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Ann Arbor Deaths: V.A. Responsible

By VVAW

What the Veterans Administration is calling "mysteries" are plaguing the VA hospital system. In Ann Arbor, the VA is admitting that as many as 11 veterans have died from unexplained cases of breathing failure: the VA bureaucrats there and the FBI which was called in to investigate say there might be a mystery murderer prowling the halls of the VA hospital. At the VA hospital in Chicago, an investigation into the case of Erwin Pawelski--a Marine vet who was mute and confined to a wheelchair when he was "lost" for 25 hours--has found no answer to the mystery of his disappearance. At the Manhattan VA hospital, 6 patients in five weeks came out of one operating room with serum hepatitis (which is caused by such blunders as dirty needles or bad blood); rather than deal with this criminal error, the VA quickly discharged the affected patients.

What's going on? The VA hospital system is the largest hospital system in the country. Yet, only 15% of eligible vets even use the hospitals and the medical care promised to us when we were in the military. Why? Though there are individual VA hospitals which are better than others, VA hospitals in general have a well-deserved reputation as butcher shops, as warehouses in which older vets are left to die, or as drug dispensaries where patients are doped up (without being told what's being done to them) instead of treated. To heavy with administrators instead of people involved in direct patient care, and with inadequate staffs, the VA is still trying to cut back on the number of VA workers. This can only make a bad situation worse, as it will speed up the already overworked staff.

At the Ann Arbor VA, 35 patients suffered a total of 56 different attacks of respiratory failure; as many as 11 patients died (these are the figures from the FBI investigation which is not yet complete). These 56 breathing failures happened between the 1st of July and the 15th of August, in a hospital where 5 such cases in a month are considered "normal." And, with all the record-keeping which goes on in any VA hospital (what the hell else are all the overpaid administrators and bureaucrats doing?), it took 56 total cases and three cases in a row on one evening to alert the VA to the fact that something was wrong. Later investigation found that the cause of these failures was the injection of Pavulon, a powerful paralyzing drug used to relax throat muscles during surgery.

The VA immediately "discovered" that negligence on the part of the VA was not to blame. But what else accounts for the time involved in finding something was wrong? At this time the VA and FBI are trying to blame a mysterious psychopath running amok in the hospital. But vets who have fought to get decent care from VA hospitals know where the blame really lies--and that is right in the lap of the VA. Despite the dedicated work of thousands of VA nurses, doctors, and other workers, the VA bureaucracy is dominated by the mentality which says "Use once and throw away." All the promises get us to fight their rich man's wars don't mean a damn thing: once they've gotten their use out of us, the care we get from their hospital system doesn't matter anymore, because there isn't any profit in it.

Because there is no profit, and because vets who go to the VA for treatment are usually there because they can't afford private care, the VA has consistently used these patients as guinea pigs for new drugs, new techniques, and new ideas in medicine which have not yet been proved. In one case a couple of years ago, a doctor in the Long Beach VA hospital caused a number of vet/patients to go blind through one of his "experiments"; the result was that his "license to experiment" was taken away--he is still a doctor working at the VA hospital there. The same kind of callous disregard for the health and lives of patients goes on in the welfare wards of hospitals all over the country--if there's no profit to be made, then the patient is a likely subject for experimentation. And, because the medical profession in the US is based on profit, the experimenting doctors seldom if ever let the patient know what is being done.

If the VA was conniving to experiment in Ann Arbor, you can bet they'll use every device to cover up. The "psychopathic killer on the loose" idea now being pushed is one more device to turn attention away from the real criminal--the VA system itself. And this is true even if there were a killer in Ann Arbor.

In Chicago, Erwin Pawelski was lost for 25 hours; from all reports, it appears as if he spent those hours riding in an elevator strapped to his wheelchair and unable to ask for help. The VA, after an investigation, now has decided that he could not have been in the elevator all that time, though they cannot say where he was. An unnamed and undiscovered "volunteer worker" is being blamed for that blunder. But only the loud demands of Pawelski's wife brought the case to the public's attention, and in fact led the VA to search the hospital to find the "misplaced" vet.

It's not only by trying to shuffle off the blame on to mysterious psychopaths or volunteers that the VA hopes to distract attention from its own criminal neglect. The newest goodie, which the VA is trying to use to distract patients, is a tour of VA hospitals in 11 cities by the Penthouse magazine "Pet of the Year." But vets know that what we need is not Penthouse tours or lengthy investigations to decide that mistreatment and murder of vets is still a "mystery"; we need decent care, and we aren't getting it.

Let's put the blame where it belongs--on the VA, top-heavy with bureaucrats, drowning in it s own red tape, and operated with the "don't give a damn" attitude toward vets it's supposed to serve. Put the blame on the government and the system which says ignore anything which doesn't turn a profit, and which is now trying to cut back more on the dangerously low VA staffs and facilities.