RIP, Old Hoss

Why didn't we do this back in 1972?

VA C-123 Agent Orange Denial - Physicians' Opinions Only?

The VA's Public Health folks, and especially the Director of Compensation, have aggressively countered every argument we've put forward about our Agent Orange exposure aboard our C-123 aircraft. With their most recent action, denying my own Agent Orange application, the VA dismissed the opinions of noted scientists because these experts weren't physicians.

Interesting. Particularly so, because the VA's position where they've twisted the acknowledged contamination of the C-123 into a hypothesis that exposure to aircrew was unlikely, they turned to a scientist, and not a physician, to develop their position. A recent University of North Carolina grad (where our daughter graduated also!) While very hard to locate in Google Scholar, the VA's toxicologist's specialty seems to be mollusk toxicology and apparently hasn't published much since receiving the doctorate in 2011. 

So the VA assigned their expert to, not as the public would would hope, examine with an open mind the issue of C-123 dioxin contamination and aircrew exposure, but instead construct whatever negative argument that would suffice to deny veterans' their benefits. Science, justice and law notwithstanding! And the VA "expert", with only limited experience, concluded (as directed) aircrew exposure was an "unlikely" situation, a view used immediately by the VA, even in the face of numerous expert toxicologists (both university-based and from other federal agencies including NIH and CDC) with over three decades experience who have all concluded veterans were indeed exposed. Thus, the VA has denied medical care to Agent Orange-exposed veterans based solely on the selective list of publications reviewed - and no publications were permitted to be reviewed except for very old ones or ones which in some way had a negative perspective. This kind of science would never be accepted in a peer-reviewed journal!

I sure hope we can trust the VA's staffer to have gained a comprehensive grasp of dioxin-related health issues in this first year with the VA. 


But amazing that the VA denies the expertise of ten other PdDs whose research confirms aircrew exposure...denies the exposure because these PhDs aren't physicians. 

But neither was the VA toxicologist! Clearly, then, the VA accepts VA PhD judgements only if the PdD works for the VA and opposes veterans issues!

Please try Google Scholar for a search on (sorry, name deleted to be polite) who is barely a blip on the toxicology radar. Then,  compare it to a search for Dr. Jeanne Stellman, for whom Scholar reports hundreds upon hundreds of publications, references, authorities. Dr. Stellman, who has for decades been the go-to expert scholar sought out by the National Academy of Sciences, the US Congress, the Federal courts, government agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, the National Academy of Sciences, the Canadian government and even the USAF.

Dr. Jeanne Stellman, Professor Emerita Columbia
University Mailman School of Public Health

It is interesting to note that VA's toxicologist, in preparing the poster presentation at the 2011 Society of Toxicology conference, improperly cited authors who had asked that their studies not be used regarding aircrew exposure. Interesting that VA ignored the already published findings by Dr. Stellman, Dr. Fred Berman at Oregon Health Sciences University, and Dr. Tom Sinks, deputy director of the CDC's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry...ignored them because only materials supporting the VA's position were to be used! One wonders why the SOT accepted such a poster presentation!

We are also left wondering why the VA develops a toxicology-based argument against aircrew exposure, and then twists it to rule invalid the opinions of the best scientists in the field of toxicology and accepts instead a literature by a recent graduate just settling into the responsibilities of the new VA job...as a toxicologist!  

Ya gotta laugh or start crying!

More Support for C-123 Veterans' Agent Orange Claims

We learned this week that another major university (not to be specified but it sits along the Charles River in Boston) has brought its expertise to bear on our claims for Agent Orange exposure. Experts from that university in Boston fully endorsed Dr. Jeannie Stellman's perspective - C-123 veterans WERE exposed to deadly TCDD (the toxic element of Agent Orange) in the years 1972-1982. Further, their professional opinion is that our veterans were exposed at a greater rate than ground troops of the Vietnam War.

And they have a great faculty club!

Like Dr. Stellman, this university's experts have previously been acknowledged by the National Academy of Sciences as the go-to source for Agent Orange research.

We still hope for a peer-reviewed article addressing the inadequacies of the VA and AF reports about the C-123, likely focusing on the unscientific assumptions made, the obvious predetermined conclusion, and the fact...the fact...that aircrews and maintenance personnel assigned to this aircraft are due fair consideration by the VA for our Agent Orange exposure claims. Several researchers have utilized our blog's extensive data collection, but we need to get more of the materials gathered by the Air Force during their investigation of the C-123 contamination. Personally, I'd like to know who exactly wrote the report because it was signed by Colonel Benjamin, commander of the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine, and I can't see that a physician or major unit commander did this work himself. Typically, such reports are released oner the signatures of the researchers involved. And typically, Air Force reports such as this can be relied upon but in this case it has failed the sniff test.

Jeanne Mager Stellman  Professor and Director of Environmental Health Sciences, SUNY-Downstate "Agent Orange was an important tool that could be used to save the lives of thousands of soldiers who could fight in the jungle more clearly. But at the same time it introduced serious toxic chemicals into the environment and one could also say caused huge ecological disaster by this massive deforestation of a jungle area.

So, fellow veterans, keep calm and await developments. We expect the Air Force to brief Senator Burr on July 11, and our Association's leadership has been invited to attend or participate via teleconference.

Make sure your own VA claims for Agent Orange-type illness are submitted, and thus far the best advice from the American Legion's National Service Officers is to address individual medical issues with specific, expert medical opinions that the issue is "as likely to as not" have been caused by exposure to Agent Orange while an aircrew member (or maintainer, or aerial port) of the C-123.

Meeting With Senate, VA & USAF is ON!!

Thanks to Senator Burr's staff, on March 8 we'll have a face-to-face in the Senate Hart Building with representatives from the VA's Public Health and Benefits Administration departments, along with the Air Force's Senate Liaison Office. The meeting is to go over the recent letter from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which supported the C-123 veterans' claim for dioxin exposure. We can only hope that VA has spent the month since the ATSDR letter fairly evaluating it.

Helping represent our veterans' concerns will be Dr. Jeanne Stellman of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Dr. Stellman brings thirty years of expertise to bear in responding to the VA's inventions of reasons to disqualify our people from legitimate AO-exposure claims.

We also hope to get a summary of the research finished by the USAF School of Aerospace Medicine. USAFSAM began with an analysis of twenty years worth of earlier tests, a review of scientific literature about dioxin and exposure routes, and now have an opinion to provide the Department of Veterans Affairs about the C-123's dioxin contamination and the exposure suffered by aircrews and maintainers. No definite word yet as to their conclusion but we hope it will be basically supportive of our claims.

VA has told Senator Burr recently that, except for the Vietnam Veterans boots-on-the-ground population, veterans must prove four things to be eligible for dioxin illness care:
1. proof of contamination
2. proof of exposure
3. an Agent Orange presumptive illness
4. a nexus between the exposure and the AO illness

Friends, once you can get past the VA's Dark Side (the benefits eligibility gatekeepers) you'll find the actual care providers and local administrators a truly caring group. The lines for care at a medical center or clinic may be long but there's usually free coffee, a paperback book donated by local citizens, a reasonably comfortable waiting room, and other veterans to swap war stories with. In the twenty years since my first visit to the Asheville Regional Medical Center to follow-up on Gulf War injuries, I have meet precisely ONE doctor who shouldn't have been touching patients, ONE patient receptionist who cut me short when I asked a question, and everyone else has been just wonderful...in sum, I'm grateful to be their patient.

The biggest concern veterans have, other than getting applications approved, is that the process remains far too long, even for today's new veterans who are counting on care waiting for them should they need it. FYI, my own Agent Orange claim, submitted via their "Fast Track" program, has been been in a full year this month and it is just barely past the half-way mark as per the eBenefits site.

Patches
Tail #362