This isn’t a snowball rolling downhill yet but it certainly is a banner year for HCVets claiming jetguns. What’s unique about this is that several VA examiners is saying it. The Vet has just dragged in not one but two good nexus letters. The 2010 VA examiner struggles to turn left-handed tobacco into drug usage and it ends up at the Board. This old boy has it nailed as if he’d been taking a chapter right out of my book. vA cannot just let this go by. They can’t even get their own brethren on board so they just keep kicking it back and forth in house until they find a rater willing to fudge.
What the hell? Seems pretty cut and dried but he didn’t win in Atlantaville. How can you get a positive nexus and still lose. Only at the RO. It took a guy with a juris doctor after his name to sort this one out. It’s Vet-4 vA-1 and they refuse to grant. Where’s that good ol’ benefit of the doubt we keep hearing about?
A March 2008 statement by the Veteran’s private physician (M.M., M.D.) indicated that he had been treating the Veteran for 25 years. He stated that the only blood product the Veteran was exposed to was the air gun in service. His ultimate opinion was that the Veteran’s hepatitis C was probably related to a contaminated multiple medication injector (air gun).
[That’s one]
The Veteran was afforded a VA examination in June 2008. At this examination he reported that he was diagnosed with hepatitis C in 1989 and told that he had been infected for approximately 12-13 years. He reported several blood transfusions, but none before 1995. The examiner concluded that the likely risk factor for the Veteran’s hepatitis C was the contaminated air gun in service. His rationale was that there were no other risk factors.
[That’s two]
A February 2010 statement from the Veteran’s VA liver transplant doctor, an Associate Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology, Gastroenterology and Hepatology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, stated the Veteran was diagnosed with hepatitis C in 1990 and he had no additional risk factors for hepatitis C except for the in-service air gun inoculations.
[That’s three and look at his credentials]
At a May 2010 VA (QTC) examination the Veteran reported that he had been diagnosed with hepatitis C and his symptoms included tremors, swelling of the legs, fatigue, memory loss, and diarrhea. After examining the Veteran the examiner opined it was at least as likely as not that the air gun inoculations from service caused the Veteran’s hepatitis C. His rationale was that if the air gun was not sterilized then it was at least as likely as not that hepatitis C could be contracted.
[That’s four.]
An October 2010 VA (QTC) medical examiner opined that he could not determine whether the Veteran’s hepatitis C was at least as likely as not related to service. His rationale was that the Veteran had admitted to polysubstance abuse in a previous VA treatment record and the record indicated the Veteran was less than forthcoming with information on this subject. See January 2009 VA treatment record.
[Ruh-oh Rorge. # 5 says Druuugs! So now we have a lowly ARNP at QTC opining on HCV and upstaging a Vanderbilt Hepatologist.]
The Board observes that at the Veteran’s November 2011 Board hearing the Veteran testified that he had used marijuana a couple of times, but that he did not use cocaine and he was unsure where this evidence came from.
Where indeed? Piehole diarrhea and honesty destroy more claims. Anything you say can and will be scrutinized for later use against you. Of this you can be certain. Absent this off the cuff statement, the vA would have found something else. They usually don’t fight these this hard with all the favorable nexi. I suspect they just couldn’t let their own raters go down that road. Before long it would become an ugly, ingrained habit and vA is not prepared to go there yet. They can bluff until the rest of us die,
asknod
Bethanie Spangenberg
kcraveiro
robinhoodesqvetsatty
Wesley McCauley
Veterans Claims Help 
I was and 8404, 8432 HM1 with 1st Force Service Support Group a Camp Pendleton and was involved in numerous Flu vaccination “evolutions.” The Jet Injector apparatus was always the mainstay though we also offered disposable syringe and needle innoculation as well for those who requested it. We corpsmen were often Over inoculated while testing and preparing the device as well as exposed to aerosol from “air” shots used to “clear” the apparatus. The nozzle assembly was always autoclaved and kept in sterile packaging until used, and the nozzle swabbed with acetone before use but NOT between shots. Acetone was used so the skin would be dry by the time the shot was given. This was to make the skin “sticky” and helped prevent lateral “cuts” rather than stable IM injections. There was no “reswabbing” of the nozzel required between injections, since the whole idea was to inoculation units of men lined up to recieve them and march out.
One can’t help imagine, however, the MICRO environment of the nozzle on the apparatus.
There was a tiny round space containing a disk of mica with a VERY tiny hole drilled through it. This produced the stream of vaccine sharp enough to pierce the skin and and force the measured dose deep enough to reach muscle. Consider the “micro space” above the mica disk and the potential for “splash back” of tissue and blood into this space.
Our instructions were to occationally “clear” the apparatus by shooting it into the air, thereby removing micro-accumulations of blood, tissue, etc. and swab the nozzle.
I attribute my current “hypersensitivity” to flue vaccine to having breathed this “blowback” that would be in the air. My hep-c was aquired at my first duty station, an NRMC MICU where I accidentally stabbed myself while “destroying” a needle as required by law at that time, a procedure forbidden by law today for good reason. The irony of having spread disease while trying to prevent it follows me through my daily life today. “New Generation” jet injectors be dambed.
Ask for a sterile needle. To my 8432 brothers and sisters: fight this worship of “march em in, shoot em, stab em, whatever and march em out” marine corps efficiancy. You have “cred” with the marines you serve, use it to help fight for them.
Another chink in the armor. This vet had a 25-year old relationship with his physician and that was a big help. Also, the claim included a lot of letters and reports that the judge did NOT dismiss as Internet junk, He might have actually read them and learned a bit.
I appreciate the doggedness of veterans who keep fighting for the U S government to recognize that MUNJI use can/did cause the transmission of blood-born infections. WHO has. Why are we so irresponsible?
It’s a fight for civilians too because there are powerful groups who still think the new generation of jet-guns can be safe (Ex. Gates Foundation) and profitable (medical device manufacturers)..