Post
by EricLeeHughes » Mon Feb 21, 2011 5:09 pm
Draft #3. Attempting to combine both statements into a unified work. The schools I plan on applying to do not have a page limit on the PS or DS. After wrestling which statement to declare my PS and DS. I've opted to combine them into a single statement that serves both purposes. Still pretty rough...
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It was a moonless night in September 1998, on a mountain road in the Imjin River Basin, South Korea. I was driving my HUMVEE when I came upon a grisly sight. A midsized sedan had just crossed right of center, striking a motorcycle head on at highway speeds. Neither driver nor passenger on the motorcycle was wearing a helmet.
The medical instincts that the Army had instilled in me instinctively took control. Without stopping to consider the long-term repercussions, I stopped my truck, grabbed what medical supplies I had, and rushed out to survey the carnage. I quickly diagnosed one patient with a broken neck. The other had a subdural hematoma and an open head wound, and was leaking spinal fluid. Both men were unconscious, and the latter required immediate surgery to survive.
As the only medical personnel on the scene, I ordered my Sergeant to take the HUMVEE two miles up the road to camp and return with medical help. While waiting, I used hand signals to instruct the non-English-speaking bystanders to call for an ambulance then instructed two bystanders in how to maintain an open airway. Up to my elbows in blood and spinal fluid, and working without infection control equipment, I gave aid to the crash victims for forty-five minutes before a Korean ambulance finally arrived.
I was aware that I was exposing myself to the risk of HIV or hepatitis infection, but I did not care because I knew their lives were in my hands. I simply considered it my responsibility to use my training to save them, despite the risks. Over the following two years I was regularly tested for HIV and Hepatitis. Thankfully, the tests came negative, and for a while I believed that I had escaped the ordeal unharmed. However, it was some ten years before the real damaging effects of these events would finally strike. PTSD can be like that sometimes. It is an insidious occupational hazard that all too often strikes first responders, and soldiers such as myself.
In December of 2007, I entered outpatient treatment for PTSD. I learned I was not alone. I believed that the world is fundamentally a fair and just place. Abruptly and traumatically confronted with the reality that there is random injustice in the world my life was shattered. The more noble a person is and the more altruistic their goals, the more likely I believe they are to succumb to the effects of PTSD.
The most effective type of treatment program for PTSD is designed to rearrange your thinking, values, and beliefs about the world. I am not saying that I was taught to give up my altruism; instead, I learned to shed my naïveté. No longer believing in simplified concepts of justice, I have come to learn that the world is unjust, but that I have the power to bring justice to some small part of it. It is this new focus and perspective that motivates my desire to go to law school.
My area of interest is in veterans’ law and military discharges. The veteran’s law community is small. Nationally, only a few hundred attorneys practice in this field. Non-attorney practitioners take up the slack in the veteran’s claims demand. Mostly they are service officers from the various veterans lobby and social support groups, or taxpayer supported county officials. Smaller still is the subset of attorneys that focus their advocacy efforts in the area of veteran’s civil rights. Save for a J.D. and a Bar Examination, I am already a member of the smaller group.
I speak directly to a current crisis in the disabled military and veterans communities. I see five profound problems that symbolize the demand for a dedicated veterans advocate.
1.) The VA claims Backlog:
At last count the Department of Veterans Affairs had 512,700+ claims pending and 90,800+ pending appeals. With the recent additions to the presumptive conditions for Dioxin (Agent Orange) exposure this backlog is only expected to grow. Dr. Martin Luther King’s statement “A justice delayed is a justice denied” rings true in this case. The Secretary has failed to make reasonable attempts to solve the procedural problems that lead to the delay. This was exemplified when he was found in civil contempt by the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims on January 27, 2011, for failing to expedite remands.
2.) Shredding our trust in the VA:
On October 13, 2008 an expose broken by Larry Scott of VAWatchdog.org uncovered a confidential VAOIG investigation into the Detroit VA Region Office shredding substantial amounts of evidence in veterans claim files. As the story unfolded, it became clear that the spoliation of evidence by VA personnel was widespread, and had become standard practice to deal with the claims backlog.
3.) Fiduciary Fiasco
When the average person can no longer manage their own funds due process protections contained within guardianship proceedings protect the incompetent individual from being taken advantage of, or by having their estate wrongly disseised. But for the veteran, there are no such protections. A single signature, from a single physician, is all it takes for the VA to assign the veterans benefits over to a VA fiduciary for “safe keeping.” The end result of such paternalism is often destitution for the veteran.
4.) The Feres Doctrine and unethical experimentation:
In Feres v. U.S. 340 U.S. 135 (1950) the Supreme Court ruled that military service members couldn’t sue or recover damages from the Department of Defense for injuries incurred in the line of duty. Sadly, this ruling has been capitalized on by military scientists that have since subjected military service members to a host of unethical experiments. Substances that have been tested on military members are chemical warfare and live biological agents; Experimental drugs to include LSD; And microwave based energy weapons designed to bake the soldiers skin as if it were food. These experiments are the subject of Vietnam Veterans of America et. al v. The Central Intelligence Agency et. al.
5.) Military Discharges and the Stigma of Disability:
When a service member becomes too disabled to function in the military environment there is a series of administrative discharge procedures that are designed to compensate the service member for their disabling condition. The simple way to understand them is that minor disabilities result in the service member’s contract being bought out by the Department of Defense. While more significant disabilities result in the service member being medically retired. The problem with this process is that the veterans’ disability status is prominently placed on discharge papers that serve as an employment reference. The result is a lifetime of stigma and discrimination.
These are problems that have motivated me to move beyond practice as a paralegal or non-attorney VA claims practitioner. I want to make the same kind of high impact, paradigm changes for justice, my friend and mentor has made. To do that, I have to be something more than a veteran’s service officer. I have to be an attorney.
