Venereal Disease

[babyray]

Has anyone ever had SC for venereal disease? What evidence was used?

babyray

[babyray]

Babyray

You wont be compensated for VD or any other disease/injury that has no symptoms/problems. Basically Va compensation is to compensate you for lack of earning capacity. VD in 1956 that causes you no problems or symptoms now is noncompensable, even if service connected. The same is true if you broke your foot..but it healed and you do not have pain, and you have no problems from your broken foot. Non compensable.

In a nutshell you have to have something called continuity to be compensated. Going back to the broken foot, if your foot that you broke in the service develops arthritis, or becomes so painfull you cant use it due to complications from the fracture, then you may get compensated. Continuity means you keep going back to the doc for treatment of the condition.

Broncovet, this a great answer. This tell me all I wanted to know. I will forget about this and move on because I cannot get SC for this because this is noncompensable. You should have been a doc. This closes out this post.

babyray

[rentalguy1]

you can still get service connected, you just can't get compensated in the absence of current symptoms. You could get a rating of 0%. This can be very important down the road with various VD's. Take syphilis for example. That disease causes brain problems and leads to death many years after becoming infected. If a vet is sc'd at 0% for syphilis, and then dies years later from a complication of that disease, the vet's spouse would be eligible for DIC.

[sharon]

http://www.va.gov/vetapp03/Files/0306103.txt

"Congress specifically limits entitlement for service-

connected disease or injury to cases where such incidents

have resulted in a disability. See 38 U.S.C.A. § 1110. In

the absence of proof of a present disability there can be no

valid claim." Brammer v. Derwinski, 3 Vet. App. 223, 225

(1992).

Edited September 18, 2009 by sharon

[rentalguy1]

a valid diagnosis constitutes a current disability. Otherwise there would be no need for a "noncompensable" regs and criteria.

[broncovet]

Rental guy is right. If you do beleive that you caught VD in the service, there is one "school of thought" that suggests you should go ahead and apply to the VA for compensation for VD even tho you have no current symptoms because you may get a 0% rating for it. Then, you have to apply the VA "fuzzy math", which means, in this case

0 plus 0 = 10%. That is, if you have a zero percent rating for SC VD and another Service connected 0% rating, say, for hearing loss, then those 2 combine to 10%.

However, people have pointed out that by asking for things such as VD that you got in 1956 but suffer no problems for it, you may not be taken seriously for a potentially much more compensable condition. For example, if you have PTSD from military service, you might want to focus on getting that service connected and forget about your 1956 VD.

JMHO.

[sharon]

a valid diagnosis constitutes a current disability. Otherwise there would be no need for a "noncompensable" regs and criteria.

If there is no current diagnosis or residuals then there is no disability. The only condition that I can think of that can be service connected with no current diagnosis or residuals is malaria. Otherwise the VD was treated and cured. A 0 percent rating means that you have the disability but not to the degree that is it compensenable. Should a conditions arise in the futher, yes, there would be a claim.