On a pinhead

Posted on August 2, 2012 by Laura

I’ve been reading a biology text book (c. 1987) that we own.  These sentences struck me:

“A virus is a genome enclosed in a protective coat.  The tiniest viruses are only 20 nm in diameter–smaller than a ribosome.  Millions could easily fit on a pinhead.  Even the largest viruses can barely be resolved with the light microscope. “

A chart tries to illustrate nanometers.  An atom is .01 nm; small molecules might be 1 nms; lipids, then proteins, up to 10 nms; ribosomes are a bit bigger and then we have the small viruses.  HCV viruses are different sizes–some are 50 nms, some a bit bigger.  They can only been seen with an electron microscope.

The CDC writes:

“How long does the Hepatitis C virus survive outside the body?

The Hepatitis C virus can survive outside the body at room temperature, on environmental surfaces, for at least 16 hours but no longer than 4 days.

How should blood spills be cleaned from surfaces to make sure that Hepatitis C virus is gone?”

Any blood spills — including dried blood, which can still be infectious — should be cleaned using a dilution of one part household bleach to 10 parts water. Gloves should be worn when cleaning up blood spills.

Our blood is the chemical soup that transports these zombies.  Since HCV can survive on surfaces for days–wet or dried up–then blood spills need be no bigger than a pinhead to house millions of them.

Media images from the Vietnam war period come to mind: outdoor village barbers with their busy clippers and razors; clunky jet-guns pressed into recruits’ bare arms at boot camp;   Vietnamese and American wounds getting dressed in the bush,  hamlets, and compounds.  Such a mixing up of blood and its then undetectable payloads of HCV.

Posted in Guest authors, HCV Health, Medical News | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

FORT LEUKEMIA PRESUMPTIVE DISEASES

Posted on August 1, 2012 by asknod

Here’s the list of diseases associated with the carcinogens found in Fort Leukemia’s water.

‘‘(i) Esophageal cancer.
‘‘(ii) Lung cancer.
‘‘(iii) Breast cancer.
‘‘(iv) Bladder cancer.
‘‘(v) Kidney cancer.
‘‘(vi) Leukemia.
‘‘(vii) Multiple myeloma.
‘‘(viii) Myleodysplasic syndromes.
‘‘(ix) Renal toxicity.

‘‘(x) Hepatic steatosis.
‘‘(xi) Female infertility.
‘‘(xii) Miscarriage.
‘‘(xiii) Scleroderma.
‘‘(xiv) Neurobehavioral effects.
‘‘(xv) Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.’’.
We shall see how they rate this. Even money says they’ll do what they already to and deny most claims as being too tenuous to prove.

Fort Leukemia Wastewater Treatment Plant

Posted in Camp Lejeune poisoning, Medical News, vA news | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Class Action: Against the VA

Posted on August 1, 2012 by joeaveragevet

Hmmmm…I wonder if shredded evidence amounts to “denial of due process”.

This Vet has launched a class action suit, and we are apparently asked to join him.

I would be very interested in Vets comments on this!

For more information contact:

gary001ok@yahoo.com

 

Posted in Fed. Cir. & Supreme Ct., Guest authors, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 14 Comments

ASKNOD @ KINDLEBOOKS

Posted on August 1, 2012 by asknod

Gee, I guess I’m officially published. I was looking on line to see if it had showed up and up sprang this. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=ASKNOD.

If you use the Kindlebook phenomenon, you can download it from your computer.

I still don’t have any copies yet in paper form. The publisher says “It’s in the mail”. Barnes and Noble has the paperback

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/asknod?keyword=asknod&store=book

Posted in ASKNOD BOOK | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

CAMP OF THE YOUNG BILL PASSES BOTH HOUSES

Posted on August 1, 2012 by asknod

Good news for CDNEH and her spouse Chase. Both Houses of Congress have passed a Camp Lejeune Bill that will mean the same litigation path all we Vets must pass through. 750.000 Vets, wives and children will be affected by this. I note with dismay the usual “except for” we all saw in the  1991 AO legislation when the coverup on that poisoning became apparent.

The bill provides health care to sick military personnel and their family members provided they had lived or worked at least 30 days on the base from 1957 to 1987. They also must have a condition listed within the bill that’s associated with exposure to the contaminating chemicals.

The trouble with all these Bills is that the Senators and Congressmen all get together and do  that serious head-bob thing like my Hawaiian Hula dancer girl on the dashboard but nobody reads the thing. Thus you get “Veterans with boots on the ground in RVN are presumptively assumed to have been exposed …etc. , the the link to Porphyria Cuatana Tarda, Chloracne, and Sub-acute, Peripheral Neuropathy will be service connected IF… you manifested it within one year of departing RVN. Whoa, dude. Run that by me again slowly. Some  raters will even throw in May 7th, 1975. Remember that? The rooftop Olympics over at the Air America Apartments trying to get a ride out on a Huey?

So you see the problem. The Marines are going to take it in the shorts when they publish the list.  I see a bunch of tricky language with the time limits “must have been disabling to a compensable degree within one year of transfer away from Fort Leukemia”. God forbid if your symptoms don’t metastasize for 15 years. The vA will undoubtedly trot out the Fed. Circus  Maxson vs. Gober decision  and conclusively prove 85 % of these souls don’t meet the criteria because it happened 40 years ago.

Typical male chauvinist portrayal of Native Hawaiian Islander in traditional garb

She could be a Senator. I’d even vote for her.

Posted in Camp Lejeune poisoning | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

CAVC–BATSON V.SHINSEKI– CURED HEP=NO DICE

Posted on August 1, 2012 by asknod

Much has been published here about representing yourself. When the evidence is so dispositive as to leave no room for doubt, we advocate it wholeheartedly. This is always true but only up to a point. When going before the CAVC, it behooves one to be very erudite on law. More importantly, before pushing the claim boat off the shore and embarking on the process, it is important to have all the condiments needed to prevail.

Meet Tommy H. Batson, [Click here . Erase the word {query}then enter 11-2405 and hit search. Click on Download in upper left to view normally]  the latest victim of pro se justice at the Court. Tommy, I’m sure has a lot of legal acumen to have made it this far on his own. To date, he has been unavailing in his pursuit of SC for his HBV-yep-Hepatitis B virus. While it isn’t unheard of, HBV can manifest itself in a chronic state that never completely resolves. These cases are few and far between but not so rare as to be an anomaly. Tommy doesn’t fall into that category. His was the mundane,  acute variety that resolved long, long ago. So long ago that he isn’t exactly sure when he got it. He insists it was from tattoos in the military. Nevertheless, it isn’t impacting his enjoyment of life now and that is the problem.

Tommy has petitioned the Court to grant him SC based on… what? The fact that he cannot donate blood at the Red Cross?  This is where he legally stubs his toe. Caluza, followed by Hickson and Shedden, enunciated the most important precept of the triad of components needed to begin a claim. That, of course, is an actual physical disability. Simply put, absent any active disease process, you have no claim. Tommy  Twotones arrived at the RO with antibodies to HBV and little else. He is otherwise healthy. Rarely do we see a Veteran arrive with no disease. Quite the contrary. Most arrive without the nexus and spend years trying to satisfy this shortcoming.

Part of the reason Patricia asked me to start this site in 2008 was to avoid this of which I speak-to educate Vets on how to win. In the process, we have branched off and tried to shed as much light on the process as possible to help you avoid wasting your time. Tommy missed that briefing much to his chagrin. Knowledge of the process is essential to formulating a game plan. I had no idea you needed a nexus letter in 2007 when I started over with my claim. You didn’t need one in 1994, but I didn’t know that either. In fact, my VSO wasn’t very forthcoming about it until I mentioned I had just uncovered it. Then he acted like I was raised by wolves for not knowing it.

I suppose this would be filed on my old site under Frivolous Filings in that it had no chance of winning-ever.  In light of the horrendous backlog that engulfs us right now, I feel it belongs in a new category-one called Depriving Fellow Vets of Justice. By carrying this appeal forward not just to the BvA, but further up to the Court, Mr. Batson has aided and abetted the backlog single-handedly. It’s unfortunate that there isn’t someone appointed by the judiciary to take the Batsons of life aside and explain reality to them-i.e. that they have no chance of prevailing. Better yet, wouldn’t it be nice if someone counseled him on the prerequisites for prevailing? I hesitate to suggest imposing monetary fines or punishment for gumming up the wheels of justice but this comes as close as I have seen for some form of intervention. Every dog must have his day. Make no mistake about it. That day should have ended at the RO. Instead, with the full force of the legal system in his corner, Tommy has usurped the place of another Vet for 8 years, received a C&P examination, extensive PCR testing for HAV, HBV and HCV antibodies, and generally pursued a claim for a nebulous condition. Along the way he has taken up the time and resources that would have been spent on someone genuinely diseased or impaired.

Assuming arguendo that he had prevailed and won, his reward would have been an ice creme cone with a scoop of air-0%.  He would have been entitled to medical care at VAMCs for what? HBV-resolved with no chronic symptoms. While we may sit back and grumble about the backlog, be aware that it is a double-edged sword. Veterans certainly aren’t the problem with today’s record backlogs but the Batsons of the world do nothing to improve the timeline to a resolution of your claim. While being unable to donate blood to your favorite charity may seem like a disability to some, rest assured that it is not.

And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

Posted in CAvC HCV Ruling, Frivolous Filings, Veterans Law | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

JANUARY 2013 SEQUESTRATION TO IMPACT VA

Posted on July 31, 2012 by asknod

As usual, those chuckleheads in DC have had a few too many martinis at lunch before the afternoon vote. They wanted to immunize vA spending against what was going to happen but somebody forgot to write it in. Shit happens. As usual, we get the short end of this punji stick and everyone will cry in their beer about how it was an “unforeseeable error”. What won’t happen is the repair order. The donkeys and the elephants will argue right on through until it kicks in. They don’t want to be seen as increasing the debt on their constituents in an election year even though they’d like to build more bridges to nowhere.

Congressman  Jeff Millers VA Blunder

On July 25, Military.com reported on the coming cuts to the DoD budget. This report includes the statement that “[a]s For the Department of Veterans Affairs, which was given an exemption from any sequestration cuts, Secretary Eric Shinseki told a somewhat surprised committee that departmental administrative costs would still be subject to mandatory cuts.”

It seems that the people who voted for the Budget Control Act of 2011 failed to read before voting. The full text (see rules.house.gov) includes definitions of categories subject to sequestration. These categories include a security category and states that “discretionary appropriations associated with agency budgets for the … the Department of Veterans Affairs…”

Republicans, including our Congressman Jeff Miller, voted overwhelmingly to approve this bill. Now that a financial disaster looms for his constituency, the Republicans are calling these cuts Obama’s. It would be more appropriate to call the coming cuts to Veteran’s Affair’s Congressman Miller’s. As the chair of the House Committee on Veteran’s Affairs, Congressman Miller has no excuse for not realizing the implications of the bill he voted for and no excuse for not assuring by now that cuts to this important department would not occur.

Congressman Miller and the Republican party can blame President Obama and the President can say that cuts will not be made to Veteran’s Affairs, but in actuality President Obama does not control this budget. With its passage and their failure to assure necessary services provided by Veteran’s Affairs, the Republicans bear the responsibility.   This info has been public for a Yr.

I guess we have to give it July’s Ruh-oh, Rorge award. Asro sorry.

P.S. Here’s another take on it. Define “administrative costs” if you can. vA apparently cannot. It’s a rather nebulous concept that will require tea leaves, chicken entrails and a lot of prognostication.

Posted in vA news | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

MORE BIG BROTHER AT THE VA

Posted on July 31, 2012 by asknod

Just when we thought we’d heard it all about spying on 80 year old VAMC patients, out comes this tidbit spotted by Bodacious Bob, our FAC spotter in the Northeast. It shows the lengths vA is willing to go to in order to obtain deleterious information on us.

I have been chided for suggesting that vA would employ Criminal Background Investigatory techniques to discover a Veteran’s history when he or she has a checkered career in the military. I know this because vA has obtained information on several of the Vets we have helped that could only have been garnered by such methods.

As an employer, we were forced into this by several employees who used us to get Workman’s Compensation. They “fell” down or were injured a few days after being hired and we paid through higher premiums for years. We started becoming more careful after that. It costs $39.95 a year to subscribe to the CBI service and you can find out anything and everything about your prospective new hire.  With the SSN, it even reduces the error of misidentification to 0%. I’m sure vA gets a break on the fee based on their extensive use of it. It reveals interesting things like drug busts, any staycations at the Graybar Hotel and in some cases even the employment history.

VA has used this for denigrating your claims for jetguns by showing intercurrent drug usage after service as a plausible risk. Time spent in prison is considered a major risk due to you becoming the unwilling recipient of a fellow inmate’s affections.  An arrest for driving under the influence is all the proof they need that you have an ETOH abuse problem and we all know that is a risk for HCV.

Keep this in mind when filing so as to avoid having it rear its ugly head later on down the road. Better yet, run your own CBI on yourself and see what the government has on you. The era of Big Brother has arrived whether we’re willing to admit it or not. Sadly, vA is overwhelmed with requests for compensation and ill-prepared to separate the wheat from the chaff. What better way to keep up on the goings and comings of us Veterans with shady pasts and questionable morals?

P.S. I received an email to the effect that the type of surveillance (if any) would be in the nature of reading your emails. This is taken from the information published in this article.

Posted in All about Veterans, vA news | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

VAMCs–RATIONED CARE?

Posted on July 31, 2012 by asknod

Something is amiss at the VAMCs. I’m sure there are those of you who use the VA for all your medical care. I’m not sure if you have noticed, but there is a subtle form of rationing afoot. It’s not blatant and glaring. It’s not an outright refusal. It’s a subtle inability to obtain what is rightfully yours by the Catch 22 method. Consider this.

When I had my teeth cleaned in January. I was handed a scheduling slip for June to make a date for another cleaning. I was not able to schedule this because Mike, the desk dude doesn’t allow it. Or, in the alternative, VA’s computer doesn’t permit it until the month it is to be scheduled. Thus the earliest you could possibly get your teeth cleaned was to call in June and hope for a July appointment. I called on June 12th. Sorry, Mr. Nod. June is booked up. Call us in July. July dawned and I dutifully called Mike on the 8th.  No way, Jose. They were all booked up for July. It was explained to me that in order to do this I must call on the first of the month for an appointment the following month.

Tomorrow I call for a cleaning appointment. I hope to get one some time in September. What this shows is the system is overwhelmed. It has been getting worse but this is becoming a joke. If the medical appointments are being processed like this we are in for some serious problems. A dental appointment, while not life-threatening, is only one facet of VA Medical care. Absent a catastrophic occurrence such as a filling falling out, we expect a minor delay even in the civilian sector. To ration the access simply to obtain an appointment is ludicrous.  This oddly employs a technique we are witnessing at the VAROs. To wit,  the practice of taking a year to certify a claim for appeal and transmitting it to the BVA. Yep. It’s certified. Has it been shipped to DC? Well, not exactly but we’re working on it.

Keep an eye on this phenomenon and question VAMC personnel. If there is a problem with access, it should be exposed now before the troops from Afstan show up and it really gets crowded. We haven’t seen anything yet. The claims backlog is just a harbinger of the tsunami of medical care that will accompany all those injuries. The large number of amputations or lost limbs from IEDs, while not as large as the Vietnam numbers, is still going to be a tremendous burden on the system as these Veterans attempt to access physical therapy and prostheses.

I guess we don’t even need to discuss the horrible delays in seeking mental health appointments from professionals for Bent Brain Box. Perhaps you just have to call in on the first of the month to get that coveted appointment 45 days hence?

Oh, the Times, They Are A-changin’.

Posted in Medical News | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

THE CARE AND FEEDING OF CARROTS

Posted on July 30, 2012 by asknod

Cupcake comes from the farmer side of the family. I was, and try to be, the hunter and fisher of vertebrates. Learning the science of farming and language of moisture feeders is C3PO crap. Like any ex-military male, I assume it can’t be any harder than chewing gum.

Thus, when Cupcake intoned that I might be getting the carrots too close together, I had to correct her and show how it is done.  After 65 days of growth, I stand corrected…

These are really hard to dig up, too. The second bit of advice I have for novices is not to plant carrots where there are a lot of rocks. I’ve been getting an inordinate amount of L-shaped ones. I hate that when that happens.

Padewan Carrot farmer.

Posted in Food for the soul, Humor | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment