Feres Is Being Attacked In New Lawsuit

[Testvet]

I know many of you know I am one the Edgewood Veterans and I have some really bad things to say about the Army, the VA and the CIA but the lawyers that are handling the Edgewood Testvets lawsuit for the VVA and Plow to Plowshares amended the complaint on 7 June 2010 and I read things in the new complaint that I had heard about but wasn;t really sure about "septal implants" yea right that only happens in the movies right? No it turns out the lawyers found the Doctors name that did them and that he was funded by DARPA read the entire complaint I knew about most of it and I could NOT stop reading it. VA Watchdog posted it last night I didn't even get a heads up from the lawyers.

http://www.vawatchdog.org/10/nf10/nfjun10/nf060810-4.htm click on new complaint and read it better than most books all I can do is shake my frickin head and that is saying a lot but if the Supreme Court won't over turn FERES after getting this case then they never will

[john999]

I wonder if we vets are in VA studies without being told. The AO and Gulf War Registry is a longitudinal study of the health effects of AO and other hazards. This is what we are told. What is the VA and government really doing with our information? I know Feres is a way for the military to escape liability for injury and sickness of active duty except in form of compensation. When they do things like giving LSD to soldiers without their knowledge that is criminal, but they escape via Feres doctrine. If a soldier murders someone on active duty he does not escape, but the government can do it and walk away with clean hands. I need to read more about it.

[Pete53]

The VAMC was involved in numerous studies involving Veterans up till the late 90's when the rug got pulled out.

I used to call myself a lab rat.

[Testvet]

no John if you were in a "study" the paperwork is a lot I have seen it my shrink showed me everything he has to do he is the Chief of Clinic and he used to hate the paperwork that is necessary to enroll veterans into the clinical trials until he met me he had never heard of the Edgewood Experiments he accused me of lying to him the first time we ever met he asked me if I ever saw "flying pink elephants" I was like what the heck...it was a month later I got my Edgewood file from the FOIA request I had filed a couple of months earlier so the next visit I just handed the entire file to him the very first paper was my inprocessing sheet where they classified me as a A level test subject for use in any and all experiments due to my bad reaction to a LSD overdose 2 weeks prior to being sent to Edgewood when I was still at Fort Lewis, someone slipped a hit of windowpane acid in a coke I was drinking and I didn't know it his jaw hit the floor he just never thought the US Army would do that to one of their own men he immigrated here from Sri Lanka in 1979 by then it was out of the news the Church Committee had finished it's work by then...

if you were being used today in any type experimental trial you and the doctors and 2 outside witnesses would have to be present for you to sign and date the consent form and they have to spell out what they are giving you what they expect it to do, worst expected outcomes etc all have to be written into it and the witnesses have to be present thru all of this so medical experiments are a lot safer today than they were 50 years ago but then again didn't they just kill a few people in England a couple years ago in a clinical trial in a hospital? Then again Porton Downs kept doing human experimentation into the late 80s or early 90s before their govt shut them down but then again Canada and Great Britain have both compensated the soldiers they used in their human experiments just not the US

[Stretch]

This is the most hypocritical thing I have ever read. On one hand Gordon P. Erspamer, give the condemnation of the Feres Doctrine in splitting up Servicemen from civilians. Then he turns around and makes the distinction between Army guinea pigs that had "Boots on CONUS", and Navy guinea pigs who were aboard ship and had "Boots On Water". Keep in mind that both programs were initiated by the US Army. It sounds to me like Mr. Erspamer has been boughten off by the DoD and VA... It also sounds to me like the US Army is trying to say that it was not involed in Project 112/SHAD....

The Old Army Dog, of the SHAD test were to test equipment aboard ships at sea, just won't HUNT...

How could anybody be so Naive....

III. Class Action Aligations

A. Class Definition

174. The proposed Plaintiff class for purposes of all claims includes all veterans who were involved in the Human Test Series (hereinafter the "Proposed Class Members"). The proposed class does not include participants in Project 112/SHAD ("Shipboard and Hazard Defense), a separate program directed by the U.S. Army Deseret Test Center. Project 112/SHAD was conducted on ships and land to test the vulnerability of ships to chemical and biological attacks, and, with respect to tests on land, to determine how biological and chemical weapons would be affected by climate. Although members of the military were exposed to hazardous biological and chemical substances during Project 112/SHAD, the principal purpose of the program was not to test the effects of biological and chemical weapons upon human subjects, as were the veterans involved in the Human Test Series.

191. Congress enacted the Federal Tort Claims Act ("FTCA") in 1948, the intent of which was to place all Americans on equal footing in litigating the civil liability of the federal government for claims based upon tort injuries. 28 U.S.C. § 1346 (1948). The FTCA included an express exception excluding certain types of claims arising out of government activities from the waiver of sovereign immunity, including "[a]ny claim arising out of the combatant activities of the military or naval forces, or the Coast Guard, during time of war" the so-called "Foreign Combatant Exception." Id. at § 2860(f). However, in Feres, the Supreme Court dramatically expanded and broadened the Foreign Combatant Exception to encompass all injuries sustained by military personnel "where the injuries arise out of or are in the course of activity incident to service." 340 U.S. at 146. The holding in Feres was expanded over the years in a long series of cases; Feres and its progeny are often referred to as the Feres doctrine, which has roundly been criticized by academics, judges, and others.

196. The Feres doctrine creates two different classes, composed of veterans and civilians, who are disparately treated despite the fact that they are similarly situated with respect to the FTCA and the intent of Congress.

This pleading shows that Mr. Cesaro was the director of Darpa, but Darpa seems to forget who its Director was from 1965-1970. Could this be to protect the guilty and test results that are still going on???

153. FOIA filings revealed memoranda of Richard Cesaro, Director of DARPA

DARPA_Directors_200807171322095.pdf