COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Leaving Military: Veterans
Forgotten veterans, and DOD has quit looking for them
Political Cortex
March 6, 2008
GAO finds that DOD has stopped trying to find veterans used in ColdWar experiments that used chemical weapons and biological weapons and
drugs such as LSD and PCP. They basically just gave up in 2003 and
have no plan to continue.
On Thursday the Government Accountability Office (GAO) confirmed what
many of the veterans involved in the Cold War Experiments, known as
Operation SHAD/112, Edgewood Arsenal's chemical weapon and drug tests
1955 - 1975 and the Fort Detrick Biological Weapon tests from 1953 -
1972. There were thousands of soldiers used in these experiments, on
ships, on the ground and in the air, they were exposed to many types
of toxic materials and many of the programs have never conducted
follow up medical studies.
A few of the programs have ran some studies but the way the Institute
of Medicine (IOM) received the contracts from the DOD it was
constructed to ignore much of the known research already done. This
is a given there is not much in the way of living victims of chemical
weapons and biological weapons attacks. The 1995 Tokyo Subway Sarin
attack, the victims of Iran/Iraqs war in the 1980s, but we don't have
much interchange with Iran.
There was a 1975 study that was published by the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) written by Doctor Karl
Heinz Lohs based on Wermacht soldiers of WW2 that worked in the Third
Reichs chemical warfare units http://www.sipri. org/conten
ts/cbwarfare/ Publications/ p dfs/cw-delayed. pdf but Dr William Page
of the IOM ignored this work and the work of the National Institute
of Health (NIH) in 1994 http://www.ehponlin e.org/me
mbers/1994/102- 1/munro-full .html
Both of these studies show many long term health problems resulting
from low level exposures and the veterans being affected years later,
from cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, nuerological and pulmonary,
yet DR Page found no problems, except for 25 personnel per 100,000
would get brain tumors. A result that neither of the other 2 studies
noted. So which study is right? I the meantime the veterans are dead
and disabled at very high rates, with no explanations from the DOD or
the VA. They just deny our claims, stating that we have no proof of
what or how much we were exposed to, or if the substances cause any problems.
This GAO report released yesterday though shows it doesn't matter
because it states that DOD quit looking for more of the veterans used
in these experiments in 2003, despite congressional committees
demanding the DOD and the VA help these veterans.
http://www.gao. gov/new.item s/d08366.pdf
In my own research in the past five years of GAO reports, NAS/IOM
studies the SIPRI study and the NIH study and Congressional reports
from the Armed Services Committees and the Veterans Affairs
Committees, many elected officials have tried to help these men and
were met by stonewalling by the DOD especially in the past 7 years of
the Bush Administration.
Of the 7120 enlisted men used at Edgewood Arsenal a March 2003 Sarin
study shows that 3098 men could not be found alive, one can only
assume they are deceased, these men were aged 45-65 at the time of
the data gathering in FY2000. That is 40% of the men. Of the 4022
survivors they did find, 54% of them or another 2200 men reported
being disabled yet, the study never explains why, or any of the causes.
This is a conclusions section of the SIPRI report of 1975:
To conclude this section, the closing observations from Spiegelberg' s monograph
will be cited (these remarks do not refer exclusively to organophosphorus
CW agents) [2]:
A psychiatric delayed-effect syndrome was found as a result of
systematic investigations
on former members of CW production and testing stations for the Wehrmacht. In
terms of frequency, two groups of symptoms can be distinguished- each
consisting of
four separate symptoms or signs.
(1) The great majority of persons examined showed:
(a) persistently lowered vitality accompanied by marked diminution in
drive; I have
(b) defective autonomic regulation leading to cephalalgia,
gastrointestinal and I have
cardiovascular symptoms, and premature decline in libido and
potency; I have
(c) intolerance symptoms (alcohol, nicotine, medicines); I have
(d) impression of premature aging. I have
(2) Further, one or more symptoms of the second group were found:
(a) depressive or subdepressive disorders of vital
functions; I have
(b) cerebral vegetative (syncopal) attacks;
(c) slight or moderate amnestic and demential
defects; I have
(d) slight organoneurological defects (predominantly microsymptoms and singular
signs of extrapyramidal character).
Our results are a contribution to the general question of
psychopathological delayed
and permanent lesions caused by industrial poisoning. On the basis of
our studies of
the etiologically different manifestations of toxication, the
possibility of a relatively
uniform-though equally unspecific-cerebro- organic delayed effect
syndrome is conceivable
If I only had one or two of the known problems I might think it was
just bad health, but I have to many of them for it to be just a
coincidence. I and the other veteran and the widows of the deceased
veterans deserve better assistance from the government.
Many of the widows have never been notified their husbands were used
in these experiments nor that their deaths may be linked to these
exposures and they might be entitled to veterans benefits, health
care and military privileges, use of the PX and Commissaries, etc.
I am in contact with 15 other "test vets" or "med vols" whatever term
they want to use for us, but to a man we can not get recognition from
DOD or the Army, many of the men have attempted to get promised
awards, medals and cerftificates of appreciation. Some of the
veterans say there were promised the Soldier's Medal which is awarded
to peacetime soldiers who risk their lives to save others. The
government refuses to address the issue except to claim what these
men did was not out of the ordinary or heroic. I beg to differ, the
amount of dead and disabled say otherwise, it was a dangerous
assignment, just because the recruiting teams lied to the
"volunteers" and told us the experiments were so safe that there was
no need for follow up medical studies after we left Edgewood. Then
why have they done three of them?
You can't use and abuse soldiers and decades later just ignore them
and wait for them to die, it isn't right.
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