Years After Admitting Secret Military Experiments, Veterans Still Being Denied Treatment


CNN may do a lot of ridiculously partisan reports on Donald Trump.  It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to see the slanted and unbelievably biased view against Conservatives and Republicans, but that doesn’t change the fact that sometimes, in an effort to slam what CNN bigwigs perceive as vast Rightwing conspiracies, they are right on the money in their reporting.

They did an interview recently with veteran Tim Josephs who served in Vietnam.  Josephs, along with thousands of other soldiers in the US Army during this period, was a volunteer for testing new vaccines, military equipment, drugs, chemicals and biological agents in a facility in Edgewood, Maryland.

While a military base, Josephs recalls that when he arrived at the facility, it resembled more a hospital than a military base.  The staff was running around in white lab coats and administering these “tests” on the volunteer subjects.

In a disturbing interview with CNN, Josephs explained how he volunteered to test new military equipment but he was tricked into becoming a lab rat.

The idea was they would test new Army field jackets, clothing, weapons and things of that nature, but no mention of drugs or chemicals.

However, when Josephs got to the base at Edgewood, Maryland, it looked more like a hospital than a military establishment. When he questioned the men in white lab coats who wanted to test various deadly substances on him, he was told play along or go to jail.

“He said, ‘You volunteered for this. You’re going to do it. If you don’t, you’re going to jail. You’re going to Vietnam either way — before or after,’” Josephs said to CNN.

Josephs is one of the thousands of veterans who have similar stories. And, Edgewood is one of many places where these thousands of veterans were used as human subjects to test anything the military could think up.

To get any help at all has been a difficult uphill battle.

“The Army still has not provided notice to test subject veterans regarding the specific chemical and biological tests to which they were subjected — and their possible health effects,” says attorney Ben Patterson of the law firm Morrison and Foerster, which represents veterans in the case. Patterson says a court ordered the Army to disclose detailed information to the former soldiers four years ago, in an injunction from November 2013, according to a recent report from NPR.

What’s going on here, however, is that the victorious lawsuit which resulted in a win (finally) for the plaintiffs, but the Pentagon and State Department are continuing their practice of evasive speech and qualifying extraneous information that is nearly impossible to ascertain on the part of the soldiers so that, even if they’re showing proof of their injuries, the government is denying the claim because the complaint doesn’t fit the criteria of what qualifies as coverable.

The way this is possible is that if a veteran comes forward with an illness that he or his doctor claims is directly related to the testing, the government immediately asks for all the paperwork and results of the examination, determining months or even years later that the illness had no connection with the testing.  Basically is the veteran’s word against the government’s word and we know who usually wins there.

Being a veteran myself, I am fully in support of the US military endeavors and its soldiers who serve in a very dangerous world, but in no way, shape or form is there room or necessity for this testing.  The CIA should come forward and release the information and get these poor ex-soldiers and currently serving soldiers the truth and the treatment if necessary.  The testing should have stopped a long time ago, and it’s a shameful testament to how wrong this is by the number of veterans who are being turned away at the clinic doors.

Source:  Activist Post

 



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