DAV HONORS VBA LEADER THOMAS MURPHY. DAV SHOULD BE ASHAMED!

WHAT THE HECK? As a lifetime DAV member, I'm outraged! DAV has just debased itself and honored the administrator who bottled up our C-123 claims for four years, Mr. Thomas Murphy of the Veterans Benefit Administration. DAV forgets it was Mr. Murphy who approved the infamous no-bid sole-source $600,000 contract to Al Young to oppose Agent Orange claims. DAV forgets its own powerful denunciation of VA and that contract. Only with a blank memory could DAV or any other veterans organization lower itself to "honor" Mr. Murphy. Background: Along with Major Marlene Wentworth, I sat in front of Mr. Murphy in his office the afternoon of February 28, 2013 and read back to him his toxic September 25, 2012 advisory opinion in which he personally denied a C-123 veteran’s disability claim that the regional office had wanted to approve.Each of the four pages of Murphy’s opinion reeked of mistakes and revealed his passion in preventing C-123 claims. He excelled in that passion by denying 100% of our claims for over four years. For this disservice to thousands of C-123 veterans DAV now chooses to honor him? Outrageous! The thrust of that advisory opinion back in 2012 was his dismissal of all expert input establishing a veteran’s exposure from our Agent Orange-contaminated C-123 aircraft. Supporting the claim were reports from federal agencies, including the CDC/ATSDR, NIH, US Public Health Service, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Dozens of experts of the Committee of Concerned Scientists and Physicians also confirmed C-123 veterans’ exposure injuries. 

It is my understanding this particular application had more supporting evidence than any other VA disability claim ever submitted. Where typically a doctor’s note, some proof of service and perhaps an outside expert opinion would accompany a disability claim, this C-123 claim had a full-court press of government and independent experts, all making clear the fact of C-123 Agent Orange exposure. It was, in VA terms, “an overwhelming preponderance of evidence.”

None of which sufficed for Mr. Murphy. Determined to maintain the zero-approval stone wall he and others built against C-123 claims, he simply dismissed everything. He said these scientists and physicians, many of whom previously were VA and IOM experts, weren’t even qualified to comment.

Most outrageous was his dismissal of the report by Dr. Thomas Sinks, Deputy Director of the CDC/ATSDR. Dr. Sinks’ opinion on C-123 Agent Orange was dramatic: C-123 vets had exposure 182-times military safety limits and face a 200-fold greater risk of cancers. Later, Sinks' report would prove pivotal in the final IOM report confirming C-123 exposure injuries.

The Sinks report was also affirmed by the CDC/ATSDR director Dr. Christopher Portier and other NIH executives, including Rear Admiral R.Ikeda MD, US Public Health Service.

Not nearly enough for Mr. Murphy, who trashed the CDC/ATSDR report:

Read carefully Mr. Murphy’s last sentence: "In summary, there is no conclusive evidence that TCDD exposure causes any adverse health effects."  Read that he did not repeat the frightening CDC/ATSDR details about exposures 182-times safety limits, or increased cancer risks.

Agent Orange is harmless? No health effects? Mr. Murphy summarized the CDC/ATSDR report about our 200-fold greater risk of cancers as “no adverse health effects?”

Later, a VA spokesperson called that “an unfortunate choice of words,” but it sufficed for Mr. Murphy’s purpose of ensuring that no C-123 claims would get past his desk. Years would pass before the first claim did succeed in 2015.

With his staff also present, I read his statement to him during our meeting on February 28, 2013 and Mr. Murphy said it would stand. He also said no evidence from whatever expert would permit C-123 claim approval because VHA had already decided we were never exposed. Meanwhile. on the other side of its official mouth, VA was falsely insisting that all our claims were evaluated on a case-by-case facts-proven basis. 

For Mr. Murphy’s mistreatment of thousands of C-123 veterans and his failure to follow his own VAM21-1MR regulation, DAV now stoops to “honor” this Agent Orange claim opponent. Totally disgraceful!

Lack of Oversight Promotes VA Claims Mismanagement at Highest Level

"Lack of Oversight"

• For more than four years, James Sampsel got away with it. Mr. Sampsel was (and still is?) working from his home as manager of the VBA Agent Orange Desk. That's a key position in the Compensation and Pension Service with duties spelled out in VA Adjudication Manual M21-1MR. Every non-Vietnam veteran claiming Agent Orange exposure faces Mr. Sampsel's scrutiny. 

What did Mr. Sampsel get away with?
• Improperly blocked every single C-123 veteran's Agent Orange disability claim that crossed his desk. That denied vital medical care and disability benefits. Unless otherwise eligible, vets with cancers and other deadly ailments were locked out of VA hospitals. 
• He created a brief to the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee that falsely assured legislators C-123 claims were decided on a case-by-case basis, while he simultaneously directed VA rating officials to deny all those claims. This was to block legislative relief for C-123 veterans.

• His friendship with Dr. Alvin Young included supervision of a unique no-bid sole-source unsolicited contract for $600,000, with Dr. Young producing a series of monographs on Agent Orange issues of Mr. Sampsel's choosing. The largest single subject of the monographs was Dr.Young's enthusiastic support for Mr. Sampsel's opposition to C-123 exposure claims. The entire series was designed to buttress VA policies against Agent Orange claims.

• Mr. Sampsel was present at the June 14, 2014 hearing of the Institute of Medicine C-123 Committee at which Dr. Young denied he was representing VA in opposing C-123 exposure claims. In fact, Dr. Young was under his Sept 2012-Sept 2014 Agent Orange consulting contract, receiving $25,000 that month. Mr. Sampsel did nothing to correct Dr. Young's misleading statement to the IOM. Critical because Dr.Young tried to come off as a disinterested expert coming forward to advise the committee. In fact, Dr. Young was a paid VA agent under Mr. Sampsel.

• In one email, Mr. Sampsel even sarcastically shared patient information with an unauthorized colleague. He also recommended VA not respond to a different patient confidentially complaint about him as it would only "encourage" the vet. VA does not want to encourage veterans?
• He misled the Secretary into signing a deceptive and error-laden letter and C-123 Fact Sheet" for the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.

How did he do that?

• Mr. Sampsel insisted VA had "an overwhelming preponderance of evidence" against C-123 claims but there was no such preponderance. Mr. Sampsel told raters there was no basis for honoring C-123 exposure claims, and even provided boilerplate claim denial language to regional offices. 
• Like others in VA, Mr. Sampsel wrongly promised every C-123 disability claim was addressed on "a case-by-case" basis. Amazingly, this is even while writing memos to Mr. Murphy questioning whether they should adopt a case-by-case basis. He directed VA's blanket denial policy while also denying hs policy existed. Some regional offices like Manchester NH took Mr. Sampsel's denials to be regulatory prohibitions of C-123  awards.

• Thus, every C-123 claim was denied from the earliest known in 2007 until June 2015. Tellingly, once free of Mr. Sampsel's twisted scrutiny, every denied C-123 claim appealed to the Board of Veterans Appeals was honored because the BVA more closely obeyed the law and followed VA regulations. Eventually, years after the Sampsel denials, C-123 vets go a fair deal at VBA...if they'd survived the interim delay.

• He also drafted Secretary Shinseki's error-laden June 2013 response to Senator Burr and the "C-123 Fact Sheet," thus forestalling legislative intervention by veterans' elected representatives

• Despite VAM21-1MR procedures, Mr. Sampsel refused to act on JSRRC confirmation of C-123 exposures. He received input as early as March 2013 yet for years continued to insist on his "overwhelming preponderance of evidence" against C-123 vets. It should be noted that the phrase "overwhelming preponderance" admits virtually no doubt – "there is no reason to believe otherwise"...even with contrary input from CDC, NIH, JSRRC, and dozens of other experts, Mr. Sampsel insisted to vets, legislators and VA itself there was no doubt. He was correct, but only in there was no doubt that all C-123 claims would be automatically denied by Mr. Sampsel's agency.

Who let him get away with it? 

• Mr. Thomas Murphy, at the time Director, Compensation, and Pension Service and now, Acting Under Secretary for Benefits. Mr. Sampsel had a key position under Murphy's organization.

How do we know Mr. Murphy failed to provide effective oversight?
• Because Mr. Murphy was personally briefed on these problems by Major Wes Carter. Further, Mr. Murphy was copied on veterans' correspondence to various VA leaders revealing specific failures of the Agent Orange Desk, and was copied by Mr. Sampsel on his internal correspondence. Veterans met with Mr. Murphy at his 1800 office on February 28, 2013 to discuss reasons for VBA blocking C-123 exposure claims. 

• One specific point covered was language in a claim denial that dismissed dioxin's harmful effects. Another was the Agent Orange Desk rejection of all opinions from the CDC/ATSDR, NIH and dozens of independent experts.

• Mr. Murphy signed the claim denial in question, and also signed VA responses to Dr. Jeanne Stellman, the Corresponding Scientist of the Concerned Physicians and Scientists. That group detailed scientific errors in the Agent Orange Desk rejection of C-123 claims

• Dr. Young's $600,000 Agent Orange consulting contract produced little if anything of value to VA, and was also pointedly anti-veteran as it obstructed C-123 claims.

What was the impact of Mr. Murphy's Lack of Oversight? 

• Vets were denied VA medical care. Vets were denied compensation for disabilities. Families were denied Champ-VA medical care and other benefits such as educational assistance for children. Veterans without VA certification were denied state benefits. Veterans were denied burial benefits. Overall, a discrediting of the VA benefits system and what one newspaper's editors called "the VA's latest success in embarrassing itself."

What has been done about Mr. Murphy's Lack of Oversight?

• Nothing. Nothing has been done to make right the harm done nor improve VA policies and procedures.

Why still be concerned about this injustice?

• Because vets were denied benefits until June 2015. While presently there is no recovery for medical care and other expenses vets faced without VA benefits, VA needs to honor old claims for retroactive disability compensation just as they do with every other claim situation because compensation is based on the date of application, not when Mr. Sampsel and company get around to doing the right thing.

• Because nothing has been done to address their failures, and the system is free to do this again to other veterans.

Department of Justice Confirms...AND EXCUSED...VA PHONY SCIENCE

VA Post Deployment Health simply made it up. Since accepted science didn't agree with VA policy objectives, VA simply revised science to insure veterans' claims were denied.

On December 1, the US Department of Justice confirmed that for years a handful of VA staffers had twisted science into a policy goal. That twisted goal: denial of valid Agent Orange exposure claims from C-123 veterans.

Please try to follow this. It is how VA refused years of medical care and other vital benefits to thousands of veterans who flew or maintained the former C-123 Agent Orange spray airplanes.

In 2012, faced with Agent Orange exposure claims from C-123 veterans, VA's Veterans Health Administration Post Deployment Health Section simply invented their own unique VA-only redefinition of "exposure" to prevent all such claims. The proper standard definition of exposure (Dorlands Illustrated Medical Dictionary, VA's standard reference) confirmed the veterans' claims, so VA twisted that word into phony science, meant only to further VA policy, not justice or good medical care.

All they had to do was bury a simple deceptive and scientifically-flawed sentence into a poster presentation VA gave at the 2012 Society of Toxicology conference in San Francisco:

"Exposure = contamination field + bioavailability."

VA poster redefinition of "exposure"

Other government agencies deny any bioavailability requirement for
exposure to occur; NIH labeled VA definition "unscientific"

In their terminology slight of hand, VA said that exposure couldn't exist without a contaminate plus proven bioavailability of that contaminante. No proof of bioavailability, however impossible to actually prove, was to mean no exposure...at least to the VA. Burn pits, immunizations, dirty water, biohazards, toxins...all the things a veteran might encounter via inhalation, ingestion or dermal contact, VA would refuse to concede exposure unless the impossible was done...a vet had to prove the bioavailability of the contamination. 

Not only did this piece of VA newspeak conflict with Dorlands Illustrated Medical Dictionary, but also with other VA and government with VA's own standard source for scientific and medical terms. Other VA agencies used the proper definition of exposure, but not VHA's Post Deployment.

Other government agencies and other VA departments simply use the proper definitions published by the CDC Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, where "exposure = Contact with a substance by swallowing, breathing, or touching the skin or eyes." That's the CDC definition, the EPA definition, the NIH definition.

So back to the Department of Justice report on VA and its reinvention of "exposure" back in 2012.

In 2013, C-123 veterans filed suit against the VA in the US District Court of Washington, demanding the background for VA's "exposure" redefinition and the basis on which VA's Society of Toxicology poster came to be. This week, DOJ finally revealed: 

 Dr. XXXX did not create the poster based on existing documents, but upon her experience assessing that and other exposure scenarios.  The statement "exposure = concentration present + bioavailability" did not previously exist in any documents of which she is aware.

So the redefinition, published over the names of Dr. Terra Irons, Dr. Wendy Dick, Dr. Terry Walters and Dr. Michael Peterson (all of VHA Public Health) was simply made up. Never existed before, and created for this poster to then be used to block C-123 veterans' claims.

And that's exactly how it was used. In February 2013, C-123 vets met with Mr. Thomas Murphy, Director of VA's Compensation and Pension Service. Besides telling the veterans no amount of proof would be acceptable to establish their exposure claims, he explained that Dr. Terry Walters had already concluded no C-123 veteran's Agent Orange exposure was to be permitted based on her own redefinition of exposure.

Invited by Mr. Murphy to discuss the issue with Dr. Walters, we found her redefinition just as we'd been told, with the additional point she made that few, if any, Vietnam veterans were ever exposed to Agent Orange based on her new definition of exposure. And it was a definition of exposure contrary to every other federal agency, including the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences as well as other VA departments.

But we have to ask: how did a PhD one year out of grad school at Carolina opt to redefine a fundamental term in toxicology, just so OPH could deny exposure claims? And again, the Department of Justice simply reported to us that she did it, pretty much by herself, calling on her specialty of mollusk toxicology to provide enough scientific wherewithal to refuse medical care to thousands of Agent Orange exposed veterans.

And on that weak, policy-driven basis, VA continued to order C-123 veterans' Agent Orange exposure claims denied until June 2015. That date was the publication of the Secretary's Interim Final Rule, recognizing the Institute of Medicine finding that C-123 vets had indeed been exposed. And exposed in the true scientific meaning of that word!