In Iraq and Afghanistan, we made our veterans sick. Then we denied responsibility, denying treatment, increasing their costs and likelihood of death
|
the damning two paragraphs for me:
"One of the first studies was conducted by Miller, the professor of clinical medicine at Vanderbilt. In 2004, soldiers from the 101st Airborne returned from a one-year deployment in Iraq and were stationed at Fort Campbell, not far from the university. Some were so short of breath, they were unable to complete the Army’s two-mile run—one of the military’s most basic tests for physical readiness to deploy. Physical readiness is an important factor in determining “service connection,” the causal link for military-related illnesses that obligates the VA to provide medical care or disability benefits.
A soldier who has completed a tour of duty was, by definition, physically fit prior to deployment. So when healthy soldiers are suddenly unable to complete the same test they passed prior to deployment, there is a baseline indication that something happened to them during their service that caused their health to deteriorate. As Miller later recalled, what each soldier told him was remarkably consistent: “I was elite. I was athletic. I was deployed. And now I can’t do my two-mile run, and I’m not deployable.”"
|
Responses:
|