Here is something Vets can take to the bank. Peel off the studies on HCV and DM2 and insert them into your claims. Then proceed to get it in nexus format. This is proof positive that HCV equal DM2. VA has denied this for years but this puts paid to the story. Read it closely and look up the studies to print and include in your claims. This is an instance where the evidence is overwhelmingly in your favor. The Vet wins on his hypertension claim as well even though it was far more tenuous.

In contrast, the file contains positive nexus opinion 
of September 2011, offered by a practicing hepatologist.  
The doctor cited numerous medical studies and provided 
additional medical information, but determined that he 
could not conclusively say that HCV was the proximate 
cause of the Veteran's diabetes.  He further observed that
 based on the preponderance of (specifically cited) evidence 
linking both HCV and cirrhosis with diabetes, it was his 
expert opinion that it was more likely than not that HCV 
and cirrhosis were either causally related to or chronically 
aggravated the Veteran's diabetes.


The Court has held that a medical article or treatise "can  
provide important support when combined with an opinion of 
a medical professional" if the medical article or treatise 
evidence discusses generic relationships with a degree of 
certainty such that, under the facts of a specific case, 
there is at least "plausible causality" based upon 
objective facts rather than on an unsubstantiated lay 
medical opinion.  Mattern v. West, 12 Vet. App. 222, 228 
(1999); see also Sacks v. West, 11 Vet. App. 314 (1998) 
and Wallin v. West, 11 Vet. App. 509 (1998).  Here, the 
studies cited by the hepatologist assisted him in 
providing a positive and adequately supported medical 
opinion in 2011.

The BVA has been good to us this year and even more so in this last quarter. Realization that something is amiss should be evident by now. If we have appealed 20,000+ denials of HCV at the ROs, how many were filed, lost and unappealed? Frightening to think. Using the 28% figure, I would assume somewhere in excess of 100,000 of us filed in 2010-2011.

We are rapidly becoming dinosaurs in this fight, so it behooves us to fight all the harder to win. With the BVA more inclined to actually read the appeal and use elementary logic, chances of a win go up daily.

http://www.va.gov/vetapp11/Files4/1138429.txt