Wednesday, March 5, 2014

USA Today: House to ask for autonomy for Gulf War Illness board


The USA Today story, below, is about the long awaited legislation to restore the Congressionally chartered Federal Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses (RAC) after it has been unjustly targeted by VA for speaking up and out on behalf of an estimated 250,000 Gulf War veterans suffering from Gulf War Illness -- in other words, doing its job.

 Helping to lead the charge is AMVETS, one of the "Big 6" veterans service organizations and the fourth largest U.S. veterans service organization following the American Legion, VFW, and DAV.
"AMVETS members [will] reach out to every Congress member this week to talk about environmental toxins like those the 1991 Gulf War veterans were exposed to..."  


 Ill Gulf War veterans' needs are too important to simply sit back and watch while VA dismantles the RAC, including removing its charge to evaluate the effectiveness of all federal Gulf War research efforts by the standard of whether or not it is improving Gulf War veterans' health and lives.  

 VA has been provided a long line of reports and recommendations by the RAC and its members, only to see VA disregard them to the detriment of ill Gulf War veterans.  

 Yet to date, VA has developed no effective treatments for Gulf War Illness, no biomarkers to diagnose it, no measures to prevent it.  VA spent a lot of time fostering a process to develop a consensus-based Gulf War Illness Research Strategic Plan, only to then gut it when individual VA research staff wanted to disregard it.  

 When the RAC raised this and other concerns, included in a June 2012 "no confidence" report, instead of correcting any of the many serious issues, VA instead shot the messenger, gutting the RAC's mission, charter, and membership.  A letter of concern sent directly to VA Secretary Eric Shinseki by all the Gulf War veterans on the RAC last summer was simply ignored, none of its recommendations heeded, without even the courtesy of a response.  

 The effects of VA's independence-stripping are only just now becoming clear -- the RAC has been muzzled, and 16 pages of a pending RAC report have been censored and not allowed to be included in the report's publication.  Those censored 16 pages, however, have been included in the RAC's annual report to the VA Secretary, and are available here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/210906186/RAC-Annual-Report-2013-Feb-26-2014

 And, newly revised VA meeting invitation letters sent to RAC members now include language that seeks to muzzle RAC members, censoring their freedom of speech.  And while VA officials told the RAC chair that half the members would be replaced within the first year, instead, VA will have replaced all but one by the end of this summer.  

It's time for Congress to pass this legislation -- with Gulf War veteran's help -- to help redirect VA's misguided research efforts.  It's time for VA's research efforts to be directed at finding solutions for ill Gulf War veterans, not reasons why they can't.  And it's time for VA leaders to stand out of the way and let the democratic process work -- allowing a long overdue fix to issues that should never have been issues in the first place.  

 -A.H. 

 Additional Documents:






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SOURCE:  USA Today, Kelly Kennedy reporting (3/5/2014)
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/03/05/congress-asks-for-autonomy-for-gulf-war-illness-board/5984215/  **PLEASE CLICK ON THIS LINK TO ENSURE YOUR READ IS COUNTED**


ARCHIVED TEXT:




House to ask for autonomy for Gulf War Illness board

WASHINGTON — The House Committee on Veterans' Affairs is putting together legislation to give autonomy back to a Gulf War illness advisory committee that has been stripped of its independence over the past year.
The legislation would give the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses independent budget control and would require that its members be appointed by congressional veterans committees.
"The committee is essentially having its legs cut out from underneath it," said Diane Zumato, legislative director for AMVETS, a veterans' service organization. "Veterans Affairs had a good idea in having this oversight group, and now it seems that they don't really like what they're hearing because the group isn't parroting what VA is saying."
Last week, Veterans Affairs notified the advisory committee that it could no longer release committee reports or recommendations without written VA approval.
In the past year, Veterans Affairs has:
• Notified the advisory committee members that all but one of them would be replaced.
• Ended the tenure of Jim Binns, a Vietnam veteran and former principal deputy assistant secretary of Defense under President George H.W. Bush, as chairman of the board.
• Removed its charge to review the effectiveness of VA research.
• Moved back toward looking at stress as a cause of Gulf War illness, rather than following up on evidence that it is caused by environmental exposures, such as to insect repellent, anti-nerve agent pills and Sarin gas, as recent studies have shown.
VA had not yet responded to a request for information Wednesday afternoon, but released a statement to USA TODAY after the original changes to the advisory board committee. The statement did not address the veterans' concerns:
"VA recognizes and respects the service and dedication of veterans of the 1990-1991 Gulf War and remains committed to working with the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses to improve their health and well-being," it read.
While legislators were not able to speak about the legislation because it has not been finalized, Zumato said AMVETS members would reach out to every Congress member this week to talk about environmental toxins like those the 1991 Gulf War veterans were exposed to. She said organizers would make an issue of Gulf War illness so more recent vets — as well as future vets — would have access to care for all potential toxic exposures.
"It's not just Gulf War," said Zumato, who joined the Women's Army Corps before it was incorporated into the Army in 1978. "It's anybody whose been exposed to any kind of toxic environment and now they have a very strong possibility of having illnesses caused by those exposures."
She said she fears the veterans' injuries will continue to be ignored, or to be treated as mental health injuries, rather than physical injuries, to avoid having to pay medical costs.
VA has said that it disagrees with the advisory committee, and that it agrees Gulf War Illness is a physical ailment.
This week, Binns sent a letter to VA Secretary Eric Shinseki letter that included 16 pages of research review that VA had prohibited the committee from including in its research report.
"That whole 16 pages is basically one example after another of VA's staff efforts to reintroduce the idea that stress caused this problem," Binns said.
The advisory committee was formed in 1997 after a congressional report found that VA's work on "Gulf War issues" was "irreparably flawed." Congress found that VA had focused most, if not all, of its attention on psychiatric causes of the illness.
Symptoms of Gulf War illness include fatigue, muscle pain, cognitive issues, rashes and irritable bowel syndrome. Recently, researchers have found changes in veterans' brains that signify physical degeneration, and that a greater number of troops were exposed to small doses of sarin gas after the Air Force bombed an Iraqi chemical factory.
Follow @KellySKennedy on Twitter.
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