See other War, War, War Articles
Title: Veterans and Brain Disease - Need To Read This Folks
Source:
[None]
URL Source: [None]
Published: Apr 28, 2012
Author: NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Post Date: 2012-04-28 13:04:37 by tom007
Keywords: None
Views: 155
Comments: 6
Veterans and Brain Disease By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Published: April 25, 2012 Facebook Twitter Google+ Email Share Print Reprints He was a 27-year-old former Marine, struggling to adjust to civilian life after two tours in Iraq. Once an A student, he now found himself unable to remember conversations, dates and routine bits of daily life. He became irritable, snapped at his children and withdrew from his family. He and his wife began divorce proceedings. Damon Winter/The New York Times Nicholas D. Kristof On the Ground Nicholas Kristof addresses reader feedback and posts short takes from his travels. Go to Blog » Go to Columnist Page » Related News Derek Boogaard: A Brain ‘Going Bad’ (December 6, 2011) Duerson’s Brain Trauma Diagnosed (May 3, 2011) Related in Opinion Nicholas D. Kristof: A Veteran’s Death, the Nation’s Shame (April 15, 2012) Room for Debate: Should the U.S. Leave Afghanistan Now? (April 3, 2012) Room for Debate: How Can We Prevent Military Suicides? (November 20, 2011) Opinion Twitter Logo. Connect With Us on Twitter For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT. Readers’ Comments Readers shared their thoughts on this article. Read All Comments (169) » This young man took to alcohol, and a drunken car crash cost him his driver’s license. The Department of Veterans Affairs diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder, or P.T.S.D. When his parents hadn’t heard from him in two days, they asked the police to check on him. The officers found his body; he had hanged himself with a belt. That story is devastatingly common, but the autopsy of this young man’s brain may have been historic. It revealed something startling that may shed light on the epidemic of suicides and other troubles experienced by veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His brain had been physically changed by a disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E. That’s a degenerative condition best-known for affecting boxers, football players and other athletes who endure repeated blows to the head. In people with C.T.E., an abnormal form of a protein accumulates and eventually destroys cells throughout the brain, including the frontal and temporal lobes. Those are areas that regulate impulse control, judgment, multitasking, memory and emotions. That Marine was the first Iraq veteran found to have C.T.E., but experts have since autopsied a dozen or more other veterans’ brains and have repeatedly found C.T.E. The findings raise a critical question: Could blasts from bombs or grenades have a catastrophic impact similar to those of repeated concussions in sports, and could the rash of suicides among young veterans be a result? “P.T.S.D. in a high-risk cohort like war veterans could actually be a physical disease from permanent brain damage, not a psychological disease,” said Bennet Omalu, the neuropathologist who examined the veteran. Dr. Omalu published an article about the 27-year-old veteran as a sentinel case in Neurosurgical Focus, a peer-reviewed medical journal. The discovery of C.T.E. in veterans could be stunningly important. Sadly, it could also suggest that the worst is yet to come, for C.T.E. typically develops in midlife, decades after exposure. If we are seeing C.T.E. now in war veterans, we may see much more in the coming years. So far, just this one case of a veteran with C.T.E. has been published in a peer-reviewed medical journal. But at least three groups of scientists are now conducting brain autopsies on veterans, and they have found C.T.E. again and again, experts tell me. Publication of this research is in the works. The finding of C.T.E. may help answer a puzzle. Returning Vietnam veterans did not have sharply elevated suicide rates as Iraq and Afghan veterans do today. One obvious difference is that Afghan and Iraq veterans are much more likely to have been exposed to blasts, whose shock waves send the brain crashing into the skull. “Imagine a squishy, gelatinous material, surrounded by fluid, and then surrounded by a hard skull,” explained Robert A. Stern, a C.T.E. expert at Boston University School of Medicine. “The brain is going to move, jiggle around inside the skull. A helmet cannot do anything about that.” Dr. Stern emphasized that the study of C.T.E. is still in its infancy. But he said that his hunch is that C.T.E. accounts for a share — he has no idea how large — of veteran suicides. C.T.E. leads to a degenerative loss of memory and thinking ability and, eventually, to dementia. There is also often a pattern of depression, impulsiveness and, all too often, suicide. There is now no treatment, or even a way of diagnosing C.T.E. other than examining the brain after death. While the sports industry has lagged in responding to the discovery of C.T.E., and still does not adequately protect athletes from repeated concussions, the military has been far more proactive. The Defense Department has formed its own unit to autopsy brains and study whether blasts may be causing C.T.E. Frankly, I was hesitant to write this column. Some veterans and their families are at wit’s end. If the problem in some cases is a degenerative physical ailment, currently incurable and fated to get worse, do they want to know? I called Cheryl DeBow, a mother I wrote about recently. She sent two strong, healthy sons to Iraq. One committed suicide, and the other is struggling. DeBow said that it would actually be comforting to know that there might be an underlying physical ailment, even if it is progressive. “You’re dealing with a ghost when it’s P.T.S.D.,” she told me a couple of days ago. “Everything changes when it’s something physical. People are more understanding. It’s a relief to the veterans and to the family. And, anyway, we want to know.” • I invite you to visit my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook and Google+, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: tom007 (#0)
(Edited)
Whether PTSD is an organic or psychic disease is beyond my grasp but the fact is that the Pentagon has churned out many thousands of victims of PTSD over the decades. I suppose, to a very great extent, EVERY war, even in antiquity, produced PTSD in some troops. But the fact remains that, in the 20th (and 21st) century the Pentagon was deliberately resistant to the concept that combat vets, by the thousands, were suffering long term mental problems as a result of their military experience. In fact, the govt tried to sweep this under the rug by having the Veterans Administration deliberately adopt a rule that any diagnosis of psychiatric ailment had to use the criteria set up in the Second Edition of the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual (DSM-2) - adopting this rule AFTER DSM-2 was already out of print and had been replaced by the next edition, DSM-3, which had a much larger and updated (and generous) section on PTSD. And the VA insisted on this rule for something like 20 years, through DSM-4 Revised. (The govt pulled a similar stunt about Agent Orange.) With the Iraq/Afghan wars our soldiers encountered something new - improvised explosives under circumstances in which those weapons caused ORGANIC brain damage. The symptoms might have, at first, seemed minor and temporary but they weren't -- and considering the Stop-Loss program and such, a LOT of soldiers actually were exposed to such explosives two or three times in their military careers, so the damage was cumulative. It turns out that even the best doctors (a category that includes hardly any doctors on the VA staff) cannot cure that brain damage - and the Army and VA aren't even trying! I don't know if anyone can distinguish the damages but it would seem that someone who experienced that organic damage from the improvised explosives would also, almost by definition, have PTSD and the combination must be pure hell. The Army is supposed to build men, but in this case it broke down thousands of men into the walking wounded - many of whom are untreated, many are uncompensated, and many cannot cope with their problems.
Interesting that this should come shortly after a rash of articles pointing out the high percentages of veterans coming from those areas who had been on PSYCHOTROPIC DRUGS - which have the known "side-effect" of increased rates of suicide. It is also interesting that this is a newly discovered phenomena that seems to be limited to soldiers serving in Iwrecked, and Pipelinestan. Good question. Get out the ouija board, or dust off that crystal ball, and ask this kid all about grenades and explosions: Or if he's busy doing whatever it is spirits do after they've been murdered, ask these kids: Then ask me why I should give a fuck about some punk in uniform having problems. -------------------------------------------------------- Your apprehension of this reality is too clear for it to be tolerated in our "polite society". If I were to advance this sentiment, with its unassailable logic, in most churches in the US tomorrow - well, I don't think there would be much Love for me. It is the disturbing truth that we all, nearly, turn our face away from. Who wants to fight whoever controls the Pentagon? Good for you, P. Well, just remember this: Satan is the bad guy... The xians would love you for saying that. -------------------------------------------------------- deleted
The relationship between morality and liberty is a directly proportional one. "If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.” —Samuel Adams America: Israel's Handmaiden
#2. To: tom007 (#0)
That Marine was the first Iraq veteran found to have C.T.E., but experts have since autopsied a dozen or more other veterans’ brains and have repeatedly found C.T.E. The findings raise a critical question: Could blasts from bombs or grenades have a catastrophic impact similar to those of repeated concussions in sports, and could the rash of suicides among young veterans be a result?
#3. To: tom007 (#0)
The findings raise a critical question: Could blasts from bombs or grenades have a catastrophic impact similar to those of repeated concussions in sports, and could the rash of suicides among young veterans be a result?
Somebody ought to tell the truth about the Bible. The preachers dare not, because they would be driven from their pulpits. Professors in colleges dare not, because they would lose their salaries. Politicians dare not. They would be defeated. Editors dare not. They would lose subscribers. Merchants dare not, because they might lose customers. Men of fashion dare not, fearing that they would lose caste. Even clerks dare not, because they might be discharged. And so I thought I would do it myself... Robert Ingersoll
#4. To: PSUSA2 (#3)
Then ask me why I should give a fuck about some punk in uniform having problems.
"Satan / Cheney in "08" 
The people of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage." J.K. Galbraith
#5. To: tom007 (#4)
If I were to advance this sentiment, with its unassailable logic, in most churches in the US tomorrow - well, I don't think there would be much Love for me.
Somebody ought to tell the truth about the Bible. The preachers dare not, because they would be driven from their pulpits. Professors in colleges dare not, because they would lose their salaries. Politicians dare not. They would be defeated. Editors dare not. They would lose subscribers. Merchants dare not, because they might lose customers. Men of fashion dare not, fearing that they would lose caste. Even clerks dare not, because they might be discharged. And so I thought I would do it myself... Robert Ingersoll
#6. To: tom007 (#0)
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest