Mr President, I thank you for spending that few minutes with me in Columbia and giving me your card to contact you. We both know the VA Secretary has the ability to fix these things on his authority, the VA Secretary has enormous power granted by the President. I wish I had never raised my hand in 1974, I regret that the US did these experiments to it's own citizens and it's soldiers. My step father was in the Air Force and flew on a plane crew doing data gathering over the Nevada test site, he ended up having three kinds of cancer that is on the list of the RECA act, he died before the RECA was enacted. He never filed for Service connection from the VA because back then they would have taken away his retirement check and he did not want the problems.
Mr. President my family has served in the Army going back to my great great great great grand father who served at Valley Forge in 1776 from Barre, Mass. My Grandfather served in the Cal 4th Volunteers in the Civil War and my father served in D Troop 7th Calvary in 1914-1916 at Douglas Arizona. If the VA quits helping veterans who will volunteer in the future, I have a 16 year old son, and I am not sure I want him to serve in the Army, he should.
He would be the first Bailey male that didn't in over 225 years, but look at this mess I am in, and look how the VA is treating the Iraq war veterans, it's shameful.
Mr. President I hope you can help my family, and possibly the other "test vets" they at least deserve medical care from this nation at the very least.
It has been more than 32 years since the human experimentation was stopped in 1975, isn't it about time the federal government, especially the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration stopped denying responsibility for the veterans and their families that were harmed by these experiments, the benefit of the doubt was designed for just these type of situations. There are no tests now that confirm exposure to hazardous substances months or years later, let alone decades. These men should have never been used in these hazardous experiments, and now in their later years the government does have an obligation to them and their families.
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