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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VCS Analysis: PTSD and Suicide Crises Continue Worsening
Written by Paul Sullivan
Friday, 17 July 2009 11:15
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Veterans for Common Sense thanks VA and the New Jersey Star-Ledger for publishing new information about the very serious mental health crisis faced by our returning Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. VCS has obtained even newer healthcare use and disability benefit statistics from VA using the Freedom of Information Act. The new VA data provides strong evidence that the mental health crisis among our returning Iraq and Afghanistan War Veterans continues to worsen far beyond what the University of California, San Francisco researchers found in their study using older data. Here are the latest VA statistics about Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans: • Veterans: 981,834 (out of nearly two million deployed) What do these statistics mean? Out of the nearly two million service members sent to the two wars, VCS estimates as many as one million total Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans will use VA by the end of 2018, and possibly sooner if the wars continue to escalate, with a price tag of between $700 billion and $1 trillion over the next 40 years. VCS believes the military and VA must do more to provide prompt and high-quality medical care to our service members and veterans. VCS urges the President to form a national advisory panel on PTSD and suicide prevention for soldiers and veterans. VCS urges President Obama to order the military to follow the law and conduct medical pre- and post-deployment medical exams for all service members. Universal mandatory exams reduce stigma and start care sooner, when treatment is most effective and least expensive. If President Obama and Secretary Gates fail to address this issue immediately, then the PTSD and suicide epidemics will worsen. |