China and the Food Supply: The Ugly Story of China’s Culture of Corruption

By John E. Carey
Peace and Freedom
May 8, 2007

SARS. Bird flu. Contaminated dog food. Contaminated pharmaceuticals. Chickens held off the market. Pigs dying.

“Food fear” is real. There is and should be real fear about the way China, or at least many Chinese firms involved, handle their responsibilities in food and feed manufacturing and development.

Every once in a while a journalist gets to go back into the archieves and find something that was “relevant then and even more important now.”

On Sunday, May 4, 2003, The Washington Times published an article I wrote about SARS. To refresh the memory, SARS is the name given to a sudden (and deadly) repiratory ailment referred to as “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.”

That May 2003 piece was titled “China’s Ham-Handed SARS Response: Omen of The Future In Disease Control?”

The following are some of the quotes or “out takes” from that 2003 essay:

“China is a particularly dangerous nation when envisioning the future of viral infections.”

“It seems as if the Chinese were very slow to react once people started to get sick and die ….. It might have taken the Chinese government two months to even admit that there was a problem.”

“The disease spread to Beijing and Shanghai. Government officials basically fired the mayor of Beijing and his health minister for their apparent cover-up of the extent and importance of the disease.”

“In Chagugang town, up to 2000 villagers torched a school earmarked as a SARS quarantine center. The villagers didn’t want the SARS infected in their neighborhood.”

“We also learned that China lacks sufficient medications, medical staff and hospital facilities to properly service their own population.”

“The World Health Organization estimated that only about 4% of China’s medical professions were prepared for a disease like SARS.”

“SARS deaths are still on the rise in China even though they have stabilized or fallen in Singapore, Vietnam and elsewhere.”

“China has not had a methodical, rigid, disciplined approach to solving this problem. China produced lots of furious activity but much of it ineffective and only for show.

Big headlines boasted that all movie theaters, internet café’s, etc. were closed. But if you really wanted to look around and find an internet café open for business you could. As you enter, they wash your hands with disinfectant and give you a face mask. These are questionable prevention techniques at best. Isolation by quarantine has proven to be the most effective prevention and control method.”

“My colleague in China e-mailed me from an internet café in Beijing right after every newspaper there claimed that the cafes were closed.”

“Once you get out of Beijing – and the further you get from Beijing – the interest in SARS avoidance and precautions remains low if it exists at all.”

“Another problem is at play here. People who think they are sick, people who think they could have SARS in China, are reluctant to turn themselves in. They fear the government more than the disease.”

“My colleague in China started a trip from down near Hong Kong at the beginning of April, and traveled through Beijing and into northern China (Jilin Province). The only place SARS awareness existed was in Beijing.”

“The Chinese government appreciates media manipulation and SARS caused the “spin machine” to go into overdrive.”

“So before SARS gets too far or we discover a new deadly disease, here are a few things we need to remember about China in the twenty-first century:

*There is no effective, centrally managed organization like the Centers for Disease Control in China.

*The Chinese government has a track record of covering up bad news like the outbreak of an infectious disease.

*China is a densely populated nation with cultural and sanitation standards and methods more than a century behind that of the western world.

*Many citizens of China fear their oppressive government and have a tendency to keep problems to themselves.

*China tends to “fake” efficiency and effectiveness in a lame attempt to manipulate the media.

Before the outbreak of the next vicious, deadly disease, we need to discuss these problems with China.”

Now back to 2007. What has changed in China in 2007 with regard to:

* food and ingredient inspection?

* announcing a crisis in the media?

* getting to the bottom of problems in a disciplined and orderly way?

* proving sufficient quality medical care to a population of 1.3 billion?

* “playing by the rules” of good business, good research and good medicine as defined by Europe and the U.S.?

The answer: China has a booming economy and has made progress on many fronts but China also hhas a lousy culture of corruption that potentially endangers the world food supply. This situation is exacerbated by a culture of clamming up the news media to hide government shortcomings and a medical system, that in many parts of China, is “third world” at best.

China’s culture of corruption, that is, getting more for less, playing tricky business games, and substituting low quality ingredients and then selling the product at top dollar to the unsuspecting customer, drags down everything good the current communist government of China proclaims.

We should be shocked to learn that cheaper, inferior ingredients have been slipped into pet food and animal feed while we pay full price for the good stuff? When China is the largest producer of pirated DVDs, books and other copyrighted products, costing western authors, artists and corporations tens of billions of dollars a year?

So we just get our Food and Drug Administration to work with the Chinese to start solving the food chain dangers, right?

Not so fast.

The first task might be to rid China’s food system of melamine, the chemical most to blame.

But when New York Times reporter David Barboza completed a fine piece of investigative journalism on May 4, 2007, he wrote, “Of course, the search for melamine in China could be an enormous undertaking, because animal feed producers have admitted in interviews here that they have been cheating customers for years by mixing melamine into animal feed.”

And finally this. In a similar effort to decrease manufacturing costs and increase profit, an antifreeze and solvent called diethylene glycol that can kill humans, was discovered in pharmaceutical supplies manufactured in Panama. The diethylene glycol was found to have come from China labeled as sweetener. Over 100 people who have used the products have died.

The New York Times also reported on May 6, 2007 that, “Over the years, the poison has been loaded into all varieties of medicine — cough syrup, fever medication, injectable drugs — a result of counterfeiters who profit by substituting the sweet-tasting solvent for a safe, more expensive syrup, usually glycerin, commonly used in drugs, food, toothpaste and other products.”

Reporters Walt Bogdanich and Jake Hooker found that, “Toxic syrup has figured in at least eight mass poisonings around the world in the past two decades…. records and interviews show that in three of the last four cases it was made in China, a major source of counterfeit drugs.”

And is America able diplomatically, scientifically, and culturally of encouraging reform in China?

I doubt it.
********

Read our 2003 Washington Times Commentary on China and SARS:
http://peace-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2007/05/this-is-reposted-on-internet-from.html

Related:
China Tells Little About Illness That Kills Pigs, Officials Say

China Now Testing Food for Chemicals

Chinese firm dodged inspection of pet food, U.S. says

China Did Kill Your Dog: Now Bans Melamine in All Food Products

Chinese Culture: Less Respect for Human Life

Google censors China criticism in U.S.

China Killed Your Dog

Multiple Sclerosis or MS Walk This Next Weekend

The 19th annual Multiple Sclerosis or MS Walk is scheduled to occur April 14 and 15 from various starting points around the nation.

Some facts and figures:

–Over 6,500 walkers and 400 volunteers participated in the April MS Walk in the Washington DC area, raising more than $1.4 million which went toward MS research and programs and services for MS sufferers in the Metro Area.

–Nationwide, 200,000 participants raised $53 million in MS Walks the 2006.

What is MS?

–MS is a chronic progressive nervous disorder involving loss of myelin sheath around certain nerve fibers.

–Every MS patient is affected differently depending upon the area of demylelination.

–The attack’s occur within the central nervous system –either the spinal column or the brain.

–Think of MS as interrupting the commands from the brain to the body.

–Multiple Sclerosis means “multiple scars.”

–These scars are areas affected by the disease.

–Today there is no cure for MS and the medical and research professionals continue to extensively research and discover more about how MS works.

–Twice as many women as men are diagnosed with MS.

–Symptoms include muscle weakness and stiffness, impaired balance and coordination, numbness and blurred vision.

–There are an estimated 400,000 people live with MS in the United States today and the number is growing.T

–MS walks help raise the funding needed to advance a better understanding of the disease and work to promote treatments.

For questions, or fundraising assistance, contact the National MS Society at (202) 296-5363 or MSWalk@MSandYou.org. Web www.msandyou.org

A Shock Wave of Brain Injuries

By Ronald Glasser

Sunday, April 8, 2007; Page B01

“We can save you. But you might not be what you were.”

Neurosurgeon, Combat Support Hospital, Balad, Iraq

This is the new physics of war. Three 155mm shells, linked together and combined with 100 pounds of Semtex plastic explosive, covered by canisters of butane or barrels of gasoline, can upend a 70-ton tank, destroy a Humvee or blow an engine block through the hood of a truck. Those deadly ingredients form the signature weapon of the war in Iraq: improvised explosive devices, known by anybody who watches the news as IEDs.

Some of the impact of these roadside bombs is brutally clear: Troops are maimed by projectiles, poisoned by clouds of bacteria-laced debris and burned by post-blast flames. But the IEDs have added a new dimension to battlefield injuries: wounds and even deaths among troops who have no external signs of trauma but whose brains have been severely damaged. Iraq has brought back one of the worst afflictions of World War I trench warfare: shell shock. The brain of a soldier exposed to a roadside bomb is shocked, truly.

About 1,800 U.S. troops, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, are now suffering from traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) caused by penetrating wounds. But neurologists worry that hundreds of thousands more — at least 30 percent of the troops who’ve engaged in active combat for four months or longer in Iraq and Afghanistan — are at risk of potentially disabling neurological disorders from the blast waves of IEDs and mortars, all without suffering a scratch.

For the first time, the U.S. military is treating more head injuries than chest or abdominal wounds, and it is ill-equipped to do so. According to a July 2005 estimate from Walter Reed Army Medical Center, two-thirds of all soldiers wounded in Iraq who don’t immediately return to duty have traumatic brain injuries.

Here’s why IEDS carry such hidden danger. The detonation of any powerful explosive generates a blast wave of high pressure that spreads out at 1,600 feet per second from the point of explosion and travels hundreds of yards. The lethal blast wave is a two-part assault that rattles the brain against the skull. The initial shock wave of very high pressure is followed closely by the “secondary wind”: a huge volume of displaced air flooding back into the area, again under high pressure. No helmet or armor can defend against such a massive wave front.

It is these sudden and extreme differences in pressures — routinely 1,000 times greater than atmospheric pressure — that lead to significant neurological injury. Blast waves cause severe concussions, resulting in loss of consciousness and obvious neurological deficits such as blindness, deafness and mental retardation. Blast waves causing TBIs can leave a 19-year-old private who could easily run a six-minute mile unable to stand or even to think.

Another problem is that these blast-related brain injuries differ from other severe head traumas, and the complexity of treating returning troops with “closed-head” injuries is taxing an already overburdened military health-care system. There is not a neurosurgeon who works in a trauma unit anywhere in the United States who doesn’t know what to do when an ambulance brings in a biker who has suffered a severe head injury in a highway accident. The standard care involves using calcium channel blockers to protect damaged nerve cells against further injury, intravenous diuretics to control brain swelling and, if the swelling becomes too great, removal of the top of the skull to allow the brain to swell without increasing neurological damage. This is what surgeons did in the case of ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff, who suffered severe brain injuries from an IED blast in Baghdad last year.

All this works with the common types of severe head injuries, but it does not work with brains damaged by shock waves. Despite the usual interventions and treatments, the majority of blast-injury patients who have neurological damage do not fully recover. There is a growing understanding within the neurosurgical community that blast injuries are different from those caused by penetrating or skull-fracture trauma. It is thought that shock waves damage the brain at a microscopic, sub-cellular level. That’s why surgeons who are quite capable of reconstructing the skull of a motorcycle crash victim — something for which they have been well trained — struggle to come up with treatment and rehabilitation techniques for the explosion-damaged brains of troops.

“TBIs from Iraq are different,” said P. Steven Macedo, a neurologist and former doctor at the Veterans Administration. Concussions from motorcycle accidents injure the brain by stretching or tearing it, he noted. But in Iraq, something else is going on. “When the sound wave moves through the brain, it seems to cause little gas bubbles to form,” he said. “When they pop, it leaves a cavity. So you are littering people’s brains with these little holes.”

Almost as daunting as treating TBI is the volume of such injuries coming out of Iraq. Macedo cited the estimates, gleaned at seminars with VA doctors, that as many as one-third of all combat forces are at risk of TBI. Military physicians have learned that significant neurological injuries should be suspected in any troops exposed to a blast, even if they were far from the explosion. Indeed, soldiers walking away from IED blasts have discovered that they often suffer from memory loss, short attention spans, muddled reasoning, headaches, confusion, anxiety, depression and irritability.

What’s baffling is the Pentagon’s failure to work with Congress to provide a steady stream of funding for research on TBIs. Meanwhile, the high-profile firings of top commanders at Walter Reed have shed light on the woefully inadequate treatment for troops. In these circumstances, soldiers face a struggle to get the long-term rehabilitation necessary for a TBI. At Walter Reed, Macedo said, doctors have chosen to medicate most TBI patients, even though cognitive rehabilitation, including brain teasers and memory exercises, seems to hold the most promise for dealing with the disorder.

Oddly enough, having more military patients than can be adequately treated is, in terms of warfare, a gruesome kind of success. These are the war injured who once would have been the war dead. And it is the unexpected number of casualties who in a previous medical era would have been fatalities that has sunk the outpatient clinics at Walter Reed and left those in the VA system lost and adrift.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the ratio of wounded service members to fatalities is 16 to 1, if the definition of “wounded” is anyone evacuated from a combat zone. During the Vietnam War, according to the VA, the ratio was 2.6 to 1. U.S. troops no longer die from the kind of injuries that killed many thousands in Vietnam. The majority of combat deaths there occurred right where the soldier was hit. If you were going to die, you were dead before there was any need of a medevac chopper. If you’d had an arm or leg blown off, the chances were that you had also suffered a penetrating chest or abdominal wound and would bleed to death waiting to be taken to the nearest surgical hospital.

But if the bleeding could be staunched and you were still breathing when the medics got to you, the odds on survival were in your favor. The military medicine practiced in Vietnam wasn’t so different from what World War II medics practiced: Stop the bleeding and hope for the best until the helicopter shows up.

It wasn’t until October 1993, when a U.S. combat assault team rappelled down from a helicopter into a 72-hour gunfight in the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia, that the notion of military medicine changed from basic life support to intensive care. In that siege situation, medics had no choice but to care for a growing number of wounded on their own, because evacuation was impossible. But without clear intensive-care procedures, they ran out of medications and fluids to treat the most severely injured.

In the civilian world, trauma medicine had progressed throughout the 1970s and ’80s, well past the simple expedients of tourniquet, plasma and keeping an airway open. Mogadishu forced the military to abandon the last of its medical practices from Vietnam. It was time to teach the medics a new trade.

Pentagon officials increased the training period for a 91W, or combat medic, from 10 to 16 weeks. Medics now trained on patient simulators that would “bleed to death” if blood loss was not stopped or “suffocate” if chest tubes weren’t correctly placed or a tracheotomy wasn’t performed within three minutes. Medics learned the new intensive-care theory of “hypotensive resuscitation,” in which intravenous fluids are given only in minimal amounts solely to keep the heart pumping, as opposed to the old Vietnam method of keeping blood pressure elevated, which only added to blood loss. Medics today use better-designed tourniquets and hemostatic bandages — dressings that act to stop bleeding for better hemorrhage control. They administer the latest non-opiate painkillers, which, unlike morphine and Demerol, do not slow breathing. This is the first war in which troops are very unlikely to die if they’re still alive when a medic arrives.

Another large part of the 16-to-1 wounded-to-fatality ratio has to do with advances in body armor. Today’s body armor is dramatically effective in preventing fatal wounds of the chest and upper abdomen. There is not an orthopedic or general surgeon in Iraq or Afghanistan who hasn’t been astonished the first time a trooper with two missing limbs and a traumatic brain injury is carried off in a chopper and the surgeon removing the armor cannot find a scratch from the chin to the groin.

But the unseen damage can be long-lasting. Most of the families of our wounded that I have interviewed months, if not years, after the injury say the same thing: “Someone should have told us that with these closed-head injuries, things would not really get all that much better.”

Now in its fifth year, the Iraq conflict is not a war of death for U.S. troops nearly so much as it is a war of disabilities. The symbol of this battle is not the cemetery but the orthopedic ward and the neurosurgical unit. The men and women inside those units have come home alive but missing arms and legs, many unable to see or hear or remember who they were before being hit by a roadside bomb. Survival clearly represents as much of a revolution in military medicine as does the dominance of the suicide bomber and the roadside bomb in the age of “shock and awe.” But now both the medical profession and the country are left to play a terrible game of catch-up.r

Ronald Glasser is a pediatric nephrologist and the author of ” Wounded: Vietnam to Iraq,” published last year. From 1968 to 1970, he was deployed at the U.S. Army Hospital at Camp Zama, Japan, treating U.S. soldiers wounded in Vietnam.

Related:
http://johnib.wordpress.com/2007/02/28/war-changing-lives-in-an-instant-bob-woodruff-and-mike-who-has-ptsd/

Search PTSD on this site to see our multi-chapter story.

AP: Mold, Leaky Roofs Beset VA Clinics

By HOPE YEN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON – The Veterans Affairs’ vast network of 1,400 health clinics and hospitals is beset by maintenance problems such as mold, leaking roofs and even a colony of bats, an internal review says. The investigation, ordered two weeks ago by VA Secretary Jim Nicholson, is the first major review of the facilities conducted since the disclosure of squalid conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. A copy of the report was provided to The Associated Press.

Democrats newly in charge of Congress called the report the latest evidence of an outdated system unable to handle a coming influx of veterans from  Iraq and Afghanistan. Investigators earlier this month found that the VA’s system for handling disability claims was strained to its limit.

“Who’s been minding the store?” said Sen. Patty Murray (news, bio, voting record), D-Wash., a member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. “They keep putting Band-Aids on problems, when what the agency needs is major triage.”

The review was conducted by directors of individual VA facilities around the country and compiled in a 94-page report to Nicholson. It found that 90 percent of the 1,100 problems cited were deemed to be of a more routine nature: worn-out carpet, peeling paint, mice sightings and dead bugs at VA centers.

The other 10 percent were considered serious and included mold spreading in patient care areas. Eight cases were so troubling they required immediate attention and follow-up action.

Some of the more striking problems were found at a VA clinic in White City, Ore. There, officials reported roof leaks throughout the facility, requiring them to “continuously repair the leaks upon occurrence, clean up any mold presence if any exists, spray or remove ceiling tiles.”

In addition, large colonies of bats resided outside the facility and sometimes flew into the attics and interior parts of the building.

“Eradication has been discussed but the uniqueness of the situation (the number of colonies) makes it challenging to accomplish,” according to the report, which said the bats were being tested for diseases. “Also, the bats keep the insect pollution to a minimum which is beneficial.”

In other findings:

_In Oklahoma City, secondhand smoke from an outside smoking shelter sometimes infiltrated the building through the women’s restroom.

–Deteriorating walls and hallways were common, requiring repair, patch and paint in 30 percent of patient areas in Little Rock, Ark.

–Numerous unspecified “environmental conditions” affected the quality of the building in New York’s Hudson Valley, with the private landlord repeatedly refusing to fix problems. The VA is taking steps to relocate to another facility.

–Roof leaks or mold at facilities such as Hudson Valley; North Chicago, Ill.; Indianapolis; Puget Sound, Wash.; Portland, Ore; and Fayetteville, Ark.

Veterans groups said they were concerned about the findings but also appreciated the VA’s aggressive efforts to identify problems.

“We now expect these problems to be corrected immediately and not shelved due to insufficient funding or because the proper care and treatment of our wounded veterans is no longer in the national spotlight,” said Joe Davis, spokesman of Veterans of Foreign Wars.

John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 150,000 VA workers, added: “Clearly the problems facing the VA require increased funding as well as better oversight.”

In response, Nicholson this week ordered “immediate corrective action” to fix problems, with full accounting provided to the VA. He noted that an overwhelming majority of the issues were normal “wear and tear” items.

In many cases where there were roof leaks or mold, officials had begun action to order patches or repairs, the department said. In some instances, they were moving to new facilities.

“The level of detail in the reports and the corrective actions enumerated demonstrate your responsiveness to my request,” Nicholson wrote in an order Monday to VA medical center directors.

In interviews, VA officials said they were somewhat reassured by the report, which they said indicated no red flags rising to the level of problems at outpatient facilities at Walter Reed in Washington, D.C., one of the premier facilities for treating those wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Walter Reed is a military hospital run by the Defense Department. Critics long have said problems of military care extend to the VA’s vast network, which provides supplemental health care and rehabilitation to 5.8 million veterans.

But VA officials noted that despite some problems, the VA health system consistently outperforms private-sector hospitals in customer satisfaction.

“There was no imminent threat of harm to patients,” said Louise Van Diepen, chief of staff to VA’s acting undersecretary for health, Michael Kussman. “We have no indication to lead us to believe there is a smoking gun.”

“Could it happen? Yes. But we’re doing everything we can prospectively to monitor the situation,” she said.

Three high-level Pentagon officials have been forced to step down after the disclosures last month at Walter Reed. The controversy also has led to investigations by congressional committees, a presidential task force and the Pentagon.

A separate review of the VA system for handling disability claims is under way to determine how to cut through bureaucratic delays, confusing paperwork and long appeals process as thousands of veterans return home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Some Military Perspective On The Walter Reed Hospital Situation

Get it fixed!  STAT!

By John E. Carey
Commander, U.S. Navy (Retired)
March 20, 2007

Many officers in the U.S. Army believe themselves the victim of yellow journalism here in the Walter Reed Army Medical Center situation.

Army officers take great pride in how they treat their most important asset: their soldiers. So any implication that the U.S. Army neglects its soldiers, the men and women now fighting and dying in war, cuts to the quick.

And it goes even deeper when the Army seems to be neglecting the wounded. Those wearing the Purple Heart are in a unique group that have achieved a kind of sainted status in all U.S. military services.

Whenever I see a Purple Heart on a uniform I stop the wearer to salute him and ask about his story. Many are embarassed by this…..but I tell them they are among the sainted few.

Most of my Naval Officer and retired Navy friends feel the same way as their Army fellows do about the Washington Post and the Walter Reed situation.

My heart goes out to those fired and all the military men and women, active and retired, that feel they were wronged. But my heart also goes out to the soldiers that experienced neglect, sadness, confusion, depression and unusual circumstances at Walter Reed.

Many military men hate the Washington Post and consider it a communist newspaper bent on destroying all the good things American. AND they think this was an anti-war hit job.

I think it a very complex and complicated situation.

Walter Reed was on the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) list: slated for closing in a few years. Thus the commander was seeing less and less in the way of money. This was the result of decisions made by the U.S. Congress that bears more than a little responsibility here.

The medical services at Walter Reed are terrific. Really first rate. I’ve been in and out of the hospital visiting the wounded. I have also spent time at the Bethesda Naval Hospital facility and at the Veterans Administration hospital in Washington D.C. All are top notch.

I think the commander at Walter Reed began to cut corners in after care and housing: and his staff is almost criminally negligent for allowing the true condition of his facility to go unreported back to him via the chain of command.

As a former Naval Officer and warship Commanding Officer I believe in “Management by Walking Around.” The boss sees things he’ll not always like when he walks around. He discovers where the holes in his organization are and where he himself has shortcomings.

At Walter Reed the boss stayed put in his office too much, I think, probably, and didn’t know the true conditions on his ship. Those that got fired deserved it in my opinion: both because they allowed after care and housing to slip and because they didn’t know the true condition of the physical plant they were responsible for.

Because he viewed himself as a Hospital Director he apparently didn’t get around his facility and didn’t know what was going on beyond the walls of the hospital. He was in fact a Base and Troop Commander as well as a Hospital Director. He didn’t get it, I believe, because he is a DOCTOR first and a soldier second. Being a Doc got in the way of his being a soldier and Commander!

I think the Washington Post should get a medal. Especially Dana Priest. This is a great case of investigative journalism: something that the victim never likes. Dana and her teammates uncovered some serious abnormalities. The U.S. Army got embarrassed but the problems are now being addressed.

Note: I wrote about how good the Navy hospitals are (see links at the bottom). I didn’t do this to embarrass the Army but to point out that patient care is great at all of our military and VA hospitals but there is not perfection across the board.

I hope this gives people without much military experience some additional understanding.

Other essays related to this topic:
http://www.nowpublic.com/u_s_naval_medical_center_proud_traditions_of_navy_
marine_corp_team_continue_at_bethesda_hospital

http://www.nowpublic.com/tribute_to_wars_medical_professionals_on_the_front_lines

http://johnib.wordpress.com/2007/02/28/war-changing-lives-in-an-instant-bob-woodruff-and-mike-who-has-ptsd/

Alzheimer’s: Five Million Americans

By Lauren Neergaard
AP Medical Writer

WASHINGTON – More than 5 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s disease, a 10 percent increase since the last Alzheimer’s Association estimate five years ago — and a count that supports the long-forecast dementia epidemic as the population grays.

Age is the biggest risk factor, and the report to be released Tuesday shows the nation is on track for skyrocketing Alzheimer’s once the baby boomers start turning 65 in 2011. Already, one in eight people 65 and older have the mind-destroying illness, and nearly one in two people over 85.

Unless scientists discover a way to delay Alzheimer’s brain attack, some 7.7 million people are expected to have the disease by 2030, the report says. By 2050, that toll could reach 16 million.

Why? Ironically, in fighting heart disease, cancer and other diseases, “we’re keeping people alive so they can live long enough to get Alzheimer’s disease,” explains association vice president Steve McConnell.

Indeed, government figures released last year that show small drops in deaths from most of the nation’s leading killers between 2000 and 2004 — even as deaths attributed to Alzheimer’s disease increased 33 percent.

Yet the report also contains a startling finding: Between 200,000 and half a million people under age 65 have either early-onset Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia. Researchers have been hard-pressed to estimate of the number of young sufferers.

“I think this has been drastically underreported,” said Dr. Bill Thies, the Alzheimer’s Association’s medical director.

He cites as an example a 55-year-old having problems at work, such as behavior changes or missing deadlines, that may be early signs of brain impairment but that go unrecognized until they progress to full-scale memory problems.

The new report — based on federal population counts, not new disease research — is the first update of the Alzheimer’s toll since 2002, when it was estimated to afflict 4.5 million people. It comes as Congress is considering funding for research into Alzheimer’s and other diseases.

No one knows what causes Alzheimer’s creeping brain degeneration. It gradually robs sufferers of their memories and ability to care for themselves, eventually killing them. There is no known cure, and today’s drugs only temporarily alleviate symptoms.

Because it complicates treatment for every other illness, the new report shows Medicare spends nearly three times as much for dementia patients’ care as for the average beneficiary — $13,207 a year vs. $4,454.  Medicare’s spending on dementia-related care is projected to double to more than $189 million by 2015.

That doesn’t include the value of the unpaid round-the-clock care that families and friends provide the vast majority of Alzheimer’s patients who live at home — a tab the new report calculates at almost $83 billion_ or nursing home costs.

There are nine drugs in late-stage clinical trials, including a few that aim to slow Alzheimer’s worsening. If such drugs pan out, delaying Alzheimer’s symptoms by even a few years could cut by millions the coming decades’ predicted toll, the report notes.

Army surgeon general forced to retire

By PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press 

WASHINGTON – The Army forced its surgeon general, Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, to retire, officials said Monday, the third high-level official to lose his job over poor outpatient treatment of wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Kiley, who headed Walter Reed from 2002 to 2004, has been a lightning rod for criticism over conditions at the Army’s premier medical facility, including during congressional hearings last week. Soldiers and their families have complained about substandard living conditions and bureaucratic delays at the hospital overwhelmed with wounded from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Kiley submitted his retirement request on Sunday, the Army said in a statement.

“We must move quickly to fill this position — this leader will have a key role in moving the way forward in meeting the needs of our wounded warriors,” Acting Secretary of the Army Pete Geren said in an Army statement.

Geren asked Kiley to retire, said a senior defense official speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record. Defense Secretary Robert Gates was not involved in the decision to ask Kiley to retire, the official said.

Kiley’s removal underscored how the fallout over Walter Reed’s shoddy conditions has yet to subside. Instead, the controversy has mushroomed into questions about how wounded soldiers and veterans are treated throughout the medical systems run by the military and the        Department of Veterans Affairs and has become a major preoccupation of a Bush administration already struggling to defend the unpopular war in Iraq.

“I submitted my retirement because I think it is in the best interest of the Army,” Kiley said in Monday’s Army statement. He said he wanted to allow officials to “focus completely on the way ahead.”

Amid the focus on Walter Reed, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson on Monday ordered his department’s clinics to provide details about their physical condition by next week to determine if squalid conditions found at Walter Reed exist elsewhere.

Nicholson has been under pressure to reduce claims backlogs and improve coordination at the VA’s vast network of 1,400 hospitals and clinics, which provide supplemental care and rehabilitation to 5.8 million veterans.

The conditions at Walter Reed were detailed last month by The Washington Post. Since then, Gates has forced Army Secretary Francis Harvey to resign and Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, who was in charge of Walter Reed since August 2006, was ousted from his post.

A number of investigations have been ordered.       President Bush appointed a bipartisan commission to investigate problems at the nation’s military and veteran hospitals, and separate reviews are under way by the        Pentagon, the Army and an interagency task force led by Nicholson.

In a briefing Thursday for reporters at the medical center, top Army officials said they have moved to fix some of the problems at Walter Reed.

Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Richard Cody said that officials have added caseworkers, financial specialists and others to work with soldiers’ families on problems they have related to the injuries such as getting loans or help with income taxes.

Commander, Walter Reed Army Medical Center Fired: Problem Not Medical Care but Neglect

By John E. Carey 

Yesterday the United States Army relieved of command Major General George W. Weightman, commanding officer of Walter Reed Army Medical Center.  The action comes as a result of a series of articles in the Washington Post that exposed irregularities and neglect not in medical services but in the care and lodging of the post inpatient  patient care.

The Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates said, “The care and welfare of our wounded men and women in uniform demand the highest standard of excellence and commitment that we can muster as a government. ” This says it all.

Congratulations to the Washington Post, especially reporters  Dana Priest and Anne Hull  for exposing the abuses and neglect at Walter Reed! Well done! And thanks! Every American owes you. Another point has to be made here.  Our soldiers and even others like ABC journalist Bob Woodruff, get the finest medical care on earth.  We’ve seen it with our own eyes….
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Tribute to Our Medical Men on The Front Lines of WarBy John E. Carey

Every single Soldier, Sailor, Airman and Marine, every man and woman who serves this great nation, deserves our eternal thanks, admiration and respect. The difference between our current engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war in Vietnam is this: we, as a nation, have matured enough to recognize that we need to support our men and women in service: no matter our political position on the conflict.

While no segment of our military population deserves more or less credit and thanks than any other, we might take a moment to recognize the valor, selfless giving and dedication exhibited by the corpsmen, also known as “medics” or “docs,” who serve in the front lines of conflict.

Through our nation’s history, medical professionals have saved lives, assisted the wounded, performed countless amputations, and risked their own lives to save others. Many non-professionals also assisted by providing battlefield care, assisting with surgery, even saying prayers and giving comfort. The contributions of all these men of mercy are remarkable. Medics exemplify selflessness. Many carry no firearms – burdened by life-saving equipment. They are technically not in the fight and considered “non-combatants” – they are there to respond to the needs of the maimed and wounded.

Perhaps the most trying conditions experienced by wartime “docs” occurred during the Civil War.

Confederate surgeon William Henry Taylor wrote, “The bullets whizzing past me were for awhile rather dismaying, but, finding that I still lived, I heartened up gradually, and the longer I lived the greater the assurance I felt that I was not to die, till presently I stood the fire with an equanimity that astonished me.”

Like other surgeons of the war years, especially Confederates, Dr. Taylor applied his skills despite many shortages and needs. “Normally, we were scant of medicines, and, generally, they were of the commoner kinds,” wrote Dr. Taylor.

Progress was made in medical technique and care throughout America’s wars, and though casualties were severe in World War I and II, the number of men saved grew as a direct result of the prompt, professional action of so many medics at the front: and a vast number of doctors and other medical professionals stretched from the war zone back to the home towns and V.A. hospitals in America.

But even as we improve upon the lifesaving technologies and techniques of the medics, weapons designed to tear flesh apart are “improved.” Human destruction advances even with the life saving sciences.

I interviewed a Korean War U.S. Army medic who wanted to relay just two thoughts. Upon arrival in the Asian war theater aboard a troop ship, he recalled feeling the rush of adrenalin that comes when men are about to engage in a great mission. “But as we disembarked from the ship, I was horrified to face the reality of war. Stacked on the pier were coffins containing our war dead – awaiting their last sea journey home aboard that same ship that delivered me into combat.”

That same corpsman told me, “War is no place for any shirker. But a medic feels he has to be as close to the action as possible: because that is where he is needed most. Being just a few dozen meters back from the action meant I might not get to the wounded in time.”

In Iraq, the long tradition of working literally “under fire” described during the Civil War by Doctor Taylor continues to this day. “The Marines know that if they are wounded, a corpsman will ignore the firefight and just patch them up,” said Capt. D.A. Zembiec, a company commander. His Marines fought near Fallujah in Iraq.

In San Diego, at the Marine Corp Recruit Depot, a building bears the name of corpsman Michael Vann Johnson Jr., a 25-year-old Navy corpsman, killed by an enemy grenade March 25, 2003 in Iraq. Yes, corpsmen do contribute the ultimate sacrifice.

The scene at a military hospital processing wounded from the front lines can be horrific. “It’s life and death, every day,” said Lt. Col. Bob Mazur, a doctor at the 10th Combat Support Hospital in Iraq.

“If you look at the overall death rate … the case fatality rate is cut in half from Vietnam to now. And again I think that’s due to better training, tactical combat casualty training,” said Col. John Holcomb, the senior surgeon at the hospital.

The thing about war is that so many die. The thing about medics is that so many can be saved.

In Iraq and Afghanistan today, even as most American work, sleep and lead their ordinary lives, corpsmen are closing wounds, staunching the flow of blood and saving lives. They are facing high powered rifles, automatic weapons and one of the crueler demons of recent wars: the so called “Improvised Explosive Devices” or IEDs. Dozens of the medics I met deserve to have their names and stories clearly honored in this newspaper and others; but they would not hear of it.

“It’s my job, sir. I do it for that: and because these other guys need me. Besides, a lot of guys do more than me.”

That quote exemplifies the selflessness of our medics and others in the medical community, saving lives in war.

Mr. Carey is the former president of International Defense Consultants, Inc. He was recently in Iraq.  As a postscript to this we invite people to listen to the interview of Bob Woodruff and his lovely bride from National Public Radio.

.http://johnib.wordpress.com/2007/02/28/war-changing-lives-in-an-instant-bob-woodruff-and-mike-who-has-ptsd/

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