from long ago.

Since the First World War the medical and psychiatric profession has mobilized to treat the psychological trauma suffered by participants of war. Initially the military and the mental health profession considered military psychiatry to have two important roles in a war setting. The first was to treat soldiers who suffered a mental breakdown as a result of combat and when possible, return them to their units as quickly as possible. The second and equally important - and infinitely more difficult - job of the psychiatric profession was to aid the military in preventing combat related mental trauma. Through intense study, first-hand experience, and trial and error mental health professionals learned over the course of the twentieth century effective ways to treat and sometimes prevent severe traumatic breakdown.

This is about WWII

Shades of Gray (ca.1940s) WW2 Shell Shock Film
Oct 26, 2013
This is a rare film on the subject of shell shock.
Shades of Gray (1940s) - This is a dramatized documentary on the subject of being shell-shocked and seems to be geared towards psychologists.

So now comes yet another waste of time and money to study rats and getting them to forget. Seems that researchers should study why they have forgotten everything. Suicides tied to military service keep going up even as they do more.

Capt. Alex Houston Shows Warrior Ethos

Commander Shows Warrior Ethos

Army.com - Huntsville,Al,USA

“He walks the walk, and talks the talk,” she said. “He and his family are committed to the unit and soldiers. His injury has not been an impediment at all. He’s a true testament to the Warrior Ethos — a testament to what the folks at Walter Reed and he have done.”

Oct. 30, 2008
By Sarah Maxwell

FORT DETRICK, Md. ( American Forces Press Service) – In most ways, Army Capt. Alex Houston is like any other Army commander.

He comes to work here every day ready to lead and set the standard for the soldiers who work for him. He diligently performs all of his administrative duties as the 21st Signal Brigade Headquarters and Headquarters Company commander, and he gets down and dirty with the unit during company physical training. He jokes with his staff, and even has been known to sing off-key for them.

And he does this all as a wounded warrior. As a platoon leader in Iraq, Houston lost his left hand when his convoy was attacked during a night mission.

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Suspected in anthrax attack commits suicide

Too many things in this article are very troubling. The first is that "that has been investigating the anthrax mailings for more than a year" but has not said why it was never an important enough investigation to have been non-stop since 2001.

It took them all this time to exonerate Steven Hatfill who had this hanging over his head for seven years. The good thing is that they had to pay for what they did to him all this time.

The government paid Hatfill $5.82 million to settle a lawsuit he filed against the Justice Department in which he claimed the department violated his privacy rights by speaking with reporters about the case.

The article went on to say that after the attacks, Ivins conducted unauthorized tests but did not say he had done so before the attacks.

This is very odd.

Anthrax Scientist Commits Suicide, Report Says
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 1, 2008
Filed at 3:57 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A top U.S. biodefense researcher apparently committed suicide just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against him in the anthrax mailings that traumatized the nation in the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to a published report.

The scientist, Bruce E. Ivins, 62, who worked for the past 18 years at the government's biodefense labs at Fort Detrick, Md., had been told about the impending prosecution, the Los Angeles Times reported for Friday editions. The laboratory has been at the center of the FBI's investigation of the anthrax attacks, which killed five people.

Ivins died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital in Maryland. The Times, quoting an unidentified colleague, said the scientist had taken a massive dose of a prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine.
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16,269 exposed to chemicals not notified of health issues?

The Pentagon hired a contractor to try to identify more veterans, but GAO found the project lacked sufficient oversight. For example, in 2007, a contractor identified 2,300 people exposed to biological tests at Fort Detrick, Md., in “Operation Whitecoat,” which ran from the early 1950s to the early 1970s.

VA, DoD urged to find chemical-exposed vets

By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Mar 1, 2008 7:56:47 EST

The Pentagon and Veterans Affairs Department must work harder to find tens of thousands of veterans involved in military chemical and biological weapons tests since World War II, the Government Accountability Office said in a new report.

“As this population becomes older, it will become more imperative for DoD and VA to identify and notify these individuals in a timely manner because they might be eligible for health care or other benefits,” according to the GAO report.

The classified tests exposed people to various agents. Some were simulated, but many were not. The list included blister and nerve agents, biological agents, PCP and LSD, in a series of tests over several decades known as “Project 112.”

According to the GAO, the military also exposed healthy adults, psychiatric patients and prison inmates in the experiments.

In some cases, service members volunteered for the tests but were misled about what they would be asked to do.

“Precise information on the number of tests, experiments and participants is not available, and the exact numbers will never be known,” the GAO report states.

Still, in 1993, the Defense Department began trying to find as many as it could. They identified almost 6,000 veterans and 350 civilians who may have been exposed. That search effort ended in 2003.

But in a 2004 study, GAO said the Pentagon should review further data and see if it would be feasible to find more people who may have been exposed.

Defense officials decided that looking further would not yield significant results, but GAO said that decision was “not supported by an objective analysis of the potential costs and benefits,” and that the Pentagon had not documented the criteria for its decision.

Since 2003, the Institutes of Medicine as well as other non-military agencies have found 600 more people.

GAO found that the Defense Department efforts in this area lack consistent objectives and adequate oversight, and officials have not used information gained from previous research that identified exposed people. GAO also aid the process lacks transparency because it has not kept Congress and veterans groups informed of its progress.

VA officials sent letters to only 48 percent of the names provided by the Pentagon because those were the only ones for whom they could find addresses. At least 16,269 known to be living still need to be notified.

Some records have been lost or destroyed, but GAO said VA does not work with the Social Security Administration or the Internal Revenue Service to obtain contact information for veterans.

go here for the rest

http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2008/03/military_chemicalweapons_tests_022908w/

A couple of things really wrong with this aside from the obvious. The VA can and does work with the IRS and Social Security when it involves the ability to collect for treatment classified as "non-service connected" and they did this in the 90's at least because they kept taking our tax refund until my husband's claim was approved. The Pentagon also must work with the IRS and Social Security because they managed to track down the National Guardsman they are sending to jail because he had income from a private job while part of the time he was deployed to Iraq. In other words, when they want to find you, they do.