We do not yet know who President Obama will nominate for this very important Cabinet position. Many in the veteran community are hoping it will be Tammy Duckworth, currently Illinois Veterans Affairs Director we feel she is attuned to the problems that all veterans are currently dealing with in trying to obtain their promised benefits.
She is a disabled Iraq War veteran who does not just advocate for the "new veterans" she advocates for all veterans, Desert Storm or Gulf War One whichever name you prefer, Vietnam era veterans, Korean War veterans and WW2 veterans and peacetime veterans, she represents them all equally.
I will be asking her or whomever it is that President Obama selects as the new VA Secretary to correct an injustice that has been allowed to continue for more than fifty years, the ignored and abused veterans of the Cold War human experiments, my blog named Military experiment veterans 1941-now deals with the various programs known as MKULTRA, Operation WhiteCoat, Operation SHAD, Project 112, Dugway Proving Grounds (sheep kill 1966) Edgewood Arsenal - chemical weapons and drug experiments using 254 different substances, Fort Greely Alaska, and other experiments spread across military bases in the US and around the world.
Many of these experiments were done without the full "informed consent" of the men involved in them, in some cases consent was obtained but the "volunteers" were not told the full circumstances nor the long term health consequences as they were not known. In other cases many of the men used were not even told they were being used in experiments as in Operation Shad.
These veterans are in many cases disabled from the long term affects of the exposures, yet due to classified data, they can NOT prove the links needed to obtain medical and financial compensation. The Department of Defense has been notorious in writing the parameters for the health studies done by the National Academies of Science (NAS) thru the Institute of Medicine (IOM) by ignoring previous health studies showing the known long term health problems caused by low level exposures.
These two studies show many medical problems caused by low level exposures, yet DR William Page of the IOM ignored these for the medical studies paid for by DOD, the first is a January 1, 1994 National Institute of Health (NIH) study on chemical weapons Toxicity of the Organophosphate Chemical Warfare Agents GA, GB, and VX: Implications for Public Protection the second study is based on German soldiers from WW2 that were cared for and treated by DR Karl Heinz Lohs the suthor of this study Delayed Toxic Effects of Chemical Warfare Agents from page 40 the known medical problems:
To conclude this section, the closing observations from Spiegelberg’s monograph
will be cited (these remarks do not refer exclusively to organophosphorus
CW agents) [2]:
A psychiatric delayed-effect syndrome was found as a result of systematic investigations
on former members of CW production and testing stations for the Wehrmacht. In
terms of frequency, two groups of symptoms can be distinguished–each consisting of
four separate symptoms or signs.
(1) The great majority of persons examined showed:
(a) persistently lowered vitality accompanied by marked diminution in drive;
(b) defective autonomic regulation leading to cephalalgia, gastrointestinal and
cardiovascular symptoms, and premature decline in libido and potency;
(c) intolerance symptoms (alcohol, nicotine, medicines);
(d) impression of premature aging.
(2) Further, one or more symptoms of the second group were found:
(a) depressive or subdepressive disorders of vital functions;
(b) cerebral vegetative (syncopal) attacks;
(c) slight or moderate amnestic and demential defects;
(d) slight organoneurological defects (predominantly microsymptoms and singular
signs of extrapyramidal character).
Our results are a contribution to the general question of psychopathological delayed
and permanent lesions caused by industrial poisoning. On the basis of our studies of
the etiologically different manifestations of toxication, the possibility of a relatively
uniform–though equally unspecific–cerebro-organic delayed effect syndrome is conceivable
We veterans of the test programs are not asking for the government to expose classified material to support our compensation claims, we are just asking that after more than 30 years of being lied to, lied about, being denied that the tests even took place, that we be given the "benefit of the doubt" and if we have any of these medical problems that we be awarded our compensation claims and be financially compensated and be given the medical care that we are entitled to regardless of our income levels, we are not charity cases asking for help, we are veterans that were harmed by exposures in human experiments that would be today under any circumstances illegal, they violated the Nuremberg Codes of 1947, and today they violate laws passed by President Gerald Ford and President Jimmy Carter after the human experiments of Edgewood Arsenal became public knowledge in 1975, after the Army publicly released the Department of the Army Inspector General Report of 1975 on Human Experimentation.
These men are caught in a Catch 22 they have been told they would receive the Soldiers Medal for volunteering for these experiments due to the nature of dealing with chemical wepaons and some of the drugs they were exposed to, the Army broke the promise and did not award the medals, when asked for now, they are told what they did was not "heroic" and was not "above and beyond the call of duty" yet many of the Army's top doctors have plainly stated that without these men many of the equipment used on todays battlefield to protect the soldiers from chemical weapons would not be possible.
LTC Bernard G. Elfert, retired of Florida was assigned duty at the facility. He recalls, "Clinical and other testing was conducted to determine the effects of various agents on humans. The testing programs were highly classified. I am unaware as to the current security classifications of the toxic chemicals and phychochemicals employed there, so I cannot specify their designations, the agents involved or regimens. However, I have heard that since then most agents tested have been outlawed for military use."
Elfert says, "In the absence of volunteer participation the various chemical agents could not have been tested. The nature of the testing involved agents that posed unknown risk factors and such hazards could not be forced on military personnel as a duty." He believes the exposure to these various tests placed volunteers in danger and at great personal risk going far beyond the call of duty. In his opinion, those who underwent the tests were heroic.
This quote comes from an article written by
Tom Segel titled For Veterans ... Justice Delayed ... Is Justice Denied dated 22 July 2005.
These men and their widows just deserve the "benefit of doubt" and their medical care and if they are disabled they should be compensated. We are not asking the government to give up any classified data, but rather to keep the promises made when we volunteered. If we were harmed by the experiments that the Army and the VA would take care of us and or our families, the same PROMISE made to all military personnel.Sphere: Related Content
