EXCLUSIVE: VA Whistleblower Who Spoke Before Congress Says VA Has Still Not Addressed His Allegations

Steven Coughlin, the former Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) epidemiologist who as I reported back in March for The Daily Beast blew the whistle on the VA for its alleged lack of care for suicidal veterans, is not satisfied with the agency’s review of his complaints. Coughlin, who worked at the VA’s Office of Public Health until he resigned last year, says the VA, which contacted Coughlin today via email, has not adequately addressed the problems he outlined during his testimony at a Congressional hearing.

In an exclusive interview with The Reno Dispatch, Coughlin said, "I remain concerned about the measures taken in many ongoing VA-funded studies to assist research participants who are suicidal. It does not appear to me that they have done enough to address this serious situation." 

Coughlin told Congress six months ago that VA routinely disseminated false information about Veterans’ health, withheld research showing a link between chemical weapons and Gulf War Illness, rushed studies out the door without taking recommended fixes by an independent board, and failed to offer crucial care or even provide a call back to veterans who came forward as suicidal.

VA Secretary Eric Shinseki

On the same day that Coughlin was testifying before Congress, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki (right) ordered the VA Office of Research Oversight to investigate these allegations. The "final" report has been under review internally at VA for months and is now complete, but has not been released to the media or the public. 

Coughlin says that in May, he received a draft copy of the VA’s final report, which, he notes, “did not discuss what steps the VA planned on taking to protect vulnerable research participants in the National Health Study for a New Generation of U.S. veterans and other large-scale epidemiologic and clinical studies who self-report suicide ideation.”

Coughlin, who notes that every year, hundreds of thousands of men and women are surveyed by VA researchers, says it is "essential" that Congress, investigative journalists, and experts in such fields as epidemiology, psychology, medicine, bioethics, and scientific integrity "continue to draw attention to the need to afford better protections to research participants who are experiencing suicidal behavior."

Coughlin notes that in some large-scale, ongoing epidemiologic studies of veterans and military service men and women, validated scales for assessing major depression have been modified by omitting the item that asks the respondent whether they are having thoughts about their being better off dead or of harming themselves or others. 

"This protects the investigators and the institution by not collecting self-reports about suicidal ideation or intent," he says, "but it does nothing to assist vulnerable research participants who may be thinking of killing themselves."

In response to an email today sent by VA to Coughlin informing him that the final report was now available, if he submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, Coughlin wrote the following:

“In order to request a copy of the report, it would be helpful to know its exact title. As you are aware, the issue that I was most troubled about was the lack of call-backs for veterans who participated in the National Health Study for a New Generation of U.S. veterans who self-reported that they were having thoughts that they would be better off dead.

Coughlin continued, “Can you please tell me, has VA required the investigators to contact any of those research participants to see if they can be assisted in some way? I am very interested to know whether my Congressional testimony and the special review requested by Secretary Shinseki prompted any improvements in the way that the VA Office of Research Oversight requires VA investigators to protect the rights and welfare of veterans participating in large-scale epidemiologic or clinical studies who self-report suicidal ideation, suicide plans, or suicidal behavior.”

Coughlin concluded, “In the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, which as you are aware is internationally accepted as a paradigmatic case in biomedical research ethics and public health ethics, vulnerable research participants were deprived of appropriate health care and some of those people died prematurely from a preventable cause of death. Simply put, they were treated as means to an end. When the whistleblower first reported his concerns and government officials examined the situation, he was unable to get the Agency (the U.S. Public Health Service) to improve the situation. Before too long, that whistleblower left government service. Here we are four decades later and similar events have occurred (in the Department of Veterans Affairs) despite the plethora of federal regulations and VA policies concerning the protection of human subjects.”

Coughlin told me back in March that his only motivation for coming forward was “to help veterans. That’s the only reason I paid for my own flight to come to Washington. I think the attention from the House committee and the media will lead to positive changes. It will hopefully help veterans.”

Members of the VA team responsible for the report did not respond to my emailed requests for comment.

A Big Fracking Mess in Colorado

Colorado floods and fracking: a bad combination - Intellihub.com

The disastrous Colorado flooding, which has claimed lives and thousands of homes, has reignited the nationwide debate over the safety of hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking, the process of injecting water, sand and a variety of chemicals deep into the ground to free natural gas trapped in rock. The floods have damaged oil equipment and sparked fears that toxic fracking fluids may be seeping into the local water supply.

More than 1,800 oil and gas wells in Northwest Colorado have been turned off, according to the Colorado Oil and Gas Association. The extent of the damage is not yet known, but pictures and videos from the floods that have shown up on anti-fracking sites and in local news outlets show flooded wells, overturned tanks and ruptured lines.

In a statement, environmentalist Gary Wockner, of Clean Water Action, said, “Fracking and operating oil and gas facilities in floodplains is extremely risky. Flood waters can topple facilities and spread oil, gas, and cancer-causing fracking chemicals across vast landscapes making contamination and clean-up efforts exponentially worse and more complicated.”

Robyn O'Brien, a Boulder resident and food activist, told CNN, "The damage is not contained. The public is very concerned about its impact on water supplies, both for communities and for the massive amounts of farmland and livestock out here."

Fracking proponents insist the folks in Colorado have nothing to worry about. But we've heard that song before. Fracking is not a clean energy. The process utilizes harmful chemicals that can indeed leak into the water supply and air. 

But as Bloomberg recently reported, the fracking industry is buying people's silence. Drillers from Wyoming to Pennsylvania to Texas have agreed to cash settlements or property buyouts with folks who insist fracking ruined their water. In most of these cases, the homeowners must agree to keep quiet. 

The strategy keeps data from regulators, policymakers, the news media and health researchers, and makes it tougher to challenge the industry’s ridiculous claim that fracking has never tainted anyone’s water. Regulators in Pennsylvania alone have already reportedly linked gas and oil drilling with about 120 cases of water contamination from 2009 to 2012.

In California, of the dozen fracking bills that were introduced in the state's last legislative session, only two survived, three were rejected, and the rest never made it to a floor vote. For this we can thank the deep pockets of the oil industry. You know, the guys who make billions in profits and routinely obfuscate the environmental damage caused by their handiwork. 

The five largest oil concerns spent half a million dollars to defeat various fracking measures recently introduced in California.

While Big Oil is aggressively behind fracking, many independent energy experts say it is a volatile and dangerous way to tap an energy source. At the very least, much more research should be done before we give in to the desires of Exxon/Mobil and the others and just start drilling sideways into the earth beneath us using a cocktail of toxic chemicals.

But fracking has some powerful supporters. During the 2012 presidential campaign, President Obama enthusiastically endorsed fracking - perhaps because it's an increasingly popular way to generate revenue for struggling American towns, including many in key battleground states. 

"We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly 100 years, and my administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy,” Obama said on the campaign trail.



But while Obama insists fracking can be done safely, many disagree. “We’re disappointed in Obama's enthusiasm for (fracking),” Iris Marie Bloom, director of Protecting Our Waters in Philadelphia, told Bloomberg last year. "Obama spoke about natural gas as if it’s better for the environment, which it’s not.”