Cold War Veterans Blog

Congress why is DOD wasting money on more studies

by testvet6778 (from Ms. Lynn Norris)

Thu Jun 14, 2007 at 05:10:15 AM PDT


The first Gulf War ended in 1991, it has now been 16 years since that war ended, yet the medical community can not decide what is causing the many medical problems the veterans of that short war are experiencing.



It was one of the shortest wars in American history, yet has one of the highest percentages of veterans being compensated for "unknown medical issues" as there is no recognized etiology or nexus for the problems these men and women are suffering.

testvet6778's diary :: ::



Why do I care, I am one of the Gulf War veterans, however I did my service in the nation of Oman, far from the war. So how did I get invovled in the medical problems?

I happened to be used in this nations program that ran from 1955 thru 1975 at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland that conducted chemical weapons experiments, Sarin, Mustard agents etc, and they also dealt with non lethal agents/weapons otherwise known as drugs, LSD, scopolmine, peyote, PCP, ecstacy, etc, all total there were 254 different substances used in the 20 year program.



The program was one of the most classified programs in the defense industry at the time, it was ran by DOD/CIA and the Army. To this date DOD will still claim that much of the data is still classified. Well like most of the enlisted men used as test subjects (medical volunteers) we were never told what we were being exposed to, nor the dosages, so we don't know any of the data needed to make military plans with this stuff. Most of us just want to know what we were exposed to.

These Cold War veterans have only been waiting for Congress for three decades since the program was stopped and 40% are now dead and of the 4022 survivors 54% of them are disabled another 2200 men and DOD and the VA refuse to help

Is there any way to help the 4022 survivors as of FY 2000 when the last health study on these men was conducted under a DOD contract by the IOM. It was supposed to be a comprehensive health review, yet the IOM Doctor William Page ignored many of the critical body systems that would have been affected by exposure to Sarin and Mustard Agents, he did not report on cardiovascular, gastrointestinal and pulmonary effects on the men.

The group they used for the "control" were the 7120 enlisted men who were used in the illegal human experiments at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland from 1955 thru 1975. In FY 2000 these men would have been aged 45-65 as the previous studies show the men used there were born in 1935 and after the youngest would have been born in 1956. Myself I was there in June - August 1974 at age 18, born on August 25, 1955.

There are 2 other independent studies on GB (sarin) and chemicals weapons one by the National Institute of Health (NIH) http://www.ehponline.org/... this one was published Jan 1 1994, two years before DOD admitted there were chemical weapon exposures at Kamisayah, Iraq in March 1991. The medical problems found in this study also match the symptoms found in this prior study that was done by a German Doctor who spent his career treating Wermacht soldiers employed by the German Army during WW2 in chemical weapon production and storage http://www.sipri.org/... pages 40 and 45 have the known symptoms.

Why did these 2 respected research facilities come to the same basic conclusions, yet the IOM based on a contract written and worded by the DOD, find none of these medical problems and even found "brain tumors" 25 per 100,000, when neither of these other studies ever found brain tumors to be an issue?

These men signed "national security disclosure" statements that is they discussed the experiments or the chemicals or drugs they WOULD be prosecuted and sent to Leavenworth for 25 years, even in September 2006 when they sent notices from the VA to the veterans, one of the paragraphs reminded the veterans of the national Security Issue and the veterans were told they could only tell the doctors what they were exposed to, if they even knew, but we were forbidden to discuss toxic levels, capabilities, or what type of experiments were done as not to disclose what the government was attempting to use the substances for.

This program and some of the drugs have been known about since the DA IG Report of 1975 on Human Experimentation was made public and Congress forced the human experiments to stop.

Many of these men carried the secrets of the tests to their graves, they never told their parents, wives or children about the chemicals or drugs at Edgewood. Given that two of the scientists/doctors who worked there in the 60s have recently written books about the experiments and the program, I no longer feel beholden to the National Security Acts, one of them is a retired Army Colonel http://www.forgottensecrets.net/ my comments are 15 and 21.

The other book I have not ordered yet, but seems to be a more accurate truth of the dangers of the tests, while using fictitious names, "Men and Poisons" by Dr. Malcolm Bowers he is a Yale Professor now.

The VA refuses to address medical issues that deserve service connection and compensation, and DOD is less than forthcoming about anything related to Edgewood.

Here is the links to the EPA super fund reports and the list of 77 toxic substances found in the drinking water, ground water and soil of Edgewood. Until the late 70's we used to post water wells for showering, drinking water, water used to make coffee and kool aid, swimming, etc., the EPA ordered the water wells capped in the late 1970s, the government had been dumping chemicals and burying wood and metal drums of toxic chemicals on the Edgewood site since the War department created the chemical weapons center there in 1917.

http://cfpub1.epa.gov/... superfund site data

http://cfpub1.epa.gov/... list of toxic substances on Edgewood in the water and soil

I am in contact with 13 other "test vets" and we are all disabled in some form partially or totally. We are aware of the feres decision from 1950, is there any way around this, our families and the veterans deserve better treatment than this, at least we should be service connected and compensated for the exposures, either directly or thru environmental exposures.

It is my feeling the reason that DOD and the VA do NOT want to find a link between the chemical weapons/pesticides and Gulf War Illness is the fact that instead of being able to claim the symptoms are psychosomatic but real issues caused by the exposures at Kamisayah in Iraq in 1991 or from cleaning the equipment exposed in Iraq either in Saudi or at bases back in the states, the cost to service connect the veterans from Gulf War one will run into the tens of billions of dollars annually, and as DR Chu, Under Secretary of DOD has publicly stated in the past, "retirees and disabled veterans will prevent this nation from being able to field a military force in the future" it is my opinion it is cheaper to keep looking for answers instead of acknowledging the data that has been gathered from experience over the past 60 years, from WW2 Germans and our own National Institute of Health. As Kissinger stated "military men are just dumb animals to be used"

Congress we have the proof to link our health problems to chemical weapons, why won't you make the Veterans Administration and the Department of Defense recognize it.