Institute of Medicine Announces C-123 Agent Orange Exposure Report is Delayed

Yesterday the IOM Agent Orange committee reported that their C-123 report, expected by the end of
this month, has been delayed into October. This is regrettable because the Department of Veterans Affairs has since January put all C-123 veterans’ claims on hold, awaiting the IOM report.

Until the IOM report is released VA will continue to refuse medical care for over 2100 affected veterans. Further, however conclusive it may be regarding the aircrew’s exposures, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs may still accept the advice of Post Deployment Health and not implement the report’s recommendations.

Its Official: VA Secretary Confirms VA Has Lost Trust of Public and Vets

The Department of Veterans Affairs has lost the trust of veterans and the American people as a

result of widespread treatment delays for people seeking health care and falsified records to cover up those delays, Acting Secretary Sloan Gibson said Wednesday.

The Secretary said the VA has created an environment where workers are afraid to raise concerns or offer suggestions for fear of retaliation and has failed to hold employees accountable for wrongdoing or negligence.

The agency also has devoted too many resources to meeting performance metrics -- such as prompt scheduling of patient appointments -- that were subject to manipulation and may not accurately reflect quality of care, Gibson said.

"As a consequence of all these failures, the trust that is the foundation of all we do -- the trust of the veterans we serve and the trust of the American people and their elected representatives --has eroded," Gibson told the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.

From my sixtyeight years of toil and life experiences, trust rebuilt is never as strong as trust unbroken.

Veterans Benefits Administration REDEFINES Science to Prevent Agent Orange Claims

PART ONE: The Grand Deception
A simple line deep in the middle of a poster presentation offered at the Society of Toxicology convention is where VA did it to the C-123 veterans, and other vets exposed to Agent Orange in situations other than "boots on the ground" during Vietnam. Here is where VA showed its eagerness to prevent service-disabled veterans from, as VA and DOD consultants have put it, becoming "freeloaders looking for a tax-free dollar from a sympathetic congressman."

The Society of Toxicology invites poster displays as well as scientific and medical presentations from members, and VA's Veterans Benefits Administration and Veterans Health Administration prepared their large poster for that San Francisco meeting.

Their objective: enjoy a freebee trip to the Golden Gate city justified on the basis of doing something useful like the poster, but also engineer a special way to skirt the law and insure Agent Orange veterans, in particular, C-123 veterans, all be denied exposure benefits clearly provided for by law. What law? The Agent Orange Act of 1991, and also Title 38, as well as the 8 May 2001 Federal Register, page 23166 which has the force of regulation.

These laws, regulations and announcements provide that veterans exposed to military herbicides will receive exposure benefits without requirement that they provide proof of medical nexus...which is virtually impossible for any individual to do. Think here of a non-smoker getting lung cancer. Where and when cannot be proved with today's science, but it surely came from somewhere. Same here with military herbicide exposure and the "Agent Orange" presumptives, a list of illnesses acknowledged the the VA and the National Academy of Science/Institute of Medicine to be associated with dioxin exposure.

Seems simple enough. Exposure proof would result in claim approval. Nope! Faced with the possibility of C-123 veterans continuing their legitimate pursuit of essential, life-saving medical treatment for Agent Orange illnesses, VA executives realized that the Agency needed to focus on exposure. The Air Force had already determined that C-123s used for spraying Agent Orange during the Vietnam War remained contaminated ("heavily contaminated on all test surfaces" and "a danger to public health" read the AF toxicology reports.) That left the VA weak on any challenge to the fact of contamination of the aircraft, and any veteran's confirmed diagnosis of an Agent Orange illness prevented any challenge on that issue, so the only approach would be to deny the exposure itself.

VHA Poster Display

Here is where VA gets amazingly creative. Simply disregarding the law, and challenging the entire world of science and medicine, Veterans Health Administration utilized the Society of Toxicology conference to present a non-juried poster display entitled "AGENT ORANGE: 50-Year History and Newest Chapter of Concerns." Folks, C-123 veterans were cited as the VA's "chapter of concerns." Folks, the "concern" was the VA's in dread of eligible veterans actually receiving the benefits to which our Agent Orange exposure entitles us!

So somebody at 810 Vermont Avenue, Washington D.C.  got the clever idea, "Let's redefine the word "exposure" to prevent any exposed veteran from ever being approved. Let's pretend, just here at the VA, that "exposure" will mean something extra...that "exposure," the simple and precise word used in the various laws, will mean only what we say it means. And that definition is going to be that "exposure equals contaminant plus bioavailability." This way, with our special private redefinition, we can pretend that the laws of the United States do not apply, that science, logic and justice do not apply, and we can once again require proof of medical nexus!"

VA associates us much too closely with the tens of thousands of Blue Water Navy veterans, and VA is frightened that approving C-123 vets will lead to approving Blue Water Navy also.

Midway down the SOT poster made up by the VA, left column, at the fourth paragraph, the reader comes to the alarming deception employed by VA's Post Deployment Health staffers who wrote this poster. C-123 Veterans Association leaders encountered them all at the March 2013 conference hosted by Senator Burr's staff as we tried to find common ground. Sadly, this non-juried piece of policy-driven verbiage is the result!

Read carefully, won't you? Chew carefully on the highlighted items. We'll discuss this vicious VA deceptions in our next post. Meantime, Google words like "medical nexus, "exposure," and take a moment to read Page 23166 of the 8 May 2001 Federal Register, the last section of the middle column. Very revealing!

C-123 Veterans Post YouTube Video - VA Defiance of Freedom of Information Act

In 2012 C-123 veterans submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain vital documents regarding the VA's treatment...shall we say mistreatment, of veteran's claims about Agent Orange exposure.

A full year later, and on 11 March 2013 VA's Assistant General Counsel "kindly" informed the veterans that no evidence exists. Nothing. No publications, research, emails, marginal notations, notes, correspondence, presentations..nothing exists within the Department of Veterans Affairs about C-123 Agent Orange exposure. Not even whatever the VA bases its refusal to honor veterans' claims for Agent Orange exposure, or why their Director of Veterans Compensation Service informed a veteran his Agent Orange claim is to be denied because Agent Orange is harmless.

We've complained, but FOIAs are commonly ignored or falsely responded to, and here's another one on the pile of dishonored requests. I guess obedience to the law is for those subject to the law, not for those responsible to administering it like the VA.