Portland VA: Human Experiments Unethical, No Consent
A consumer group named Public Citizen filed ethics complaints against Portland VA for unethical kidney transplant trails at the facility that lacked consent.
The trial paperwork indicated the kidney transplant trial subjects were deemed “nonhuman” despite kidneys being transplanted into live humans. The study failed to seek informed consent through normal channels because of the “nonhuman” classification.
The Portland VA Medical Center and University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) were involved in the study. Drs. Daren Malinoski and Claus Niemann led the study. Dr. Malinoski works at Portland VA. The Institutional Review Board (IRB) was conducted by UCSF.
The complaint from Public Citizen said participants in the study were not informed of the nature of the transplanted kidneys. Those kidneys came from brain dead donor bodies where the body was cooled prior to removal of the kidney as part of a study. The kidney gathered at experimental temperatures was then placed into a live human for research.
The purpose of the study was to gauge whether colder kidneys would result in quicker acceptance of the organ. The meta-goal of the study was to find cheaper ways to transplant kidneys.
PORTLAND VA / UCSF STUDY ERRORS
The recipients were apparently not informed. According to the Public Citizen complaint, the organizations failed to reach a few obvious and common sense related conclusions prior to the study being conducted:
- Failure to recognize trial as involving human subjects research
- Failure to satisfy IRB review and approval requirements
Not surprisingly, these two researchers and the IRB panel failed to recognize the subjects of the study were human. While the donors were brain dead, the recipients of the kidneys subject to the cooling experiment were most certainly human.
Should we be surprised that Ivory Tower type researchers would erroneously conclude recipients of experimentally harvested kidneys are not human? Do you ever wonder if VA at large considers us humans with rights, at all?
The complaint indicates that the error of judgment about the humanness of the study resulted in the participant doctors failing to seek informed consent from the 572 recipients.
This news made me wonder an obvious question:
How many more similarly mistaken IRB reviews have concluded veterans are not humans where informed consent is required?
In the name of conducting human experiments to save money, researchers apparently concluded humans were not humans. How many of these “nonhumans” were veterans?
It’s called Crimes against Humanity & where exactly are our D.C. & state representatives on our behalf?????
University’s are teaching hospitals just as with so called non profit hospitals like kaiser, A TEACHING HOSPITAL that teaches the VA how to do such research and theft. Many millions are sought after FOR “research”. Patients ARE THE RESEARCH. Body donations are big business just as anything else in the “medical community”. It’s going on all over. There are just too many of us for the NAZI’s, so it’s back to making money off of us while alive and or dead. If we’re not quite dead, they’ll make sure as to get us ready to steal our body parts, all for so many millions and billions over all.
In CA. the UCDavis, medical center, all patients are guinea pigs and in some cases, doctors from other countries (with out a CA or state license or any other doctor’s license get to do “research” in these universities that will guarantee the patients’ demise., people are operated on all the time for nothing other than experimentation OR for a resident to get their board certification. It’s all about money all in all, how much can they get from the federal govt treasury That goes for the VA too. Are all of their docs licensed??? OR are they too form other countries that are Nazi sympathytizers. These hospitals should have stayed taking care of people’s pets. There are more rules to prevent their experimentation for extermination. Thanks to the DR. Kizer or Kaiser, yes we’re under the NEW Nazi Dr Mengele’s care!. The U.S. is full of these NAZI Bastards. just as in our universities. The VA is just another gold mine for these ” so called medical suckers”.. stealing American made money while offing civilians & vets alike, all Americans. The only people who will get good care are the elites. those that have “our”money!
Phone 602-793-9151
My guess is that the VA figures all of us veterans are non-human so they can perform medical experiments on us without our knowledge or consent. This article makes me keep wondering if all VAMC’s are inter-connected conglomerated medical experiment farms or something. This is eerily similar to some of the medical experiments that were done in the Nazi concentration camps.
I no longer get heath care from the V.A. It always made me feel like I was in the book 1984. I no longer get health care from any where. If I am going to die then so be it, I would like to go out making a difference in this life. not being killed by some sleeze bag doctor for some made up reason. Oh yea when our generation is gone to the grave AMERICA is really going the way of all those mighty nations before, TO DUST. So let that golden grayhound roll your soul away.
The entire VA medical system has to scrutinized and held accountable for human experimentation, “medical education,.” consent and lack thereof, etc.
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New York Times
V.A. Hospital Is Told to Halt All Research
By PHILIP J. HILTS
Published: March 25, 1999
The Department of Veterans Affairs has for the first time suspended all research in one of its health care centers, saying the center has failed to meet ethical guidelines in human experiments.
After six years of investigations and temporary suspensions, the hospitals and clinics of the Veterans Affairs of Greater Los Angeles Health Care System — including the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center, one of the nation’s largest research hospitals — were ordered on Monday to halt all of their animal and human experiments. The order will go into effect on Friday.
About 100 researchers are conducting 500 experiments there, officials said.
Dr. Dean C. Norman, acting chief of staff at the Los Angeles veterans hospitals, said in a telephone interview that several managers of research projects would be removed from their jobs and an interim team would be put in place to correct the problems.
Dr. Norman added that ”no patients or animals have been harmed” and that the failures were breakdowns of administration, not of patient care.
The shutdown was ordered by Dr. Kenneth W. Kizer, Under Secretary for Health at the Department of Veterans Affairs, who noted that the hospitals had already been put on probation and that the management had repeatedly failed to correct the problems.
At the same time, the Department of Health and Human Services office in charge of overseeing human experiments officially cut off all Federal funds to the Los Angeles hospitals. Dr. Kizer’s order also halted all private funds for the hospitals.
The problems mainly involve experiments carried out on veterans who are mental patients. In some experiments, advocates for the patients say, subjects in the experiments were deliberately taken off their medicines and allowed to suffer relapses so that researchers could study the course of their symptoms.
In other experiments, the subjects were given drugs that intentionally made the symptoms worse so that doctors could observe them as they occurred.
The investigation of the Los Angeles hospitals began in 1993 when Federal officials found, among other violations, that proper informed consent was not obtained from patients in the experiments.
To protect against such problems, hospitals are charged with establishing review boards that monitor proposed experiments for abuses, said Dr. John F. Feussner, the chief research and development officer at the Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington.
It is the failure of the Los Angeles hospitals to properly monitor and report on the sensitive experiments, he said, rather than any specific abuses of patients, that led to the Government’s order to suspend the research this week.
Dr. Adil Shamoo of the University of Maryland, an expert on ethical issues in psychiatric experiments, said yesterday that the action against the Los Angeles hospitals showed that ”levels of concern on these kinds of experiments have been rising.”
”People are now seeing some potential harm to patients if these issues are not taken seriously,” Dr. Shamoo added.
Dr. Feussner, describing the research system as ”an honor system,” said: ”It requires that responsible officials assure us that their human and animal studies meet Federal policies and my expectations. In this case, the processes in place do not provide us with that assurance. I don’t have any evidence that harm is taking place, but I don’t have the proper assurance that it isn’t, either.”
He continued, ”I am unwilling to assume things are fine, because the costs of being wrong are too high for the patients.”
In a six-page letter on Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for the Protection from Research Risks charged the hospitals with multiple violations, including these:
*Failure to include at least one representative to speak for the experimental subjects on the board that gives ethical approval for the experiments.
*Failure over five years to establish a ”data safety monitoring board” to oversee events during experimental treatments as they were going on to assure the safety of particularly sensitive subjects like those with severe psychiatric disorders.
*The hospital ethical review board’s continuing, despite warnings, to approve human experiments when few board members were present and even though insufficient information to decide on the ethics of the experiments was given to the board members.
Dr. Feussner said that it would take 30 to 90 days to correct the problems initially, but that the Department of Veterans Affairs expects to monitor the Los Angeles hospitals for at least a year after new rules and new managers are put in place.
@namnibor & 91Veteran & everyone else!
Where the HELL is all that money going. It sure as hell isn’t going for veterans healthcare. Or anything else for veterans!!!!!
It has to be going into some bodies pockets.
Maybe it’s going into “off-shore accounts”? That would make many crooks very wealthy! Just a thought.
It’s come out today, Kerry and Heinz Corp. have off-shore accounts in the millions. Y’all realize Kerry married into that ‘family’. He also has a Muslim Son-in-Law!
P.S.
On “military dot com” yesterday. “Kerry is returning to Vietnam next month”. The first time in ??? years.
The article stated he was a “soldier”, not a sailor. It also praised his miltary service. Which was debated, negatively, when he ran for potus.
The people in the comment section slammed him. Calling him a TRAITOROUS COWARD, “…Equal to Hanoi Jane…” and worse.
I’ve personally met people, “Brown Water Sailors” (Officers and Enlisted), who knew him when I joined the Navy in 1975. Then I met more people up in Illinois in 2006, who did not like him!
No one, and I mean NO ONE, had anything good to say about him or his military service. People I met denigrated his “Anti-War/ Anti-Military Stance” when he returned.
Then when he and (Songbird) McCain did what they did to the groups, and families, who were attempting rescue, or find, our POW/MIA’s after the war. The hatred became further entrenched against him.
Be careful with this one – “He is with the Dark Side!” As Obi-Wan Kanobi would say!
Dr Mengala BS
There are people who believe Mr Trump is “Not Presidential”.
Well, this video proves them 100% wrong.
Google ;
“Full Event: Donald Trump Speaks on Foreign Policy in Washington”
from: “Right Side Broadcasting” on “Utube”
He talks straight. He speaks like a President!
It’s a little long. Yet, his plan is precisely what our country needs!
Did this happen with the Hep C vaccines?
@js03
Yea, and I wonder how many veterans were murdered by Dr. ShiNAZI in the process of developing that “miracle drug”?
We have Veterans in our group who were told the VA was using Harvoni “off label” and treated with it before it was approved by the FDA. That means they were treated as part of studies and weren’t asked to sign consents. It’s the only way they could have gotten the meds.
You get what you pay for and you pay for what you get!!
This is one of the many reasons to strongly assert your humanity from time to time, when dealing with VA. Otherwise without stern reminders, the VA parasite vampire bastards will conclude that you are a pumpkin or a toad or a clump of horse dung or something instead of a human being.
REMINDER:
U.S. Edition
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New York Times
U.S.
V.A. Hospital Is Told to Halt All Research
By PHILIP J. HILTS
Published: March 25, 1999
The Department of Veterans Affairs has for the first time suspended all research in one of its health care centers, saying the center has failed to meet ethical guidelines in human experiments.
After six years of investigations and temporary suspensions, the hospitals and clinics of the Veterans Affairs of Greater Los Angeles Health Care System — including the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center, one of the nation’s largest research hospitals — were ordered on Monday to halt all of their animal and human experiments. The order will go into effect on Friday.
About 100 researchers are conducting 500 experiments there, officials said.
Dr. Dean C. Norman, acting chief of staff at the Los Angeles veterans hospitals, said in a telephone interview that several managers of research projects would be removed from their jobs and an interim team would be put in place to correct the problems.
Dr. Norman added that ”no patients or animals have been harmed” and that the failures were breakdowns of administration, not of patient care.
The shutdown was ordered by Dr. Kenneth W. Kizer, Under Secretary for Health at the Department of Veterans Affairs, who noted that the hospitals had already been put on probation and that the management had repeatedly failed to correct the problems.
At the same time, the Department of Health and Human Services office in charge of overseeing human experiments officially cut off all Federal funds to the Los Angeles hospitals. Dr. Kizer’s order also halted all private funds for the hospitals.
The problems mainly involve experiments carried out on veterans who are mental patients. In some experiments, advocates for the patients say, subjects in the experiments were deliberately taken off their medicines and allowed to suffer relapses so that researchers could study the course of their symptoms.
In other experiments, the subjects were given drugs that intentionally made the symptoms worse so that doctors could observe them as they occurred.
The investigation of the Los Angeles hospitals began in 1993 when Federal officials found, among other violations, that proper informed consent was not obtained from patients in the experiments.
To protect against such problems, hospitals are charged with establishing review boards that monitor proposed experiments for abuses, said Dr. John F. Feussner, the chief research and development officer at the Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington.
It is the failure of the Los Angeles hospitals to properly monitor and report on the sensitive experiments, he said, rather than any specific abuses of patients, that led to the Government’s order to suspend the research this week.
Dr. Adil Shamoo of the University of Maryland, an expert on ethical issues in psychiatric experiments, said yesterday that the action against the Los Angeles hospitals showed that ”levels of concern on these kinds of experiments have been rising.”
”People are now seeing some potential harm to patients if these issues are not taken seriously,” Dr. Shamoo added.
Dr. Feussner, describing the research system as ”an honor system,” said: ”It requires that responsible officials assure us that their human and animal studies meet Federal policies and my expectations. In this case, the processes in place do not provide us with that assurance. I don’t have any evidence that harm is taking place, but I don’t have the proper assurance that it isn’t, either.”
He continued, ”I am unwilling to assume things are fine, because the costs of being wrong are too high for the patients.”
In a six-page letter on Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for the Protection from Research Risks charged the hospitals with multiple violations, including these:
*Failure to include at least one representative to speak for the experimental subjects on the board that gives ethical approval for the experiments.
*Failure over five years to establish a ”data safety monitoring board” to oversee events during experimental treatments as they were going on to assure the safety of particularly sensitive subjects like those with severe psychiatric disorders.
*The hospital ethical review board’s continuing, despite warnings, to approve human experiments when few board members were present and even though insufficient information to decide on the ethics of the experiments was given to the board members.
Dr. Feussner said that it would take 30 to 90 days to correct the problems initially, but that the Department of Veterans Affairs expects to monitor the Los Angeles hospitals for at least a year after new rules and new managers are put in place.
i was at the LA VA back in the late 80’s. was there for a chronic pain issue due to spinal injury. i was due to be processed out of active duty due to that injury and they were treating us for pain with various “remedies/techniques”. i say “us” because i shared a room with two guys from vietnam duty. i *think*…its a long time ago with many trials & tribulations since then so my recollection could be incorrect …. i’m almost sure i volunteered for a few chronic pain research gigs. that research program for for chronic pain issues i think. the two guys i shared a room with had those issues plus ptsd. i certainly remember one of they guys talk about his tunnel rat experiences and the other guy didn’t much talk about anything until after a few weeks.
for a few days or weeeks i would go outside the hospital to an adjacint building, part of the hospital. there the nurse/researcher would have me sit in a chair with headphones and stuff (i think) and i would be placed in front of a screen and they would show images and short clips and i was to press a button or two indicating something in my mind when viewing these things. i don’t recall anything invasive or anything like that. though the nurse/researcher said she was from my home town. i’ve never forgotten that one and still to this day i thought that was really odd. that was the extent of that volunteering at that mad house. one day came back to my room and the two guys were gone. never told me they were being discharged. weird.
the last time i was at West LAVA a few years ago the neuro there pulled the same lies as i’ve grown accustomed to over the years. the bait-n-switch blame game. i’ve never been back since and told this local VA in writing cc’do Congress why i won’t go back. the local VA here hasn’t hinted of sending me there again for evaluations thankfully. i’d already been diagnosed by a handful of top civilian neurologists and the local VA was already so-so treating my service connected injury/illness. so why the heck would they all of a sudden want to send me to that dungeon — the West LAVA — for a bogus 2-3 day evaluation.
i’ll tell you why, so they could lie or fudge more medical records hoping to blow me out of the water, as they say.
i write this because i hadn’t thought that place for years until few years back i was going through records and requesting records from various VA’s due a claim my attorney was working on. i noticed that the West LAVA didn’t send what i thought were all the records. especially the ones regarding the chronic pain therapy classes and that one i volunteered for.
i wrote the West LAVA 2-3 times for all my complete records when i was inpatient there. of course they wrote back stating they sent all they had, there was nothing else. they sent me most of it but no where in them were any documentation of me volunteering for that “research project”, the project itself or one of the “classes” we attended back then.
they sent enough though for my attorney to prove dates/times/symptoms and such for a particular claim, so i’m lucky about that.
when reading Ben’s blog today and the post by @Don it woke up a sleeping brain cell regarding “va experiments”. maybe mine was nothing really, but you can’t help but wonder. especially after 30+ years of dealing with the VA and its lying & deflection techniques to never rightly diagnose a service connect injury/illness nor acknowledging any documented proof you show the VA doctor’s. it’s a mad house!
Oh they do this shit in one degree or another at all VA facilities. Like a web poster said about buying Thailand motorcycle parts, “It’s Thailand! Put your money down and roll the dice.” I wouldn’t do VA drugs or surgery, much less let them transplant organs into me. My eyes, nose, and ear surgeon is blind, lol. He might be the original Dr. Frankenstein.
Is it just me or does it appear the VA chooses architectural design for place like this Portland VA and others with that “ominous monolithic house of horrors” theme in-mind?
Conversely, it just may be that inner justified fear and loathing of the VA Medical end. Also, any VA is immediately confrontational when you have VA Goon Police every where that look like trigger-happy range flunkies. Yeah, it’s not exactly a PTSD friendly place to deal with, but the VA cannot even get that and why Vets feel this way. 🙂
Looks like the American Legion and other veteran organizations are not with us either. I just read that they are mad that money is being taken away from the VA and being used for the Veteran’s Choice Program where vets can get real care from real doctors who are not trying to kill them or need to experiment on them.
So, anyone who is for the VA system and promotes it knowing all this CRAP is for murder of innocent veterans, use of veterans as laboratory rats in unethical research and FOR their own self interest and paycheck.
A common comment by Legion officials at the town hall event last night was it was a disaster, which it is, and money being taken away from the VA…which it isn’t. It was a separate appropriation by Congress.
What they also didn’t want to hear was the VAs own culpability in turning it in to a disaster. They made excuses about not being trained on it, etc. It doesn’t take training for their Choice champions to log in to their HealthNet account and see what the problem is, then call and demand HealthNet schedule the appointment.
It also doesn’t take training to match an authorization to an appointment and to a bill, and pay the damn bill. One comment was about the VA here not having any urologists in the city that the VA can use. No urologist will accept Choice vets here because The VA wouldn’t pay the bill.
The VA oversees the contract with healthnet, and if HealthNet or whoever they are now is not executing the contract, then the VA should not be extending it, as they have done once already.
Several comments last night were on HealthNet not scheduling the appointment, and veterans not knowing who to call even when they have confirmed authorization numbers. Once the VA refers a vet to Choice, they forget about the vet until they hear from them again asking questions, or they hear from a congressional office.
Regardless of whatever BS excuses the VA is making, they have had at least 2 years to figure it out.
It would not be the disaster it is if the VA made any effort at making it work.
We have all heard about the billion dollar hospital in Denver.
What if the VA refused to oversee all contracts like they do with Choice?
Its like they sign a contract to build the hospital in Denver, then don’t work with the builder to make sure they get what they pay for, or let the builder build anything they want with the money they get, then whine about the building falling in because the builder had no blueprints or work orders to go by.
I forgot to mention, in my comments last night at the “System worth Saving” Legion town hall, I ended with saying, it’s a system where 40 veterans died in Phoenix, veterans dying in Wisconsin, a veteran beaten to death in Louisiana, and a veteran who doused himself in gas, lit himself on fire outside a VA in New Jersey and died, and asked if that were a system worth saving.
Nobody batted an eye and nobody refuted what I said or claimed I was making things up.
*Thank You* for stating those things!! I bet it was like ***crickets*** after you spoke, with lumps in all their reptilian throats while they looked forward to refreshments afterwards, not batting an eye!
I wanted to make it clear no amount of BS excuses, funding, lack of authority, training or any other crap excuses why every one of those veterans died. Every one of them was caused in some way by the VA.
I do know from the responses from the other vets that there were those who were unaware of some deaths.
I also know from the lack of questions from any VA employees that they were aware of all of these vets as well.
The PHX VA body count is out in the National Cemetary, check Nam dead, 2010 hundreds, if NOT thousands..incredible!
The’ Legion’, the VA employees, and the unaware veterans. What a shithouse full of fun. Glad you went and unloaded some reality on them. Glad they didn’t try to distract what you said too. What fossils. It must have been weird for them. If there is anything I can’t stand, it’s veterans that are unaware and not tuned in to what’s coming down. The VA knows the mass majority of their veterans are that way, and that is exactly why they get away with anything they want to pull. May they all rot.
I don’t mind veterans who are uninformed, but what irritates the hell out of me is when they are given facts, and choose to remain ignorant.
I was the first to speak last night, and most older veterans still thought the VA was worth saving, even after I mentioned those who died. It didn’t matter that other younger veterans were describing horrible problems, or even what other older veterans said.
At some point someone mentioned his Choice experience and said his doctor told him it took so long to see him because he had to put him at the end of all his other patients he already had. Someone else said if the VA were privatized, then every appointment a veteran had would be like that…which is bullshit. If Medicare and Medicaid can make it work and people can see doctors in a timely manner and the doctors can get paid, so can Choice.
I wouldn’t mind if the VA stayed open if they acknowledged their mistakes and worked to improve, but the VA is so badly broken with no interest in anyone getting rid of the incomptence and corruption, that it’s not worth continuing to see billions thrown at them and vets still not getting care.
Yes, you are right. They CHOOSE to REMAIN IGNORANT. I would call that DUMB ! Lot’s of DUMB veterans out there. They choose to be dumb because they are AFRAID of not going along with what they are told by the larger group then they are (VA, VSOs, etc) They choose to buy into the bullshit saying things like “oh well, every large and beaurocractic organization has their faults – it will be worked out – I trust the good old usa” or some other muttonhead stuff. They feel too overpowered by status quo to question anything or demand big change or to fall out of line with these fake powers that have complete control of what’s left of their brain. And they are lazy to boot. I’ve said many times on here that that’s why any march in DC will not work – it will fail miserably. Too many diverse points of view and nothing “on message” I really have to roll my eyes when people on this blog want a “March in Washington” It will never matriculate. Besides that, 99% of them won’t spend the money for transportation and lodging and food to feed their pie-holes. D.C. is expensive. You’ll get a few who live nearby that “trickle in” waiting to be told what to do, no less. See ‘what’s up’.
It’s more effective to chip away at each bastion you individually confront , it seems, because we (the vets) do not have a bonifde organization that is for the ‘aware ones’, sorry to say. As far as all the ‘other civilians’ who did not experience the military or deal with the VA or HNet or these pseudo-qualified Secretaries of…., they don’t know or want to know very much than soundbites of VA problems. There are thousands of other concerns for them (and us) that exist because of the government these days. The most they know is that the VA is suppose to be ‘terrible”. Since they have no skin in the game – they will never know to what depth this department sinks to exactly, and continue to believe any PR that the “VA acknowledges the problem and will pride a fix real soon”
This is our problem – we own it – we are the ones getting screwed in the end. People just keep paying their inflated tax monies because if they don’t, they go to jail.
Finally, other countries like Canada, Australia, most European countries, and , yes, even middle eastern countries DO have their own Veterans Administration (as I stumble upon articles about these countries now and then accidently) – and guess what? They are ALL BAD news too over there. We are not alone !
I TOLD YOU THEY LOOK AT VETERANS AS LESS THAN HUMAN, ANIMALS, GUINNEA PIGS AND LABORATORY RATS…. THOUGHT I WAS KIDDING ABOUT ALL THE EXPERIMENTATION AND RESEARCH? I THINK NOT… WAKE UP PEOPLE….
I REST MY CASE.
Just got back from the VAMC, extremely small clinic, here in Central Florida.
Saw ANOTHER PCP, my 4th or 5th, (can’t keep count), in the past 2 1/2 years.
A couple of observations.
A.) She didn’t even know who her boss was.
B.) During our conversation I found out VA might be BROKE, or close to it! Because, she thought I meant “broke” in the “broken toy” way. My wife said, “No, in the not having money kind of broke!” The physician said, “Oh, yea. I’ve heard the same thing!”
C.) All she could talk about was my blood pressure and bad collesteral.
When I asked about the “Choice Program” – there was complete ignorance. When I asked about anything else, she reverted back to blood pressure and bad collesteral! And of course diet!
It was as though she didn’t want to hear the truth! Understand the truth ir anything. Of course, I expected the treatment I received.
Lastly, When I asked where she went to school. She answered Atlanta. When I said, not what city or state. What medical school? She refused to answer. I believe she went to school outside America. She might also be ashamed of where she went! Only my quess though!
FUCK THE VETERANS ADMINISTRATION AND THE VETERANS HEALTHCARE ADMINISTRATION, their all worthless pieces of shit.
Yea, I know. I got a bad attitude today. And I’m going to have a bad attitude until all of VA is shut down!
@crazyelf- I would not be surprised at all if all VA employees high and low have been sternly briefed to now not answer ANY questions Vets may pose to them…all part of VA Spin Dr. Damage Control.
WTF? Almost out of $$$$ already??? This is insane. The VA needs an outside fiduciary to handle every cent and never let it touch VA’s ands.
Correction: VA’s HANDS.
@namnibor
Don’t y’all remember in June or July 2015, VA “claimed” they had been “broke since April!” (It’s April folks!)
Then they “held veterans hostage” on healthcare. Until they were granted funds! Which McDonald received.
It looks like, some of us, had predicted this! Well, our predictions are coming true!!!!!!!!!
(I tried explaining to these STUPID asswipes there better be some real changes coming. Because our next POTUS will not except excuses!)
What I DO remember is a comment from a vet last night that the VA needed to spend money on IT and fix their computer system since so many employees couldn’t figure it out.
I wanted to stand up and scream that the VA just spent $22 billion on a friggin IT contract that is 3 times more than the NSA spent on the largest data center in the planet.
…and we hear rumblings of them being broke already?
I wrote Ben about this issue awhile ago. It is not just this facility, but all facilities. Not only do they do experimentally surgery they also do un-necessary surgeries for the teaching hospitals the VA’s are attached to. You cannot sue the VA, which makes Veterans teaching material without liabilities. I was also told by the same Doctor not to trust any diagnosis because it always favors the VA and not the Veteran. This is because they don’t have to treat the ailment. “Don’t Trust Them.”
Another alarming practice has made itself apparent. The VA is now placing ‘Do Not
Resuscitate’ orders on Veterans without their knowledge, or bullying family members to do so.
I am still waiting for Ben to answer me because I am living a nightmare right now. My husband is a 100+% SC Disabled Veteran. He was Special Forces with the USAF and is not a sissy. The things that have happened, 3 times now, you know the VA wants him dead. I don’t know who protects Veterans because it is not, your elected officials, Bob McDonald or your Veterans Advocate at the VA.
I wonder just how many of these veterans or their families being pressured with the DNRs are also being pressured to be organ donors.
*BINGO* My same exact thoughts. Scary how so many of us think on same wavelength using critical thinking, rather than what’s been plastered by VA Spin Dr. and speaking of which, am just waiting for some VA employees to come on here and defend the VA’s “practice” as “medical research benefits Vets, blah, blah, blehhk”….we see just how that played-out with the VA’s Hep C Vaccine.
Clinical Trials to the VA are akin to skeet shooting with Dr. Kevorkian.
Creating unnecessary medical emergencies / crisis is also part of the unethical, barbarous routines of VA fockers…I believe… Do you prefer lethal injections?..Lying to family and deciding you should be dead OR your spouse should be destroyed?…I believe. Body parts theft is routine at PHX VA … I believe…
All I can say is HOLY SHIT! There are a serious number of people involved in this scandal from the research side who, in a perfect world would be seriously sanctioned if not permanently barred from ever getting a research grant again, in addition to losing their license to practice medicine.
Having spent a huge amount of time in the past reviewing veterans medical research for possible funding, I understand this process fairly well. The layers of review for a typical medical research grant is usually pretty extensive, and this travesty should have been caught numerous times before funding was every provided let alone getting to the point of cutting open a veteran.
The Health Resources and Services Administration (part of government run HHS) has ultimate responsibility for this because they signed off on this crap.
To understand the process, one or both of these researchers would write their research proposal and submit it to their initial review board. Given both UCSF and the VA were involved, that review should have been done by both UCSF and the VA, particularly since veterans were the rest subjects. Anything not addressed in the proposal should be caught at that point and corrected, then reviewed again. There are layers of checks before money is ever given…unless their research review process is so grab-ass as to be worthless.
When I reviewed proposals, they had already gone through 2 to 3 or more layers of review before it ever got to us, and many didn’t get past us unless problems were corrected. The proposals were rejected and they were told to apply again next year. Those layers of review prior to getting to us included review by the research boards at the institutions, and human research, Institutional Review Boards and informed consent are all huge issues that had to be addressed, or it would never pass.
UCSF and certainly the VA have hordes of flunkies to review stuff like this, so it’s not like some independent clinical researcher at a small community clinic who cannot afford to do the reviews by themselves.
If you look at the PDF attachment in Ben’s post, the grant number is listed in the complaint. Searching on that grant number pulls up all kinds of information on this research including a listing on organdonor dot gov, the abstract on PubMed and the full research article on the New England Journal of Medicine web site.
Malinoski seems to have been involved in this type of research for years. This particular project was funded in 2011, started in 2012, finished in 2014 and research results published in 2015.
The article at the NEJM site describes the study design, and states that the UCSF Institutional Review Board decided informed consent was not needed because the risk to recipients was minimal.
WTF? Seriously? The FDA requires informed consent for human trials for new medicine but not transplanting a vital organ into a humans body? Propose giving a new medicine to treat a common cold and informed consent is required. Not good to have if The money is there, REQUIRED. This is a major reason why lots of human research is done overseas because the laws are such that much of the oversight is not required.
The research was sponsored by UCSF, but lots of information suggests the government was also heavily involved, including a post at clinicaltrials dot gov using the identifier: NCT0168744, where the only consent mentioned is from the donor. Really?
Other comments on other articles suggest the real reason for not getting informed consent from the recipient was because it was logistically impossible. Really? You can get consent from a brain dead organ donor but not a living veteran?
I suspect they used veterans to avoid informed consent and limit any liability if something went wrong, and to minimize any additional cost. Participate in a private human study and the participants demand significant money according to risk. Tell a needy veteran they get free coffee, and the cost is much less.
Their entire position reads like the most important goal was to study tissue reaction rather than how the human benefited from the medical procedure.
Imagine a veteran trying to get follow up care from any problems resulting from this.
I had a head nurse on a ward that I never met in my life before tell me he regarded me as “disgusting and loathsome”. My jaw dropped. I asked what on Earth he would say that for to a stranger on his ward? His reply, “I know you are going to the press about us.” Another nurse made him come back and say he loved me three times and keep a straight face. And they call me a lunatic… That place looks at vets as disgusting and loathsome for talking to others about them. And these are the ones killing people off with negligence, but to their credit, he did say he loved me three times. In-effing-credible.
Did this nurse dress in black, known as ‘bones’ and administer lethal injections too?
That would be their Halloween Version of Hungry, Hungry Hippos, with Dr. Kevorkian, err, Candy Man presiding.
Affirmative!
West LA VA Medical Center and the UCLA Medical School lost their research accreditation in the late 1990s for cutting corners like that. I don’t know how long it was suspended and what hoops they had to jump through to get it back.
And now it speaks volumes as to WHY VA builds hospitals so close, or on the same properties, as Universities which have medical studies!
“Experimentation on veterans without consent!” How many decades has this gone on?
I guess VA believes veterans are still concidered “Property of the government!” I thought our “discharges”, or DD214’s, reestablished us as civilians, NOT government properties!? Which would/should entitle us to all the legalese afforded civilians!?
@91Veteran;
That was a great summary you gave on VA and the Legion town hall you attended!
Please keep us, and Ben, informed.
You mentioned about a girl who was basically fired from VA. When she spoke at last night’s town hall meeting with American Legion and VA upper management.
I remember someone saying something a while back about how McDonald or Gibson “claimed” there has been a lot of people fired. Yet, it came out almost ALL the people fired were those who had not completed their one year probationary period!
Thereby, making VA “look good on paper”! But not in reality, on transparency and accountability.
Was anything said about that when she spoke.
I hope your news medias will follow up on this issue.
13 years of trying to save VA is, in my opinion, a waste of taxpayer’s monies! If American Legion, and other VSO’s, are behind this. Then one could speculate a collusion between each of them. Possibly even criminal intent!?
VA, and all VSO’s, need to be investigated on this issue!
The part about the VA fiduciary kidnapping the veterans has happened in several places. I have a small town newspaper article on one of my sticks that tells of a vet that was declared incompetent over him and his families objection and never came home from a hospital visit. He had driven himself. Luckily the local sheriff was a cousin and threatened to call into the FBI a kidnapping and set up a full blown investigation. They got a phone call saying he would be home in a few hours from the vet’s fiduciary. Calls to the VA that appointed him went unanswered.
Turns out the fiduciary sold the vets car…legally since it was paid off and he claimed that power since it was BOUGHT with his VA funds, and had brought him to a rooming house he ran a few hours away. The vet evidently had some money and the fiduciary was trying to figure out how to get it. If it wasn’t for the family making such a fuss to find him it would have worked.
How many vets with no family collecting SMC r1, r2, t are being warehoused in a room all day while their fiduciary parties it up on the 8k or so a month? I am betting a few or more. Severely damaged in order to receive it they are likely to die and if no family steps forward never known. Like the Vietnam MIA’s we probably left.
The full time caregiver said the FBI was investigating felony kidnapping, and for some reason DHS was also involved.
I don’t know who the caregiver was…he seemed a cross between a young Amish man and a surfer hippie dude. I had no doubt of his concern for the veteran in his care. He seemed like he would charge hell with a bucket of gas for him.
Such a contrast from the “caring” attitude of the VA.
I have a copy of the AFGE union demand to VHA to halt implementation of the OIG recomendations regarding Disruptive Behavior Committees. That OIG report looked like an essay on the Nazi Protcol T-4 (Akton T4) that showed a failure of America to protect vets. The stated flatly that many (I am guessing 99.99%) of sanctions against vets therin were violations of federal law. The letter demands VHA halt implementation of legal compliance!
That letter is dated May 27, 2014, and was penned by Oscar L. Williams Jr., who identified as 2nd executive vice president, National VA Counsel #53. The phone number listed to call for additional information of Mr. Williams is (217) 554-4866. He lists this and invites inquiry. I have a question: why are you involved??? On the bottom of the page is the footer “AFGE – Good government, we are ready! Well AFGE, The People are ready for it too…
Thanks elf. If you check out the video or the newspaper article, there is more detail on the American Legion, former VA employee who was fired.
She made VERY clear she was fired 5 days before completing her probationary period. That has been a common theme at the VA. Fire them before their probationary period ends when you know they won’t roll over and submit to the lazy, incompetent and corrupt.
She also made VERY clear she had proof they falsified documentation used to fire her, so it should be interesting to see where that goes.
She is now on the Cat One Violent and Disruptive Patient list. I would bet my bottom dollar on it.
I have also thought the va looked at me as aub human. I am just some one they have to dral with ao they have a job.
VA DEATHCARE IS A FEDERAL RICO CRIME RACKET RUN BY AFGE UNION CONTRACTS VETS YO ARE SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO SCREWED BY VA DEATHCARE FROM SATANIC HELL !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Would not be caught dead on the slab in the VA Frankenstein lab.
Are these not Human Rights Violations as well? All the World’s A Stage these days, perhaps an International Humanitarian Outcry is required because the VA is **way** out of control.
This article reminded me of the book (also made in movie) by Robin Cooke, “Coma”. It also brought me right to that movie “Jacob’s Ladder”…a merge of both.
The travesty on top of it all is that Big Pharma and Institutional Medicine is experimenting on Vet’s backs to squeeze out more $. How many times did the VA try cow or sheep kidneys on unsuspecting Vets before the VA moved-onto cadaver Human kidneys?
Rot in Hell 🙁