Re: Pentagon, Big Pharma: Drug Troops to Numb The to Horrors of War

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Great article!!!

Jim

Pentagon, Big Pharma: Drug Troops to Numb Them to Horrors of War

By Penny , AlterNet

Posted on January 10, 2008, Printed on January 10, 2008

http://www.alternet.org/story/72956/

In June, the Department of Defense Task Force on Mental Health acknowledged

" daunting and growing " psychological problems among our troops: Nearly 40

percent of soldiers, a third of Marines and half of National Guard members

are presenting with serious mental health issues. They also reported

" fundamental weaknesses " in the U.S. military's approach to psychological

health. That report was followed in August by the Army Suicide Event Report

(ASER), which reported that 2006 saw the highest rate of military suicides

in 26 years. And last month, CBS News reported that, based on its own

extensive research, over 6,250 American veterans took their own lives in

2005 alone -- that works out to a little more than 17 suicides every day.

That's all pretty bleak, but there is reason for optimism in the

long-overdue attention being paid to the emotional and psychic cost of these

new wars. The shrill hypocrisy of an administration that has decked itself

in yellow ribbons and mandatory lapel pins while ignoring a human crisis of

monumental proportion is finally being exposed.

On Dec. 12, Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., chairman of the House Veterans

Affairs Committee, called a hearing on " Stopping Suicides: Mental Health

Challenges Within the Department of Veterans Affairs. " At that hearing

suggestions were raised and conversations begun that hopefully will bear

fruit.

But I find myself extremely anxious in the face of some of these new

suggestions, specifically what is being called the Psychological Kevlar Act

of 2007 and use of the drug propranalol to treat the symptoms of

posttraumatic stress injuries. Though both, at least in theory, sound

entirely reasonable, even desirable, in the wrong hands, under the wrong

leadership, they could make the sci-fi fantasies of Blade Runner seem

prescient.

The Psychological Kevlar Act " directs the secretary of defense to develop

and implement a plan to incorporate preventive and early-intervention

measures, practices or procedures that reduce the likelihood that personnel

in combat will develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or other

stress-related psychopathologies, including substance use conditions.

(Kevlar, a DuPont fiber, is an essential component of U.S. military helmets

and bullet-proof vests advertised to be " five times stronger than steel. " )

The stated purpose of this legislation is to make American soldiers less

vulnerable to the combat stressors that so often result in psychic injuries.

On the face of it, the bill sounds logical and even compassionate. After

all, our soldiers are supplied with physical armor -- at least in theory. So

why not mental? My guess is that the representatives who have signed on to

this bill are genuinely concerned about the welfare of troops and their

families. Kennedy, D-R.I., is the bill's sponsor, and I have no

reason to question his genuine commitment to mental health issues, both

within and outside of the military. Still, I find myself chilled at the

prospects. To explain my discomfort, I need to go briefly into the history

of military training.

Since World War II, our military has sought and found any number of ways to

override the values and belief systems recruits have absorbed from their

families, schools, communities and religions. Using the principles of

operant conditioning, the military has found ways to reprogram their human

software, overriding those characteristics that are inconvenient in a

military context, most particularly the inherent resistance human beings

have to killing others of their own species. " Modern combat training

conditions soldiers to act reflexively to stimuli, " says Lt. Col.

Kilner, a professor of philosophy and ethics at West Point, " and this

maximizes soldiers' lethality, but it does so by bypassing their moral

autonomy. Soldiers are conditioned to act without considering the moral

repercussions of their actions; they are enabled to kill without making the

conscious decision to do so. If they are unable to justify to themselves the

fact that they killed

another human being, they will likely -- and understandably -- suffer

enormous guilt. This guilt manifests itself as post-traumatic stress

disorder (PTSD), and it has damaged the lives of thousands of men who

performed their duty in combat. "

By military standards, operant conditioning has been highly effective. It's

enabled American soldiers to kill more often and more efficiently, and that

ability continues to exact a terrible toll on those we have designated as

the " enemy. " But the toll on the troops themselves is also tragic. Even when

troops struggle honorably with the difference between a protected person and

a permissible target (and I believe that the vast majority do so struggle,

though the distinction is one I find both ethically and humanely

problematic) in war " shit happens. " When soldiers are witness to

overwhelming horror, or because of a reflexive accident, an illegitimate

order, or because multiple deployments have thoroughly distorted their

perceptions, or simply because they are in the wrong place at the wrong

time -- those are the moments that will continue to haunt them, the memories

they will not be able to forgive or forget, and the stuff of posttraumatic

stress injuries.

And it's not just the inherent conscientious objector our military finds

inconvenient: current U.S. military training also includes a component to

desensitize male soldiers to the sounds of women being raped, so the enemy

cannot use the cries of their fellow soldiers to leverage information. I

think it not unreasonable to connect such desensitization techniques to the

rates of domestic violence in the military, which are, according to the DoD,

five times those in the civilian population. Is anyone really surprised that

men who have been specifically trained to ignore the pain and fear of women

have a difficult time coming home to their wives and families? And clearly

they do. There were 2,374 reported cases of sexual assault in the military

in 2005, a 40 percent increase over 2004. But that figure represents only

reported cases, and, as Air Force Brig. Gen. K.C. McClain, commander of

DoD's Joint Task Force for Sexual Assault Prevention and Response

pointed out, " Studies indicate that only 5 percent of sexual assaults are

reported. "

I have thought a lot about the implications of " psychological Kevlar " --

what kind of " preventive and early-intervention measures, practices or

procedures " might be developed that would " reduce the likelihood that

personnel in combat will develop post-traumatic stress disorder. " How would

a soldier with a shield against moral response " five times stronger than

steel " behave?

I cannot convince myself that what is really being promoted isn't a form of

moral lobotomy.

I cannot imagine what aspects of selfhood will have to be excised or

paralyzed so soldiers will no longer be troubled by what they, not to

mention we, would otherwise consider morally repugnant. A soldier who has

lost an arm can be welcomed home because he or she still shares fundamental

societal values. But the soldier who sees her friend emulsified by a bomb,

or who is ordered to run over children in the road rather than slow down the

convoy, or who realizes too late that the woman was carrying a baby, not a

bomb -- if that soldier's ability to feel terror and horror has been

amputated, if he or she can no longer be appalled or haunted, something far

more precious has been lost. I am afraid that the training or conditioning

or drug that will be developed to protect soldiers from such injuries will

leave an indifference to violence that will make them unrecognizable to

themselves and to those who love them. They will be alienated and isolated,

and

finally unable to come home.

Posttraumatic stress injuries can devastate the lives of soldiers and their

families. The suicides that are so often the result of such injuries make it

clear that they can be every bit as lethal as bullets or bombs, and to date

no cure has been found. Treatment and disability payments, both for injured

troops and their families, are a huge budgetary concern that becomes ever

more daunting as these wars drag on. The Psychological Kevlar Act perhaps

holds out the promise of a prophylactic remedy, but it should come as no

surprise that Big Pharma has been looking for a chemical intervention.

What they have come up with has already been dubbed " the mourning after

pill. " Propranalol, if taken immediately following a traumatic event, can

subdue a victim's stress response and so soften his or her perception of the

memory. That does not mean the memory has been erased, but proponents claim

that the drug can render it emotionally toothless.

If your daughter were raped, the argument goes, wouldn't you want to spare

her a traumatic memory that might well ruin her life? As the mother of a

23-year old daughter, I can certainly understand the appeal of that

argument. And a drug that could prevent the terrible effects of traumatic

injuries in soldiers? If I were the parent of a soldier suffering from such

a life-altering injury, I can imagine being similarly persuaded.

Not surprisingly, the Army is already on board. Propranolol is a

well-tolerated medication that has been used for years for other purposes.

And it is inexpensive.

But is it moral to weaken memories of horrendous acts a person has

committed? Some would say that there is no difference between offering

injured soldiers penicillin to prevent an infection and giving a drug that

prevents them from suffering from a posttraumatic stress injury for the rest

of their lives. Others, like Leon Kass, chairman of the President's Council

on Bioethics, object to propranolol's use on the grounds that it medicates

away one's conscience. " It's the morning-after pill for just about anything

that produces regret, remorse, pain or guilt, " he says. Barry Romo, a

national coordinator for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, is even more

blunt. " That's the devil pill, " he says. " That's the monster pill, the

anti-morality pill. That's the pill that can make men and women do anything

and think they can get away with it. Even if it doesn't work, what's scary

is that a young soldier could believe it will. "

It doesn't take a neuroscientist to see the problem with both of these

solutions. Though both hold the promise of relief from the effects of an

injury that causes unspeakable pain, they do so at what appears to be great

cost. Whatever research projects might be funded by the Psychological Kevlar

Act and whatever use is made of propranolol, they will almost certainly

involve a diminished range of feelings and memory, without which soldiers

and veterans will be different. But in what ways?

I wish I could trust the leadership of our country to prioritize the lives

and well-being of our citizens. I don't. The last six years have clearly

shown the extent to which this administration is willing to go to use

soldiers for its own ends, discarding them when they are damaged. Will

efforts be made to fix what has been broken? Return what has been taken?

Bring them home? Will citizens be enlightened about what we are condoning in

our ignorance, dispassion or indifference? Or will these two solutions

simply bring us closer to realizing the bullet-proof mind, devoid of the

inconvenient vulnerability of decent human beings to atrocity and horror?

And finally, these are all questions about the morality of proposals that

are trying to prevent injuries without changing the social circumstances

that bring them about, which sidestep the most fundamental moral dilemma:

that of sending people to war in the first place.

Penny is the widow of a Vietnam veteran who took his own life after

coming home. Her latest book, Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder,

Suicide and the Lessons of War, was released on Memorial Day, 2006. Her blog

is Flashback.

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/72956/

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