Our last battle is for the future generations of innocents. We will go to our graves without honor if we abandon the future generations. If we lose this battle for P.L. 114-315, the child victims die without recognition of their veteran ancestors' service causations.... How many generations must suffer? Our human dignity is at stake. The world will benefit from this research.
Surgery to remove cancer and even vital organs such as
kidneys has been a mainstay of cancer treatment, but today, researchers are
striving to find other options for patients. For example, nonsurgical
treatments for patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma include the use of
immunotherapy (which uses one’s immune system to attack cancer cells) and
tyrosine kinase inhibitors (which block enzymes that aid in cancer growth).
Fifteen years ago, there weren’t many first-line treatment
options for patients with this type of cancer, but now we have several —
allowing patients and their oncologists to choose which treatment may work best
for them.
In this special issue of CURE®, we spoke with a patient with
metastatic renal cell carcinoma who obtained a second opinion after
experiencing tumor growth while on a combination of two immunotherapy drugs.
His new doctors suggested he enroll in a clinical trial that was testing an
immunotherapy drug with a tyrosine kinase inhibitor. He enrolled and
participated, which resulted in the cancer shrinking. “Every scan I had showed
a decrease, and the overall reduction of my cancer was 54%,” he told CURE®. Two
other patients interviewed for the story had similar experiences with the
combination treatment, highlighting its effectiveness in treating this disease
even in earlier stages.
Veterans may be in line for a big cost-of-living boost in
their benefits payouts starting in December thanks to legislation finalized by
Congress on Monday.
The Veterans’ Compensation Cost-of-Living Adjustment Act
passed unanimously in the House on Monday and without objection in the Senate
earlier in the summer. It now heads to the White House, where President Joe
Biden is expected to sign it into law in coming days.
The legislation ties the cost-of-living boost for veterans
benefits to the planned increase in Social Security benefits. Although the
Social Security boost is automatic each year, lawmakers must approve the
veterans benefits increase annually.
How much that boost will be next year is still not certain.
The Social Security Administration is expected to announce the COLA rate for
2022 next month, based on economic trends over the last few months.
That increase will go into effect for benefits checks sent
out starting this December.
The cost-of-living bump hasn’t been above 3.0 percent since
2011, and has averaged less than 1.3 percent over the last six years.
But last month, officials from the Senior Citizens League
predicted that next year’s rise could top 6.2 percent, based on recent
inflation and wage data released by federal economists. If so, it would be the
largest increase since 1983 for Social Security and VA benefits recipients.
Deputy Minister of National Defence Sen. Lieut. Gen. Hoang
Xuan Chien met with Patrick Leahy, president pro tempore of the US Senate on
September 22 (local time) in Washington DC, with their discussion focusing on
war-aftermath mitigation projects in Vietnam.
Hanoi (VNA) - Deputy Minister of National Defence Sen.
Lieut. Gen. Hoang Xuan Chien met with Patrick Leahy, president pro tempore of
the US Senate on September 22 (local time) in Washington DC, with their
discussion focusing on war-aftermath mitigation projects in Vietnam.
The US senator expressed his delight at outcomes of the
nations’ collaboration in tackling war consequences, particularly a dioxin
detoxification project at the Bien Hoa airport and a project on improving the
quality of life of people with disabilities in eight provinces heavily sprayed
with Agent Orange.
He also acknowledged the progress made in cooperation in
searching for remains of missing-in-action US servicemen and Vietnamese martyrs
as well as in the implementation of joint communications campaigns.
Chien informed Leahy that his ministry has supported the
COVID-19 vaccination of people involved in the Bien Hoa airport project to
ensure its progress and asked the US official to support the provision of more
funding to complete the project sooner.
Chien proposed the US study to expand the beneficiaries in
the life quality improvement project as most provinces in Vietnam have
AO/dioxin victims.
Our last battle is for the future generations of
innocents. We will go to our graves without honor if we abandon the future
generations.
If we lose this battle for P.L. 114-315, the child
victims die without recognition of their veteran ancestors' service causations.... How
many generations must suffer?
The American citizens and signers of this formal petition
for just reconsideration do hereby demand Secretary of the Department of
Veterans Affairs Dennis McDonough personally read the entirety of The
Toxic Exposure Research Act (TERA), Public Law 114-315, Sections 631
through 634. Upon reading this law, we further demand the VA Secretary read and
understand the DVA-contracted report issued by NASEM (IOM) dated 2018, Gulf
War and Health, Volume 11: Generational Health Effects of Serving in the Gulf
War, specifically the sections within the report that stipulate the
research mandated by TERA, Public Law 114-315, is both feasible and necessary.
Most importantly, we demand the VA Secretary follow the specific, written
intent of TERA, Public Law 114-315, and based upon NASEM’s declaration of
feasibility, certify to both Veterans Affairs committees of Congress his
understanding of the research feasibility, and certify it is his
honorable intent to proceed with the specified research and implement the
remaining provisions of that noble law, as specified and intended for the
wellbeing of and for the American people.
Please circulate this petition. Ask your fellow Americans
(friends, family, neighbors, fellow veterans and non-veterans alike) to sign
it. For every 100 signatures submitted, you will receive an Agent Orange face
mask.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is hiring new staff
within its Veteran Benefits Administration (VBA) to support the adjudication
and disbursement of benefits related to agent orange and other toxic chemical
exposure.
Since January, the agency has sought to expand benefits to
veterans who suffered damage to their health as a consequence of exposure to
napalm and other harmful chemical agents. In addition to the support provided
for Vietnam War veterans, these benefits will also extend to veterans who faced
similar exposures during the Gulf War.
VA has just begun processing these new claims as of
September, noted Secretary McDonough at a recent press conference in
Washington, DC.
“We’ve started processing claims for the new presumptive
conditions related to toxic exposure for Vietnam War and Gulf War vets,"
he said.
Ensuring these claims are evaluated and distributed in a
timely manner will require additional manpower within the Veterans Benefits
Administration, with the agency now undergoing a considerable hiring push to
fulfill this demand.
“VA has begun an aggressive effort to hire 2,000 more
employees to process these claims,” McDonough said.
One in eight men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in
their lifetimes. But the risk for African American men is higher—75% higher.
“Starting in your early to mid-40s, engage in this
discussion with your family doctor,” says, Oncologist Dr. E. Ronald Hale. “Be
diligent about having regular prostate screening tests done.”
What are the risk factors?
According to Dr. Hale, the risk for prostate cancer in
African American men is 75% higher than in white men who are the same age. And
African American men have twice the risk of dying from it.
Typical risk factors include unhealthy eating and lack of
exercise, which can increase the likelihood of developing prostate cancer and
other potentially dangerous medical conditions.
Veterans of the Vietnam War should be also aware of their
elevated risk.
“Men who served in Vietnam, or otherwise had any Agent
Orange exposure should absolutely undergo regular testing,” Dr. Hale says.
“That should also be reported to their local Veteran’s Affairs Hospital.”
And while prostate cancer has no known early warning signs,
you can do a few things to help lower your overall risk.
How can you lower your risk?
The Department of Veterans Affairs has extended the time
limit for Gulf War veterans to claim presumptive disability for certain chronic
illnesses related to their military service.
The illnesses, commonly referred to as “Gulf War Syndrome,”
are considered “presumptive” by the VA, meaning veterans claiming a disability
related to them are not required to prove they were caused by military service.
While there is no time limit for claiming disability
benefits from the VA in normal circumstances, some presumptive conditions do
come with time restrictions.
According to the Disabled Veterans Of America (DAV) Gulf War
Syndrome affects approximately 200,000 veterans of the 650,000 service members
who served in operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.
To qualify as disabling, a covered illness must have caused
illness or symptoms in the veteran for at least six months and:
• Occurred during service in the
Southwest Asia theater of military operations from Aug. 2, 1990, to the
present. This also includes Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003-2010) and Operation
New Dawn (2010-2011), or;.
• Been diagnosed as at least 10%
disabling by the VA after service.
Originally the VA was scheduled to stop awarding benefits to
new Gulf War veterans with a related disability diagnosis that was given after
Dec. 31, 2021. However, the VA has extended that cutoff date to Dec. 31, 2026.
Slowing increases to housing and food allowances for service
members by switching a crucial benchmark could save the Pentagon billions, the
Congressional Budget Office reported Thursday.
The idea proposed in the report involves tying those
allowances to the same benchmark used for basic military pay raises.
The Defense Department is required to use the Bureau of
Labor Statistics' employment cost index, or ECI, to adjust basic pay, which makes
up 70% of the military's regular pay expenses. The only exception is when
Congress approves a bigger pay raise.
But housing allowance rates are set annually by the defense
secretary, using data on rental housing vacancies in each location. Food allowances
are set annually based on the Agriculture Department's index for food prices.
These methods combined have resulted in troops' compensation
growing beyond what the DoD envisioned, according to the CBO report released
Thursday.
The Pentagon's goal was for troops to be paid at the 70th
percentile of earnings for comparable civilians, meaning 30% of civilians in
similar jobs would earn more than troops.
“Agent Orange: Health Effects on Veterans”
Mitchell Turker, PhD, JD
Professor, Medical Genetics, OHSU
September 22, 2021 12:30-1:30pm
MS Teams Meeting
(Contact Kyle @ veterans@samhealth.org)
Activity Objectives:
Samaritan Health Services is accredited by the Washington State Medical Association to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
Samaritan Health Services designates this live activity for a maximum of one (1) AMA PRA Category 1 CreditsTM. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
Dr. Turker and the planners for this educational activity have no relevant financial relationships to disclose with ineligible companies whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients.
As floods increase in frequency
and intensity, chemicals buried in river sediments become “ticking time bombs”
waiting to activate.
Hurricane Harvey flooded or
damaged at least 13 Superfund sites in 2017, sending cancer-causing compounds
into Texas waterways.
A new perspective paper in
Journal of Hazardous Materials calls attention to an understudied area: the
remobilization of pollutants buried in riverbeds. Chemicals have a knack for
binding to sediments, meaning chemical spills in rivers frequently seep into
sediments instead of flowing downstream. Future layers of silt bury the
pollutants and hide the problem.
But persistent chemicals in
riverbeds are “ticking time bombs,” warned Sarah Crawford, an environmental
toxicologist at Goethe University Frankfurt and lead author of the paper. The
buried chemicals can easily be remobilized. “It just takes one flood event,”
she said.
By Leo Shane III - Blue Water Vietnam veterans are
getting their disability benefits paid out by the Department of Veterans
Affairs, but it might not be exactly how much they deserve, according to a new
watchdog report.
The VA Inspector General’s Office
found that while department staff have done a good job at getting benefits
flowing to newly eligible veterans covered by the Blue Water Navy Vietnam
Veterans Act two years ago, nearly half of the claims decisions investigators
reviewed from 2020 were “inaccurate.”
The mistakes total an estimated
$37 million: about $12 million in underpayments based on veterans eligibility
and $25 million more in excess payments to individuals.
“Employees did not always know
how to correctly process these claims, particularly determining accurate
retroactive effective dates for evaluations,” investigators stated in the IG
report, released late last week. “[Benefits officials] should increase oversight
to help ensure employees processing these claims clearly understand how to
correctly evaluate and decide them.”
Benefits for ‘blue water’
veterans finalized after years-long fight
The move ends a years-long fight
to get faster disability benefits for up to 90,000 Navy veterans who served in
Vietnam.
In a statement, VA officials told the Inspector General that they have improved training in recent months and put in place “special focused quality reviews” to address the problem.
The National Museum of the U.S.
Air Force Museum near Dayton is stunning.
Where else can you stroll through the actual plane that flew FDR to Yalta in 1945, or the one that flew Harry Truman to meet an insubordinate Douglas MacArthur on Wake Island in 1950, or the one that flew Dwight D. Eisenhower to Switzerland in 1955 for the first peacetime meetings between the Soviets and Western powers?
You can also walk through the
plane that ferried JFK to Dallas in November 1963 — and brought back his
lifeless body along with new President LBJ after Kennedy was felled by an
assassin’s bullet.
So much history made tangible —
and that’s just in the Presidential Gallery far at the back of the museum’s
four huge hangars.
From cloth-covered planes
pioneered by the Wrights at nearby Huffman Prairie to spaceships that descended
from them, a breathtaking array of the technology that has dramatically
reshaped modern life is on display in those yawning spaces.
Oh, and did I mention that
admission is free?
When I first visited as a child,
all was awe walking among primitive biplanes and sleek, supersonic fighters.
But returning to Ohio a few years
ago, much older and a little better read, I spotted some holes. Many of the
captions accompanying the exhibits omitted key details, enough in some cases to
be misleading.
I know. This is the Air Force’s
museum and it would be silly to expect it to present a completely objective
account of itself.
Calls and texts to the
Veterans Crisis Line have increased significantly amid the end of U.S.
operations in Afghanistan in recent weeks. But Veterans Affairs officials say
that’s good news, not bad.
“The more that we can do to normalize discussions about crisis and about suicide and how it’s okay to reach out for help, the better,” said Dr. Lisa Kearney, director of crisis line operations. “I’m thankful for it, hopefully we can … make it easier for folks to reach us.”
Calls to the crisis line jumped about 7 percent over the last three weeks compared to August 2020. Online chats with crisis line staff are up almost 40 percent. Texts to the emergency service are up about 98 percent.
That time frame coincides with international headlines chronicling the fall of the democratic government in Afghanistan, the return of Taliban rule and the chaotic end to U.S. military operations there.
However, Dr. Matthew Miller,
National Director of VA’s Suicide Prevention Program, cautioned against
assumptions that all of the increase is from veterans of the recent wars
traumatized directly by the events overseas.
Prostate cancer is the most common
non-skin cancer diagnosed in men, and the second leading cause of cancer deaths
in men, after lung cancer.
The prostate is a gland in the male reproductive system located just below the bladder and in front of the rectum. It is about the size of a walnut and surrounds part of the urethra (the tube that empties urine from the bladder). The prostate gland produces fluid that makes up part of semen.
According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), almost all prostate cancers are adenocarcinomas (cancers that begin in cells that make and release mucus and other fluids). Prostate cancer often has no early symptoms. Advanced prostate cancer can cause men to urinate more often or have a weaker flow of urine, but these symptoms can also be caused by benign prostate conditions.
Because of effective
screening options for prostate cancer, the disease is often caught before it
spreads, and as a whole, survival rates are good for this type of cancer.
The NCI’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program estimates that more than 248,530 men in the United States will be diagnosed with prostate cancer and 34,130 men will die of the disease in 2021.
Prostate cancer is more common in older men. It is more likely to occur in men with a family history of prostate cancer and in men of African-American descent. Other risk factors include smoking, being overweight, and not getting enough exercise. In the United States, about 11 percent of men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer at some point during their lifetimes.
September is Prostate Cancer Awareness Month.
Jack McManus is a Vietnam Veteran who served in Operation Ranch Hand. Watch and listen as he explains the history of Agent Orange.
The Agent Orange Next Gen Campaign
During the Agent Orange litigation, 65,000 veterans reported that their children had been born with birth defects or developmental disabilities. Now veterans are also reporting that their grandchildren are affected. Yet, no government studies have been done on the association between the father’s exposure to Agent Orange and adverse outcomes in their children.
Since 1990, only Birth Defect Research for Children has
collected data showing a pattern of birth defects and disabilities in the
children of Vietnam veterans.
The Agent Orange Next Gen Campaign will draw attention to
how many veterans’ families have been affected and raise funds to continue
birth defect research.
Join the Vietnam Veterans of America Charles Kettle Chapter
31 in showing your support for the children and grandchildren of Vietnam
Veterans affected by Agent Orange. Wear an Agent Orange Next Gen mask. For each
$10 mask sold, a donation will go towards research connecting Agent Orange
exposure to the birth defects and illnesses that veterans’ children and
grandchildren are facing every day. Please help by ordering your mask today.
Agent
Orange was an herbicide the American military used to clear leaves and
other vegetation during the Vietnam War. More than 12 million gallons were sprayed in Vietnam, according
to the Aspen Institute.
The name Agent Orange comes from the colored stripes on the
55-gallon drums it was kept in.
Reports of potential health problems due to Agent Orange
exposure started emerging in the late 1970s. The herbicide has now been
connected to dozens of health problems in United States veterans including:
The Red Cross, as reported by the Aspen Institute, also
estimates more than 3 million Vietnamese people have developed health
complications, including 150,000 birth defects, due to Agent Orange
contamination.
Are those exposed to Agent Orange at
risk for CLL?
In 2002Trusted
Source, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs added CLL to the list of
diseases linked to Agent Orange exposure.
Of the 195 veteransTrusted
Source who were diagnosed with CLL from 2001 to 2010, a
disproportional 17 percent were exposed to Agent Orange, according to a
retrospective cohort study published in 2014.
Researchers have found that the average age of CLL diagnosis
in people exposed to Agent Orange was 61 versus 72 for people who were not
exposed.
VA’s claims process has undergone a tremendous positive
evolution over the past eight years. It is now a ‘paperless’ system thanks to
the Veterans Benefits Management System and the digitally based National Work
Queue system. This evolution, led by VA’s dedicated claims teams across the
country, resulted in a claims backlog of over 600,000 claims in 2012 fall below
100,000 by 2017.
VA defines backlog as the number of claims pending over 125
days.
Two events have occurred that will, however, result in
significant claims backlog increases in the near term.
First, unprecedented claims processing delays caused by the
COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a current claims backlog of approximately
180,000, more than double its pre-COVID-19 backlog levels. After in-person work
restrictions at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) caused
a significant growth in the number of outstanding requests for military
records, VA collaborated closely with (and continues to collaborate with) NARA
to retrieve and scan records into VA’s electronic claims processing
system. Mitigating these COVID delays
will take more time.
Second, VA is beginning to now process claims related to two
significant benefits changes for Veterans enacted by law and expect these new
processes have an impact on VA’s ability to deliver benefits within 125 days.
The VA’s Board of Veterans’ Appeals has appointed 20 new veterans law judges to deliver more veterans appeals decisions — bringing the total to 113. Most of the new veterans law judges will arrive prior to the end of Fiscal Year 2021, with additional judges to be appointed in Fiscal Year 2022. The judges will receive extensive training from mentor judges to prepare them for their new responsibilities and will be supported by a cadre of attorney-advisors and professional staff as they adjudicate appeals.
