What's New
| 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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| 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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| March 9 VCS Weekly Update |
This week’s VCS update keeps you in the loop with news on issues you care about. One good change – our weekly news updates won’t ask you for money. Instead, our news updates point you to news articles at our web site. We hope you will read them and share the important facts with your friends. This week's update includes news about VA and suicides, VCS on CNN, our VCS FOIA campaign, VA automating Agent Orange claims, a waterboarding torture video, and Gulf War veterans' benefits. |
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| Federal Court Keeps Torture Lawsuit Against Rumsfeld Alive |
What's Waterboarding? Watch Video of Torture March 5, 2010, Chicago, Illinois (Associated Press) - A federal judge refused Friday to dismiss a civil lawsuit accusing former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of responsibility for the alleged torture by U.S. forces of two Americans who worked for an Iraqi contracting firm. [Rumsfeld served at the Pentagon under former President George W. Bush.] |
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| Reducing Suicides: VA Adopts Policy on Emergency Care for Mental Health Patients |
This Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Directive provides policy to ensure the provision of safe and secure mental health services during all hours of operation for Emergency Departments (EDs) and Urgent Care Clinics (UCCs) in VHA |
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DU Expert to VA: Time to Investigate the DU Program
Written by Dan Fahey
Friday, 10 January 2003 00:00
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January 10, 2003 - Honorable Anthony Principi (00) Secretary Department of Veterans Affairs 810 Vermont Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20420 Dear Secretary Principi: As a veteran and veterans's advocate, I strongly encourage you to investigate the conduct and utility of the VA study of Gulf War veterans exposed to depleted uranium, known as the Depleted Uranium Follow-Up Program (DU Program). In the last few years, Pentagon officials have made false statements about the health status of the veterans in the DU Program in apparent attempts to reduce domestic and international concerns about the use of DU munitions. The DU Program has facilitated this deceit first through its silence, and further through its ostensibly subjective and selective presentation of facts concerning the development of cancers, bone tumors and other health effects among the few veterans in the study. I strongly believe there is sufficient publicly available evidence to justify a thorough audit of the DU Program. This evidence also supports the creation of a new DU study that will more effectively serve the interests of Gulf War veterans and meet the needs of policymakers who make decisions about veterans? service connected benefits. I have outlined my findings and proposals in the attached documents. After serving in the Navy, I worked as a service organization representative for six years with Swords to Plowshares (San Francisco) and Vietnam Veterans of America (Washington, DC). I know there were myriad problems with federal research on Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange, and I am deeply concerned that history is repeating itself with respect to research on Gulf War veterans exposed to DU. I respectfully request a response from your office to the concerns I have raised. Thank you for your consideration of the materials I have provided. Sincerely, Dan Fahey cc: Senator Russell Feingold Senator Jay Rockefeller Representative Christopher Shays Representative Lane Evans Representative Bob Filner Representative Chris Smith Representative David Bonior Representative Nancy Pelosi Representative Barbara Lee James Binns, VA Gulf War Illness Research Advisory Committee |