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 RACs mission, charter, and membership. Its time for Congress to pass this legislation to help redirect VAs misguided research efforts. Its time for VAs research efforts to be directed at finding solutions for ill Gulf War veterans, not reasons why they cant. And its 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. 91outcomes/2014/03/usa-today-house-to-ask-for-autonomy-for.html
Posted on: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 03:20:22 +0000
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