Supporting Our Troops

A few years ago I wrote about a high school classmate who was injured in Iraq and then charged $650 for the body armor that was damaged when his vehicle hit a roadside bomb. Fortunately, about a year later (after his story was picked up by numerous media outlets) the army reimbursed him, and admitted that he never should have been charged in the first place. At the time, I suspected that he was just one of the many soldiers falling through bureaucratic red tape and winding up with bills they shouldn't owe. Now the proof comes from our own Government Accountability Office:

Army and DFAS [Defense Finance and Accounting Service] data as of September 30, 2005, showed that nearly 1,300 Army GWOT battle-injured soldiers who left the service or were killed in combat had military debts totaling $1.5 million during the first 4 years of the OIF/OEF deployment.7 Within this total, almost 900 battle-injured soldiers had debts totaling about $1.2 million and about 400 soldiers who died in battle had debts totaling over $300,000. The actual number of separated battle-injured soldiers and fallen soldiers reported for debt collection may be greater due to inaccurate or incomplete information these soldiers.

I love when you forget that something is required to be double-spaced, and all of a sudden your document jumps to 30+ pages! Woo-hoo!

I can't justify blowing $100 on a hoodie, but this is still pretty damn tempting.

Seriously, I wish I knew the 'real' Cecilia, because we would so clearly be friends. Thankfully, I'll have my very own TA, so this hopefully won't actually be my life next year.





I know posts have been even more random and short lately, but between my previously mentioned friend and this dissertation thing I'm pretty much at the end of my rope these days.

xkcd just about sums it up

And Good Math, Bad Math does the dirty work of diving into the vaccine/autism debate (I pretty much have to stop reading about this one, my brain goes from calm to explode way too rapidly). Here's the latest:

Earlier this month, there was an outbreak of measles in San Diego - the first outbreak of measles in 17 years. None of the infected children were vaccinated. Why not?

There have been recent outbreaks of the mumps in Iowa - started by people who weren't vaccinated, and later transferred even to some who had been.
...
Naturally, the doctors who care for children are concerned about this. They're seeing parents put their children at risk, and they're seeing children come in with diseases and complications that should never happen anymore.

So they've decided to take action. Through the main professional organization for pediatricians, the AAP, they're putting together their own publicity campaign - trying to remind people of the fact that vaccines save lives. They're looking for people who didn't vaccinate their children, and who as a result have suffered from preventable illnesses with serious consequences:

From: Susan
MartinSent: Wednesday, February 13, 2008 2:29 PMTo:
SPOKESPERSONS@LISTSERV.AAP.ORGSubject: parent spokespersons
Hello,
As part of our ongoing response to media stories regarding autism and vaccines, the AAP communications department is compiling a list of parents who support the AAP and are available for interviews. We are looking for two types of parents who could
serve as spokespersons:

Parents of children with autism spectrum disorders who support immunization and who do not believe there is any link between their child's vaccines and his or her autism.

Parents of children who suffered a vaccine-preventable illness. This could be a parent who declined immunization, whose child became ill before a vaccine was available, or whose child was ineligible for immunization.

We are asking for your help identifying parents who would be good spokespersons. They do not need to be expert public speakers. They just need to be open with their story and interested in speaking out on the issue. We will contact candidates in advance to conduct pre-interviews, to offer guidance on talking to reporters and to obtain a signed waiver giving us permission to release their name.
If a parent were placed on our list, we would offer their name and contact information to select media. We hope to build a list of parents from a wide range of geographical areas.

As the Jenny McCarthy and "Eli Stone" stories illustrate, this issue is likely to recur in the national and local media. The AAP is committed to doing all we can to
counter such erroneous reports with factual information supported by scientific
evidence and AAP recommendations. The anti-vaccine groups often have emotional family stories on their side. The ability to offer a reporter an interview with a similarly compelling parent who is sympathetic to the AAP's goals is a powerful tool for our media relations program.

Please contact me if you have any questions or to suggest a parent to interview.
Thank you,
Susan Stevens MartinDirector, Division of Media RelationsAmerican
Academy of Pediatrics847.434.7131