Litigation

Where is the Pentagon's Brains?

By Michael Kaplen

In a damming lead article this morning, "Military fails on brain-test follow up," USA Today reports that the Pentagon has failed to comply with congressional mandates that they administer a brain injury screening test to all returning veterans.  As a result thousands of brain injured veterans fail to obtain a proper diagnosis and fail to obtain necessary treatment.  To put it bluntly, the Pentagon needs to have its own head examined!

The military had agreed to administer base line brain injury cognitive tests before soldiers are deployed into combat areas and then repeat these same tests upon their return. In this way, they would have an accurate gauge of the effects that a concussion had on an individual's cognitive functioning.  The Pentagon claims the test THEY chose to administer has to many "false positives". Many experts in the field disagree with the military's assessment.  I am more likely to believe that the test is accurate and their are more individuals suffering from the effects of the post concussion syndrome then the military wants to believe or admit to.  In any event, if the were unhappy with this test, why didn'tt they switch to other respected screening tools?

The Congressional Brain Injury Task Force under the leadership of Representative Bill Pascrell, D-NJ need to schedule an immediate hearing and hold the Pentagon accountable for their failure to follow congressional mandates.

Full post as published by Brain Injury News and Information on June 14, 2010 (boomark / email).