Trump's Republican Followers in the Senate

How Can I Make $ Off A Vet?

Before there were any real codes of medical conduct or preventative FDA regulations, harsh curative experiments upon various groups of marginalized people and sick victims were kept quietly under wraps.  

The sordid history of such investigations reveals a willingness to discard moral guardrails for personal advancement or arbitrary prospect.

Without oversight or regulation, interest can quickly override rationality.  Here’s an example or two: “Perhaps one benefit of being an inmate at California’s San Quentin prison is the easy access to acclaimed Bay Area doctors. But if that’s the case, then a downside is that these doctors also have easy access to inmates. From 1913 to 1951, Dr. Leo Stanley, chief surgeon at San Quentin, used prisoners as test subjects in a variety of bizarre medical experiments. Stanley’s experiments included sterilization and potential treatments for the Spanish Flu. In one particularly disturbing experiment, Stanley performed testicle transplants on living prisoners using testicles from executed prisoners and, in some cases, from goats and boars.”

“In 1939, University of Iowa researchers Wendell Johnson and Mary Tudor conducted a stuttering experiment on 22 orphan children in Davenport, Iowa. The children were separated into two groups, the first of which received positive speech therapy where children were praised for speech fluency. In the second group, children received negative speech therapy and were belittled for every speech imperfection. Normal-speaking children in the second group developed speech problems which they then retained for the rest of their lives. Terrified by the news of human experiments conducted by the Nazis, Johnson and Tudor never published the results of their‘Monster Study.’”

You can find an unsettling number of others at several sites including Best Psychological Degrees. 

You can also find another disturbing illustration of unapproved medical procedures occurring presently in Veteran Affairs, where a Senator from Nevada has secured an opportunity for himself and a company with whom his senior aide has had business connections for many years.

The Senator: Dean Heller.  His opponent: Democratic challenger Jacky Rosen.

Senator Heller is often described as a low-flying member of the Congress who follows closely and sits often near the current President, but remains carefully hidden and unknown.  According to Vox, he aligns with Trump in voting 92% of the time, and he has slashed Nevada’s health care funding by $257 million.  

But, Senator Heller is quick to see an opportunity even if ignorant of FDA regulations regarding the treatment(s) of patients working their way through PTSD issues in various VA hospitals. Senator Heller has been moving doctors at the Veteran Affairs Medical center in Reno, Nevada, to practice a mental health treatment still in experimental stages by a company with ties to his office.  Using the Trump Administration’s invitation for more alternative treatments, the promotion by Heller’s office of CereCare is troubling to the VFW and other organizations as it represents procedures that have not been scientifically demonstrated to be safe or even effective.

According to ProPublica, “The procedure that CereCare was pitching to the VA uses electrical scans of the brain and heart to detect a patient’s “intrinsic brainwave frequency” and find “the area of the brain in need of restoration,” according to materials brought to the meeting. CereCare then uses that data to apply electromagnetic pulses from a machine called a transcranial magnetic stimulator.

“This procedure is off-label, meaning it uses equipment approved by the Food and Drug Administration, but in a way that is not approved by the agency. Off-label procedures are not uncommon or illegal, but the FDA has not signed off on their safety or effectiveness.”

Regulations?  Who needs regulations?  

In fact, we all do.

The Food and Drug Administration is the oldest comprehensive consumer protection agency in the U. S. federal government. Since 1848 the federal government has used chemical analysis to monitor the safety of agricultural products -- a responsibility inherited by the Department of Agriculture in 1862 and by later by the FDA. 

Although it was not known by its present name until 1930, FDA’s modern regulatory functions began with the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act, a law a quarter-century in the making that prohibited interstate commerce in adulterated and misbranded food and drugs--had been the driving force behind this law and headed its enforcement in the early years, providing basic elements of protection that consumers had never known before that time. 

Since then, the FDA has changed along with social, economic, political and legal changes in the United States. Examining the history of these changes illuminates the evolving role that FDA has played in promoting public health and offers lessons to consider as we evaluate current regulatory challenges. 

But in this administration, the match between office and ability has little overlap and certainly not within the procedural treatment of the VA.  Who studied and agreed to the questionable and unapproved treatments for patients in the VA?  The President’s appointee Wisconsin Beer Baron Jake Leinenkugel who has no experience in dealing with treatments for the mentally injured or veterans suffering from war trauma.  In fact, Leinenkugel has also proposed the use of hyperbaric chambers for the assistance to disturbed veterans, but not because of any real scientific proof – just various companies’ lobbying.  

Meanwhile, Jacky Rosen is closing in on Heller’s lead in Nevada.  

Given Trump’s open invitation for alternative procedures, the White House is now under a flood of hopeful medical vendors with new ideas and possible procedures.  And, it is likely that other weak-willed Senators are facing lobbyists and others who have cash and new, improved concepts for alleviating our most sacred captive audience (our veterans) lucrative issues. 

Maybe testicle transplants?

For his own part, Heller has bombastically responded that he will never apologize for supporting policies that could lead to additional treatment options for Nevada veterans because “no one who has served this country should be waiting for care once they return from combat.”   

Draping your connections to a lobby or company in the American flag and the blood of our veterans is despicable. 

If you have friends or family in Nevada, get on the phone now.  Urge them to vote Rosen and why. 

One week to go.