'Dead Men Walking:' The Dark Side of Military Medical Advances

NEW YORK, Feb. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- "Dead Men Walking, " an investigative feature in the March DISCOVER Magazine, reports on a little-known consequence of the Iraq War: the growing number of American soldiers coming home with traumatic brain injury, or TBI, only to languish inadequately treated. The article hinges on a harrowing irony. Survival rates for soldiers with TBI are rising to an unprecedented degree, thanks to advances in military medicine. But those soldiers are saved only to come home to American hospitals under funded, under staffed and generally unprepared to handle issues related to TBI.

The soldiers are kept alive only to lead a kind of death-in-life existence.

"No other war has created so many seriously disabled veterans," writes Michael Mason, a brain-injury case manager at the Neurologic Rehabilitation Institute at Brookhaven Hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Author of the upcoming book, "Damaged: The Injured Brain," Mason has counseled hundreds of brain-damaged veterans from 40 states over the last four years, navigating the healthcare system on their behalf.

Many states have no brain-injury rehab centers, Mason reports, and only a few that do provide even a basic level of specialized care.

"The quality and coordination of post-acute TBI service systems remains inadequate," the Institute of Medicine concludes. Lifetime cost of care for brain-injured troops could reach $35 billion, according to a Harvard University expert.

"Dead Men Walking" exposes this country's lack of support for its most severely injured troops on their arrival home. As the article went to press, the Veterans Administration was, rightfully, concerned about the story and repeatedly demanded a copy (not given).

"Dead Men Walking" represents exactly the kind of spirited journalism that DISCOVER publisher Bob Guccione Jr. plans as a hallmark for his boldly revamped science magazine. "Our article raises frightening questions," Guccione says. "One is, are these soldiers being kept alive in order to reduce the 'killed in battle' numbers? Regardless, why are we not doing more for them once the flag waving photo ops are done?"

"The military has done a spectacular job repairing bodies," concludes Mason, "but it hasn't yet learned how to put lives back together . . . When the dream-team care is finished, soldiers are finding themselves trapped in a nightmare."