VA NEWS FLASH from Larry Scott at VA Watchdog dot Org -- 10-08-2005

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TESTS IN 1960s MAY HAVE HARMED VETERANS -- VA LOOKING FOR VETS EXPOSED TO NERVE AND CHEMICAL WARFARE AGENTS

How do you test nerve agents and chemical warfare weapons?  How else?  Expose humans to the agents, and see what happens.  Our government has been doing this for decades and finally has to pay the price for the damage that was done.

The damage was to those involved in testing...mainly active-duty serve personnel...now veterans.

Here is a bit of old news that recently got re-circulated and popped-up once again on the search engines.  This explains about research where now-veterans may have been exposed to live nerve and biological warfare agents.  Article here...  http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aa052802a.htm

And, other "medical experimentation" has been conducted by our government where service members were used.  Some tests involved dosing participants with psychedelics to see what would happen if these drugs were administered to the enemy.  We all know about GIs being exposed to radiation...some at atom bomb testing sites.

Then there was Operation Whitecoat, where "volunteers" were exposed to infectious biological warfare agents.  What's interesting about Operation Whitecoat is that the government is now trying to rewrite history and point to this program as a model of ethical human experimentation.  Read this if you really want to get mad... http://www.dcmilitary.com/army/standard/10_05/local_news/33582-1.html

Obviously, not everyone agrees with the government's assessment of the program... http://www.sunshine-project.org/publications/pr/pr030305.html

I grew up after WWII and was inundated with horror stories of the German's human medical experimentation.  Dr. Josef Mengele was painted as something worse than Satan.  But, we had our own Mengele's right in our own government.

A word of advice and encouragement to all veterans who may have been a part of any chemical, biological or radiological "experiment"...the truth is coming out and you should, if you already haven't, get to the VA and demand the treatment and benefits you deserve for the damage that was done to you.

To say that this type of human experimentation is shameful is far too mild.  It is disgusting, repugnant and evil...and our government must be held accountable

Larry Scott