Archive for the 'The Wounded' Category

In my younger years I competed on the power lifting team at the college level (squat, bench and dead lift).  I still lift, but haven’t been able to keep that trim form I had when I was twenty.  I can’t imagine why.  Really.

So my gym and workout buddy Jim competed in the Mid-Atlantic Classic bodybuilding championship recently, and he is the one on the left part of the photograph (or facing us, the one on the right).

More photos at NCMuscle.com.  Jim turns 60 years old in a couple of weeks.  That’s right.  Sixty.  That’s six followed by a zero.  No, I don’t quite look like my buddy Jim.

Jim competed here (in this specific division) with guys less than half his age.  He placed second.  Jim and I both decided that we were glad that he didn’t win.

Here is the extremely fit Jim again.

Here is the thing.  Look at the guy in the middle, who placed first.  Take careful note of his right deltoid.  It isn’t there.  It was shot off during a combat tour in Iraq.  Let’s see.  Combat tour serving country.  Get right deltoid shot off.  Continue bodybuilding.  Win competitions.

So here is the Iraq veteran on the left.

What have you done lately?

Imagine that you are in Iraq and you receive this letter from your father.

“If you become wounded – especially on your extremities but also even on your whole body – and a doctor begins to discuss rapidly propagating infection, or amputation of limbs, you need immediately to request that he administer 50 Rads of gamma or x-ray radiation to the affected area.  If the infection doesn’t begin to retreat within 12 hours, request another 50 Rads.  If the doctor doesn’t understand or wants to talk about this, have him call me.  You know how to reach me at any hour, night or day.”

The idea has to do with radiation hormesis, and at least to practitioners and those familiar with it, it’s science is well known and well understood.  But there is help coming in the form of treatment of battlefield injuries with nanoemulsions.

In the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, soldiers often suffer shrapnel wounds and burns as a result of improvised explosive device blasts.

But other threats – bacteria, viruses and fungi – linger in the air and soil. Contact with the soldiers’ broken skin can lead to debilitating and potentially life-threatening infections.

With the goal of developing a treatment that can be applied to soldiers’ wounds at battle zones and hospitals to prevent infections, the U.S. Department of Defense allocated a $1.5 million grant to researchers at the University of Michigan and the NanoBio Corporation, the university announced Tuesday.

Researchers at the university’s Michigan Nanotechnology Institute for Medicine and Biological Sciences and the Ann Arbor-based NanoBio Corp., a biopharmeceutical company, will use the money to study the effects of nanoemulsion-based therapies on curbing wound and burn infections in combat situations.

“A broadly effective nanoemulsion-based wound treatment that can be safely and easily applied at the time of injury, without causing pain or interfering with wound healing, would have great value to prevent infection, increase survival and enable more rapid healing of wounded United States military personnel,” Dr. James R. Baker, the principal investigator for the grant, said in prepared remarks.

Nanoemulsions are made up of soybean oil, alcohol, water and surfactants emulsified into droplets 200 to 600 nanometers in diameter, according to the release. Research shows that nanoemulsions are effective in combating various bacteria and viruses.

The two research entities will develop 10 new nanoemulsion formulations against bacteria, fungi and spores in lab culture studies. The formulations will then be studied on animals for safety and effectiveness before moving on to human trials.

Nanoemulsions have shown promising results in other aspects of health care. The application of nanoemulsions for the treatment of cold sores is currently undergoing phase 3 clinical trials. Nanoemulsions have also been studied to treat cystic fibrosis infections and develop vaccines against influenza and bioterrorism agents.

The $1.5 million grant will be distributed to the University of Michigan and NanoBio Corp. over a three-year period.

Faster please!

Obama intends to play some pickup basketball.

U.S. President Barack Obama, who enjoys shooting hoops with family and friends, will take on a couple of tougher — and much taller –opponents Sunday: the Phoenix Suns’ Grant Hill and the Houston Rockets’ Shane Battier.

The game of presidential pickup will be held at Fort McNair in southwest Washington before an audience of “wounded warriors” and participants in the White House mentoring program, the White House press office said.

Hill told the Washington Post he was in town to play, along with a handful of other pros, including Battier.

First Shooter Obama, at 6’2”, will find some tough competition on the court: Hill and Battier, both forwards, are each 6’ 8”.

It’s been a bachelor sporting weekend for Obama, whose wife , Michelle, and younger daughter, Sasha, are in Spain and whose older daughter, Malia, is away at camp. On Saturday he played golf at Andrews Air Force Base.

Is this a bad joke?  Let’s contrast one administration official with another.  One might agree or disagree with the decisions made by Secretary Gates, but he cares about the men under his charge (from February 2008).

At the Marine Corps Association’s annual dinner in July, Gates cried while eulogizing Capt. Douglas Zembiec, a marine known as “the lion of Fallujah,” who had recently died in battle. By that time, Gates was writing personal notes at the bottom of every condolence letter sent to families of troops killed in battle. “I want the recipient of that note to know that the secretary of defense actually saw that letter, signed that letter, thought about that letter,” he told me on the plane ride back from Fort Hood. “It forces me to pay attention to every single one of the young people killed — how they died, where their hometown is, what other members of their unit were killed. I’ve kept count — 796 Americans have been killed in Iraq on my watch.” (This was as of Nov. 27.)

He takes his job seriously, and in fact doesn’t even really like the job due to the burden of it all.  It could be that Obama doesn’t like his job either, but for different reasons than he takes it so seriously.  I’m not even sure I know the two NBA players, but professional basketball has become a thuggish sport, and I don’t watch it.

Instead of spending time at Walter Reed or Bethesda Naval Hospital watching wounded warriors in rehabilitation, praying for them in their rooms out of sight of the cameras, urging them on, and ensuring that they get the best care possible, he is sporting it up in front of them.  Get it?  He expects them to watch him as he plays a game of fantasy ball with his heroes.

What an egomaniac.

Closing GITMO has its price.  The Chinese Muslims at GITMO, called the Uighurs, included four who had been cleared of charges by the U.S.  Bermuda has agreed to take them in and allow them to pursue citizenship.  As for the balance of the Chinese terrorists captured on the field of battle, all thirteen of them?  Well, the tiny Island of Palau with a population of 20,000 has agreed to take them in for whopping $200,000,000.  This amounts to $10,000 per person for every citizen.

Now.  Let’s assume that front, rear and side SAPI plates (small arms protective inserts), plus the soft panel ballistic protection against shrapnel, plus the carrier, costs a total of $2000 for complete body armor (this figure is slightly to moderately exaggerated).  This means that for what we have spent on sending thirteen terrorists to the Island of Palau we could have purchased 100,000 full sets of body armor for Soldiers and Marines.

It also means that wounded warriors who are being denied coverage will still have to plead with the authorities for full recognition of their wounds from war, both mental and physical.  So while our warriors need body armor and rehabilitation and assistance, Chinese Muslim terrorists have been released to Bermuda (where most people cannot afford to go on vacation) and other such Islands.

This means that to finally address the issue of each Chinese Muslim terrorist has cost us $15,384,615.  Extremely conservative estimates are that Baitullah Mehsud has around 20,000 fighters at his disposal.  Disposal of them will cost us a mere 308 Billion Dollars if history is any indication of the future.  It’s time for another spending package.  Call up Timothy Geithner and tell him to get the printing presses rolling.

Note: Updated with Further Thoughts on the Uighurs

The Captain’s Journal had decided to wait before weighing in on the appointment of General Eric Shinseki to head Veteran’s Affairs.  We’re glad we did.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday that the Obama administration is considering a controversial plan to make veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance, but was told by lawmakers that it would be “dead on arrival” if sent to Congress.

Washington Sen. Patty Murray used that blunt terminology, telling Shinseki that the idea would not be acceptable and would be rejected if formally proposed. She made the remarks during a Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs hearing about the 2010 budget.

No official proposal to create such a program has been announced publicly, but veterans groups wrote a pre-emptive letter last week to President Obama opposing the idea after hearing the plan was under consideration. The groups also noticed an increase in “third-party collections” estimated in the 2010 budget proposal—something they said could only be achieved if the VA started billing for service-related injuries.

Asked about the proposal, Shinseki said it was under “consideration.”

“A final decision hasn’t been made yet,” he said.

A second senator, North Carolina Republican Richard Burr, said he agreed that the idea should not go forward.

“I think you will give that up” as a revenue stream, if it is included in this April’s budget, Burr said.

Sen. Murray said she’d already discussed her concerns with the secretary the previous week.

“I believe that veterans with service-connected injuries have already paid by putting their lives on the line,” Murray said in her remarks. “I don’t think we should nickel and dime them for their care.”

Eleven of the most prominent veterans organizations have been lobbying Congress to oppose the idea. In the letter sent last week to President Barack Obama, the veterans groups warned that the idea “is wholly unacceptable and a total abrogation of our government’s moral and legal responsbility (sic) to the men and women who have sacrificed so much.”

The groups included The American Legion, Disabled American Veterans, Military Order of the Purple Heart, Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

At the time, a White House spokesman would neither confirm nor deny the option was being considere (sic).

Carefully consider what is happening here.  Even if this move is fashioned as companies paying their fair share, it is still a dark, sinister and sinful plan.  We are left without much to go on with the paucity of facts in the report above.  But let’s assume the best – that veterans still get treatment in full, paid for by the VA, unless they happen to work for a company with insurance who covers injuries to veterans (without considering them a so-called pre-existing condition).

The problem here is that if company A doesn’t hire injured veterans, and company B does and also happens to have an insurance benefit, then company B is penalized.  They are essentially taxed for having veterans under their employ.  The economy is not a perpetual motion machine, or another way of saying it is that money doesn’t grow on trees, unless you work for the U.S. Treasury.

Medical insurance means that everyone contributes out of his or her paycheck towards the health of everyone.  This cushion means that the company which hires any veteran who needs medical treatment (versus the company which doesn’t) is actually financially worse off because of it, especially small companies.  Now for the problem.  This is a disincentive for hiring veterans.

This scenario above is the best of all possible worlds, i.e., that all veterans are still covered for medical treatment in full.  According to the information above, this simply isn’t so, and veterans might have to pay out of pocket for their treatment.

Many veterans come home and continue to fight for all they are worth to keep from dying, and then to live with their injuries and disabilities.  They never leave the battle space.

So now Eric Shinseki must sit and ask himself what happened to his soul that he could abandon his fellow warriors on the field of battle like he has done, trying to save a few dollars while schemes are concocted to throw that very money away into useless programs.  And then when he finally determines how he lost his soul, perhaps he will have enough of one left to feel the shame that will always be his for the rest of his life.