What's New
| VA Secretary Pressed by Senator on High Percentage of Wrongly Denied Benefit Claims |
March 16, 2010, Washington, DC (CQ Politics) - A leading Republican senator on Tuesday asked Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki to explain why so many veterans’ benefit claims are wrongly denied, resulting in a high rate of reversal on appeal. |
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| Profile of New Veterans' Courts in New York Times |
Defendants Fresh From War Find Service Counts in Court - VCS Supports Veterans' Courts March 15, 2010, Charleston, West Virginia (New York Times) — When Judge Robert C. Chambers handed down Timothy Oldani’s federal sentence for selling stolen military equipment on eBay, he gave the former Marine a break. |
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| Presdent Obama Donated $250,000 of Nobel Prize Money to Fisher House |
March 11, 2010, Washington, DC (New York Times) - President Obama made good on his promise to give his $1.4 million Nobel Prize money to charity, releasing the names on Thursday of the organizations that will benefit. |
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| Philanthropist Bobby Willis to Build New $3.3 Billion Hospital for VA in Farmington, NM for Rural and Native American Veterans |
Proposed state-of-the-art Kirtland veterans clinic could provide as many as 8,000 jobs March 14, 2010, Farmington, New Mexico (Farmington Daily Times) — A proposed veterans complex in Kirtland centered around a new hospital, backed by a wealthy entrepreneur and costing an estimated $3.3 billion promises to bring state-of-the-art medicine and other benefits to veterans, as well as 8,000 jobs to the local economy. |
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| Dr. Haley at UTSW Presents Compelling Brain Images Showing Gulf War Illness |
VCS Asks VA: Since UTSW Research Remains Vital to Understanding Gulf War Illness, Then Why Did a Handful of VA Staff in Washington Impede UTSW Contract and Then End Funding for UTSW? March 9, 2010, Salt Lake City, Utah (Science News) - Nearly two decades after vets began returning from the Middle East complaining of Gulf War Syndrome, the federal government has yet to formally accept that their vague jumble of symptoms constitutes a legitimate illness. Here, at the Society of Toxicology annual meeting, yesterday, researchers rolled out a host of brain images – various types of magnetic-resonance scans and brain-wave measurements – that they say graphically and unambiguously depict Gulf War Syndrome. |
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Doctors Had 'Central Role' in CIA Abuse: Rights Group
Written by AFP
Tuesday, 01 September 2009 09:03
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August 31, 2009 - A US-based medical rights advocacy group on Monday blasted health experts for playing a "central role" in advising and implementing the CIA's abusive interrogation techniques used on terrorism suspects.
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) issued its six-page white paper after shocking details about the range of techniques used by interrogators, including the simulated drowning known as waterboarding, came to light one week ago with release of a 2004 CIA inspector general's report. The revelations have fueled the raging debate over interrogations during the "war on terror" of the George W. Bush administration. "Health professionals played a central role in developing, implementing and providing justification for torture," PHR said in its report. "Health professionals in the (federal government) and psychologist contractors engaged in designing and monitoring harmful interrogation techniques. Such medical participation in torture is a clear violation of medical ethics." The not-for-profit group also said the medical experts "were complicit in selecting and then rationalizing these abusive methods, whose safety and efficacy in eliciting accurate information have no valid basis in science." Interrogators are alleged to have used a range of techniques on suspected Al Qaeda members, including physical threats, mock executions, choking to the point where detainees lost consciousness and even using a stiff brush to scrub a detainee's skin raw. PHR warned that such spy agency techniques -- and monitoring by doctors to gauge their effectiveness -- "approaches unlawful experimentation" on human subjects. The report's lead author, PHR medical advisor Scott Allen, pulled no punches in a statement on the organization's website, saying "medical doctors and psychologists colluded with the CIA to keep observational records about waterboarding, which approaches unethical and unlawful human experimentation." By standing by to monitor the effects of acts such as waterboarding on detainees, the health professionals were "laying a foundation for US government lawyers to rationalize the CIA's illegal torture program." PHR urged a separate investigation of the medical experts involved to determine whether "criminal and unprofessional conduct" took place, and said those who violated medical ethics rules should lose their license.
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