This morning Sleepy read that approximately 10.1 percent of Americans are veterans.Here goes some arithmetic on the back of an envelope...
We lose around 6600 Americans to ALS every year. Military veterans have around twice the incidence of ALS than the general population.
So, 10.1% * 6600 * 2 = 1333 annual veterans' deaths from ALS.
So, since Lou Gehrig died in 1941, we have had around 80,000 veterans who have died from ALS.
That would be even more names than are on that agonizingly long Vietnam Memorial wall. Enough is enough. Those who put up their lives to defend our freedoms deserve better.
2 comments:
That is an oustanding number my husband is a veteran and also has ALS, very scary statistics indeed.
I understand the Department of Defense and Veterans Administration have gotten the message. DoD has an active and relatively well funded research program investigating why the military has twice the incidence of ALS than the public at large. I'm not aware of any useful results coming out of the research program. The current budget brouhaha in Congress can seriously affect the funding for all ALS federally funded research.
The VA now considers a diagnosis of ALS as being 100% service connected. Some VA centers are providing extraordinary service to ALS vets. This is not true for every VA servicing center. Where the service centers are not up to par vets need to report this to their Congressmen. A letter from a Congressman often results in remedial action.
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