EDITORIAL: No 'disposable heroes'

By | Thursday, July 3, 2008

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Republican presidential candidate John McCain seems to be studiously ignoring the Department of Veteran Affairs drug-testing scandal. By comparison, the McCain camp found time this week for 16 press releases to shadowbox with retired Gen. Wesley Clark. Amid the veteran-themed political theatrics, why can't Mr. McCain simply pledge to get to the bottom of a scandal harming veterans?

As a three-month Washington Times/ABC News investigation revealed in June, the VA is administering drugs with severe potential side effects on hundreds of military veterans in studies that should be suspended immediately. In one particularly egregious case, the VA is testing Pfizer Corp.'s smoking-cessation drug Chantix on a veteran population that includes post-traumatic stress disorder patients returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. The Food and Drug Administration has linked Chantix to three dozen suicides in the general population and more than 400 incidents of suicidal behavior. Initially, the VA failed even to communicate the risk to the test subjects.

In one case described in The Times, a former Army sharpshooter suffered a dramatic recurrence of his stress symptoms while taking VA-administered Chantix. He did not find out that the drug's potential side effects include "changes in behavior, agitation, depressed mood, suicidal ideation and suicidal behavior" until after a stress episode that required police to Taser and restrain him. "I would have shot me," the veteran said of the encounter.

There have been 25 tests on veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and 300 studies on the disorder itself. There are 4,796 enrolled in post-traumatic stress disorder studies at present. Five drugs raise substantial concern. Why does the VA refuse to halt the riskiest aspects of these studies? At minimum, it should stop testing drugs with harmful potential side effects on the traumatized. Chantix in particular should be nowhere near combat veterans, and the VA should not be exploiting veterans with psychological disorders as lab rats.

This scandal is substantially more important and wide-reaching than the Walter Reed Army Medical Center abuses, which rightly garnered much official attention.

As a sitting senator and Vietnam War hero seeking the Oval Office, Mr. McCain owes veterans, and the rest of us, a pledge for action.

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