MEDICAL PATIENTS SAY THE PUBLIC BUNGLING OF THE PACT ACT IS PROOF OF THE CIVILIAN INCOMPETENCE THEY HAVE BEEN FACING ON CAPITOL HILL & AT THE VA.

WASHINGTON , DC, U.S.A., March 7, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- A national group of veteran medical patients are publicly disavowing the legitimacy of a variety of environmental health processes at the Dept. of Veterans Affairs agency. They are also calling out the level of menacing, buffoonery, and incompetence that was allowed to play out with the recently mishandled legislation known as The PACT Act. The veterans want all of Washington DC to know they are united in their decision to opt out of using the VA for their patient screening purposes, and have taken a position of "no participation" as it applies to the bungled workings of The PACT Act.

The Fort McClellan Veterans Stakeholders Group was never consulted with or included in any public hearing for the use of their national group name which appears in the language of The PACT Act. They accuse the House Veterans Affairs Committee of using their name in a bill that they didn't ask for and were not a party to. Then it was all publicly displayed without their informed consent as a medical patient group. How all of this came to be is a lengthy story that can't be fully addressed in the word limits of a press article. But the veterans are appealing to others who may also feel dismayed over the mishandled toxic exposure legislation.

The group is advising any veterans who consider themselves to be medically matched to the ten known toxic sources which makes up their "official" environmental spill profile stemming from the former Fort McClellan, Alabama Army Base, to join their effort to ignore The PACT Act. McClellan Vets who served there between the years of 1950 to 1998, should also "opt out" of any VA patient screenings for toxic exposures. Having a health registry at the VA where nobody participates in it, would be the kind of pushback they are hoping for. Veterans opting out of using the VA is allowed under the Veterans CHOICE Act. Alternatively, the McClellan Vets are expecting to have their patient screening eventually done at the Agency For Toxic Substance & Disease Registry in Atlanta.

They have successfully launched a petition request for services and admission into the Chemical Mixtures Program at the ATSDR in June 2021. That engineering science review is near the very end and the veterans are expecting a ruling decision for it any day now. If the petition succeeds and is granted, then the next step will be to launch the national Fort McClellan Veterans Cumulative Health Risk Assessment for multiple exposures, mixtures, or combinations. The veterans have also submitted an email request to the Environmental Justice Center at the Environmental Protection Agency in Atlanta, to have them conduct a formal law review regarding the various environmental matters at Fort McClellan. The veterans have identified legal questions that range from the use of Agent Orange at the base, to the Army using the base for conducting secret level military experiments known as PROJECT 112. That request is still getting processed by the EJC.

The opting out of VA patient screening by a veterans patient group is only the latest development that shows how disenfranchised and unrepresented veterans are finding ways to protest against a system that doesn't adequately process their medical cases. According to them, the VA has a long standing history of using wrong sciences, wrong exposure screening methods, wrong web pages, wrong forms, and wrong evidence papers, all to eventually accomplish a harmful patient outcome to deny veterans benefits that they would otherwise be entitled to without all the menacing. They predict that a forced and ill-advised health registry on a patient population that has a known age group of the 60s to 80s, would only be another vehicle for the VA to jerk around sick veterans for decades while they die in place.

They argue that the ATSDR agency has a 3-way coalition review and patient screening process in place that's run by the nations top environmental industry experts at the Center for Disease Control, the ATSDR, and the Environmental Protection Agency. In sharp contrast to this, they say that the VA doesn't hire doctors who are specialized in the practice of environmental medicine. The group says they are also using a clerical rater workforce for disability rating offices that have no medical or college background in some cases. They are also using a mysterious contractor firm called "Veterans Evaluation Services" who picks and chooses general medicine doctors for individual exams. This is done without any regard to the medical specialty for environmental toxic exposure cases. The veterans insist they have had enough of the low rent approaches by the VA.

They also say that both the ATSDR agency and the Environmental Protection Agency in Atlanta have direct jurisdiction authority over the former contamination sites in Anniston, Alabama that previously surrounded their military pedestrian routes. The VA has no such comparable jurisdiction. The McClellan Vets also say they have been meeting at official venues across Capitol Hill and at the VA for nineteen years now. So it's been nothing less than an insult to them to have no information meeting or consultation with any legislative office about them using their veterans group name in the language of The PACT Act. The group feels that it's nothing short of stunning that such a scheme was hatched right out in public view, and without ever including them as the actual patient group who represents that very cause.

For them, the very next important moment will come when the ATSDR finally makes a public announcement on their decision about the veterans cumulative risk study petition. Until then, the veterans will not be using The PACT Act or the VA which can potentially lead to a false denial from their deceptively manufactured "proof". The Vietnam Veterans know all too well how long it took them to overcome the infamous and bungled Ranch Hand Study on Agent Orange. The Fort McClellan Veterans are working to steer clear of that same kind of potential outcome.

Sue Frasier, activist veteran
Toxic Exposure Army Veterans of Fort McClellan
ft_mcclellan_vets1@yahoo.com
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