Today Institute of Medicine staffers informed us that their C-123 Agent Orange report is again delayed, this time with a projection for its release until after Thanksgiving. This hurts, because VA has told its claims adjudicators to postpone decisions on disability claims until the report is issued, and perhaps even longer if VA takes months to then consider its next step.
Stay tuned.
Stay hopeful.
[T]he government’s interest in veterans cases is not that it shall win, but rather that justice shall be done, that all veterans so entitled receive the benefits due to them.” Barrett v. Nicholson, 466 F.3d 1038, 1044 (Fed.Cir.2006)
Showing posts with label national academies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label national academies. Show all posts
31 October 2014
26 July 2014
C-123 Veterans Charge to the Institute of Medicine C-123 Committee, June 16 2014
INDEPENDENCE.
The IOM web site, and staff emails, end in “.edu.” and not “.gov.” The Institute of Medicine is independent, say both the Department of Veterans Affairs and the IOM. Respectfully, we ask for your independence to be exercised.
But the VA charge restricted your independence, and gave rise to confusion when instead VA should have sought useful answers. We listened to the confusion and attempts to clarify the charge back on May 15 at the first public meeting.
Back on May 15, you weren’t briefed by VA that the report of this committee, if strictly in response to the VA’s charge, still won’t affect C-123 veterans’ access to VA care. The wording on the charge was chosen most carefully.
Yale Law, and other legal scholars, and the VA itself through publications in the Federal Register, have made it abundantly clear that the sole qualifier for Agent Orange illnesses to be treated by the VA is a veterans’ proof of exposure, or proof of service in Vietnam or on the Korean DMZ.
The real question is not how much harm. The real question is not how much exposure. The real question is not about bioavailability.
The answer to the real question is vital, yet the real question itself wasn’t even raised in the charge to the committee.
That question, one you are asked by us to answer more fully, is whether or not we were exposed and are thereby due care. Last month we discussed the “as likely to as not” decision point for medical claims. The level of proof, by veterans’ law, is only equipoise. We’re far past that.
The charge, as worded, avoided the real question of simple exposure. The reason for that has become clear: By not directly asking IOM to determine C-123 veterans’ exposure on a yes or no basis, there is no response to the challenges raised in our disability claims.
The C-123 contamination has been repeatedly proven over the decades by the military. The harm from our exposure, although the law frees us from having to prove it, has also been established. Please consider that the findings supporting our exposure claim were all offered by experts without compensation. If we’d paid as much to support our claims as the VA to oppose, we’d certainly have even more to offer.
Stretch the boundaries of your charge, to answer the real question before this committee, which is simply whether our C-123 crews were exposed and are due the care for ailments already identified by the IOM as Agent Orange-presumptive illnesses.
Certainly, your work on this committee to address the fullness of the VA charge is important and there are important answers you’ll uncover. But you must go further for the real problem to be resolved. Three years of this misery is enough.
I say there must be no barrier, no evasion, no acceptance of rigid blindfolds disguised as a committee charge. As worded, the charge which takes from you the independence needed to meet the real mission of the IOM and the National Academies, fulfilling what President Lincoln sought in 1863, a body of distinguished scholars “charged with providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology.”
Please: Independently answer the real question the veterans and the Department of Veterans Affairs are contesting, and form an effective as well as scientifically accurate report.
C-123 veterans, the focus of all your work, ask you to provide the nation your advice in the fullest way with a more complete, responsive answer to the real question at hand: QUESTION – In fulfilling our duty to fly this transport for a decade, were we, more likely than not, exposed and are thereby due VA care for illnesses previously associated by the IOM with Agent Orange exposure?
That should have been the real charge to this committee.
The IOM web site, and staff emails, end in “.edu.” and not “.gov.” The Institute of Medicine is independent, say both the Department of Veterans Affairs and the IOM. Respectfully, we ask for your independence to be exercised.
But the VA charge restricted your independence, and gave rise to confusion when instead VA should have sought useful answers. We listened to the confusion and attempts to clarify the charge back on May 15 at the first public meeting.
Back on May 15, you weren’t briefed by VA that the report of this committee, if strictly in response to the VA’s charge, still won’t affect C-123 veterans’ access to VA care. The wording on the charge was chosen most carefully.
Yale Law, and other legal scholars, and the VA itself through publications in the Federal Register, have made it abundantly clear that the sole qualifier for Agent Orange illnesses to be treated by the VA is a veterans’ proof of exposure, or proof of service in Vietnam or on the Korean DMZ.
The real question is not how much harm. The real question is not how much exposure. The real question is not about bioavailability.
The answer to the real question is vital, yet the real question itself wasn’t even raised in the charge to the committee.
That question, one you are asked by us to answer more fully, is whether or not we were exposed and are thereby due care. Last month we discussed the “as likely to as not” decision point for medical claims. The level of proof, by veterans’ law, is only equipoise. We’re far past that.
The charge, as worded, avoided the real question of simple exposure. The reason for that has become clear: By not directly asking IOM to determine C-123 veterans’ exposure on a yes or no basis, there is no response to the challenges raised in our disability claims.
The C-123 contamination has been repeatedly proven over the decades by the military. The harm from our exposure, although the law frees us from having to prove it, has also been established. Please consider that the findings supporting our exposure claim were all offered by experts without compensation. If we’d paid as much to support our claims as the VA to oppose, we’d certainly have even more to offer.
Stretch the boundaries of your charge, to answer the real question before this committee, which is simply whether our C-123 crews were exposed and are due the care for ailments already identified by the IOM as Agent Orange-presumptive illnesses.
Certainly, your work on this committee to address the fullness of the VA charge is important and there are important answers you’ll uncover. But you must go further for the real problem to be resolved. Three years of this misery is enough.
I say there must be no barrier, no evasion, no acceptance of rigid blindfolds disguised as a committee charge. As worded, the charge which takes from you the independence needed to meet the real mission of the IOM and the National Academies, fulfilling what President Lincoln sought in 1863, a body of distinguished scholars “charged with providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology.”
Please: Independently answer the real question the veterans and the Department of Veterans Affairs are contesting, and form an effective as well as scientifically accurate report.
C-123 veterans, the focus of all your work, ask you to provide the nation your advice in the fullest way with a more complete, responsive answer to the real question at hand: QUESTION – In fulfilling our duty to fly this transport for a decade, were we, more likely than not, exposed and are thereby due VA care for illnesses previously associated by the IOM with Agent Orange exposure?
That should have been the real charge to this committee.
04 December 2013
Institute of Medicine Releases Newest Agent Orange Review
Released today, the Institute of Medicine's Agent Orange Committee delivered their 2012 update on Agent Orange issues. Because the IOM only considers issues submitted to them by the VA, there was very little controversial coverage...nothing done regarding C-123 or next-generation exposure concerns because these were not in the tasking paid for by the VA in their charge to the IOM.
Instead, the IOM's 2012 report simply noted our January presentation to them and dismissed their involvement with us by stating exposures outside Vietnam were not a part of their VA assignment. True enough, but our presentation to them dealt with the VA's treatment of the concept of "exposure" and the denial of VA benefits because Agent Orange hasn't been shown to be harmful (at least, from the perspective of VA's Compensation and Pension Service which uses that excuse to deny claims.)
We note with humor the fact that most of the committee are scientists, and only two are physicians. Based on earlier directives from Compensation and Pension Services only physicians are qualified to comment on Agent Orange (and none of them, unless they agree with VA perspectives!) so therefore this report shouldn't be acceptable to the VA!
In fact, of course, these committee members are dedicated professionals from science and medicine and their report is well-founded. We only mean to say the VA is highly selective in what input it will accept, and firmly determined to prevent any input which may (as it always does) confirm both the contamination of the C-123 and the exposure of its aircrews and maintenance personnel.
The single new conclusion was that there is limited or suggestive evidence of a scientifically meaningful association of stroke with exposure to the chemicals in question. This could be a tremendously important point, given the positive way Secretary Shinseki treated the IOM's earlier findings on heart disease!
Instead, the IOM's 2012 report simply noted our January presentation to them and dismissed their involvement with us by stating exposures outside Vietnam were not a part of their VA assignment. True enough, but our presentation to them dealt with the VA's treatment of the concept of "exposure" and the denial of VA benefits because Agent Orange hasn't been shown to be harmful (at least, from the perspective of VA's Compensation and Pension Service which uses that excuse to deny claims.)
We note with humor the fact that most of the committee are scientists, and only two are physicians. Based on earlier directives from Compensation and Pension Services only physicians are qualified to comment on Agent Orange (and none of them, unless they agree with VA perspectives!) so therefore this report shouldn't be acceptable to the VA!
In fact, of course, these committee members are dedicated professionals from science and medicine and their report is well-founded. We only mean to say the VA is highly selective in what input it will accept, and firmly determined to prevent any input which may (as it always does) confirm both the contamination of the C-123 and the exposure of its aircrews and maintenance personnel.
The single new conclusion was that there is limited or suggestive evidence of a scientifically meaningful association of stroke with exposure to the chemicals in question. This could be a tremendously important point, given the positive way Secretary Shinseki treated the IOM's earlier findings on heart disease!
17 January 2013
C-123 Discussed at First 2013 Institute of Medicine Meeting
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| C-123 issues presented to the 15 IOM members, 16 January 2013 |
And that cause is that we flew contaminated aircraft and were exposed aboard them. Not only aircrews, but also aerial port, AME and maintenance personnel were identified to the Committee as the veterans deserving of their intervention. How that intervention might come about, publicly or privately, I don't know and I don't care...at least the IOM knows what the VA has been doing to us ever since the problems with post-Vietnam contamination first surfaced publicly in 2011.
The crux of that VA opposition has been their refusal to accept the contamination information as indicative of exposure also. Not only that, but they deny any exposure could have occurred because of a novel concept, unknown to science outside VA headquarters, of "dry dioxin transfer." Using it, and a pretense that there wasn't "enough" dioxin to cause long-term health issues, the VA has directed regional offices to continue refusing medical care and benefits to C-123 veterans. They even rely on the opinion of the Director, Compensation Services, to write in denying veterans' benefits "there is no conclusive evidence that TCDD exposure causes any adverse health effects."  |
| IOM Conference Center at UC-Irvine |
This brought a smile, then a frown, from most Committee members when it was read to them! "Not sure which medical school or toxicology program that" (came from), was one Committee member's comment as he shook his head.
We shake our heads also, but in sadness, not just bewilderment. Recent VA actions and letters make it more clear than ever than no amount proof or expert independent opinions will sway them to permit service connection for C-123 veterans. It just won't happen. They have all the time in the world...and we don't. Besides, fellow veterans, we must come to understand that these VA people are not like us. They are different, with a different set of values, a different perspective regarding "those trash-haulers, freeloaders" (as the OSD consultant slandered us), and a different perspective regarding honor.
Already, signaling this sea-change, I listened to the bulk of the Committee's free time being spent today on health issues of Vietnam veterans' children...and grandchildren. I was the oldest guy in the room.
22 March 2012
Agent Orange - How'd This Mess Get Revealed?
(from the National Academies Press)
The Beginning of the Controversy
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| Snoopy Explains Agent Orange to his ground crew! |
During the early and mid-1970s, a growing number of veterans began to question the possible linkage between their conditions or diseases and their exposure to herbicides, mainly Agent Orange, in Vietnam. In 1977, Maude deVictor, a benefits counselor in the Chicago regional office of the Veterans Administration (VA), was contacted by the wife of Charles Owen, a Vietnam veteran who believed his terminal cancer was the result of exposure to Agent Orange.
After learning that Charles Owen had died and that the VA had refused his widow's claim for benefits, deVictor began to research the health effects of exposure to Agent Orange (Wilcox, 1989). She contacted Alvin L. Young, Major, U.S. Air Force, an expert in plant physiology, and inquired about the types of herbicides used in Vietnam. DeVictor recorded the conversation in a memorandum to the file, which explained the use and toxicity of Agent Orange and Agent Blue (DeVictor, 1977). In response to this memorandum, a line-by-line commentary was prepared by Dr. Young, and a copy was recorded in a congressional hearing (U.S. Congress, House, 1980b).
After learning that Charles Owen had died and that the VA had refused his widow's claim for benefits, deVictor began to research the health effects of exposure to Agent Orange (Wilcox, 1989). She contacted Alvin L. Young, Major, U.S. Air Force, an expert in plant physiology, and inquired about the types of herbicides used in Vietnam. DeVictor recorded the conversation in a memorandum to the file, which explained the use and toxicity of Agent Orange and Agent Blue (DeVictor, 1977). In response to this memorandum, a line-by-line commentary was prepared by Dr. Young, and a copy was recorded in a congressional hearing (U.S. Congress, House, 1980b).
DeVictor continued her inquiries into the possible connection between Agent Orange and certain health outcomes. She began gathering statistics on veterans' exposure to Agent Orange by questioning veterans who visited her office for benefits, widows of veterans, and wives of veterans about the health of their husband and children. When the VA learned that she was carrying out this research, she was asked to cease these additional inquiries and concentrate on her assigned duties, but she continued her research on Agent Orange.
Early in 1978, Paul Reutershan, a former helicopter crew chief responsible for transporting supplies to the 20th Engineering Brigade, appeared on the ''Today" show and shocked many of the show's viewers by announcing: "I died in Vietnam, but I didn't even know it." He told of how he flew almost daily through clouds of herbicides being discharged from C-123 cargo planes, and how he observed the dark swaths cut in the jungle by the spraying, and watched the mangrove forest turn brown and die (Wilcox, 1989). Even though he observed this destruction of the jungles and forests, he did not worry about his own health. He said that he was told by the Army that Agent Orange was "relatively nontoxic to humans and animals" (Wilcox, 1989).
Upon returning home from Vietnam, Reutershan was diagnosed with cancer. On December 14, 1978, at the age of 28, Reutershan died.
Upon returning home from Vietnam, Reutershan was diagnosed with cancer. On December 14, 1978, at the age of 28, Reutershan died.
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