On Mon, 04 Mar 2013 05:42:10 -0800, Gunner
wrote:

snip
Treat it like a disease and find out the root causes.
Personally..I suspect we will find its been the pyschotropic meds that
have been handed out lately by the car load.
snip

Thanks for the kind words. This was what I call a top down
proposal. I have also proposed a bottom up effort focused
on the returning service members, who the media assure us
are all homicidal maniacs.

As indicated, this memo was sent to the Wounded Warrior NGO,
with copies to the American Legion, VFW, AmVets, and as they
have a considerable dog in the fight, the NRA. No response.

As this proposal is somewhat lengthy and to preserve the
formatting and hot link foot notes (mouse click to access)
download a copy at
http://mcduffee-associates.us/DROP%20BOX/wwprop01.pdf
(free adobe reader required which you can download at
http://get.adobe.com/reader/otherversions/ )

From the available information, it would appear that if we
could get even a few hundred responses ==with med
samples==, particularly any tablets handed out in the hot
zones to boost operational stamina, alertness and focus, it
would go a long way to deciding one way or the other if it
is a pharmacutical/environmental problem or something else.

=== excerpts from the narrative section ===

Subject: Verification or elimination of the pharmaceuticals
our men and women in uniform have been exposed to during
operations, and the types and amounts of pharmaceuticals
they are receiving as veterans, as a contributing cause to
the apparent upsurge of veterans' illogical and excessively
violent incidents.

The global or foundational problem of interest is the recent
apparent upsurge in the number and scale of illogical,
random, and extremely violent incidents, only some of which
involved a firearm, albeit these incidents received the most
media attention. This is much too large a question for a
NGO to attempt to analyze. This is special concern as there
appears to have been a significant change in after service
behaviors compared to prior cohorts which in many cases
engaged in far more prolonged and intense combat operations
such as the trench warfare and mass frontal assaults of WWI,
amphibious operations such as Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and
D-Day of WWII, and the battle for Hué as part of the Tet
Offensive in Vietnam.
....
What is therefore suggested is that ONE aspect of the very
broad foundational and indeed cultural/societal problem, as
it involves current and former military personnel, should be
examined with the specific research question “do
psychoactive/stimulant drugs, currently being taken or which
have been taken in operational areas, contribute to the
recent apparent upsurge in violent/irrational mental
attitudes, incidents and behaviors?”

The reason for selecting current and former military
personnel is that they are a well-defined class, and have
been screened by the military before being allowed to join
for gross mental defects, low intelligence, drug use, and
medical abnormalities, and the rigorous basic training
period separates most “marginal” individuals that may have
slipped through the initial screening process. Thus they
are the best group likely to identified that were free of
other contributing factors.
....
RATIONALE/NARRATIVE: While anecdotal, I grew up and later
worked with/for many WWII, Korea and Vietnam veterans, many
of whom had received serious injuries and were involved in
some of the most violent and extended actions such as Trawa,
Iwo Jima, Okinawa, D-Day, and Battle of the Bulge. Indeed,
my high school football coach had a bad limp from a bullet
he took in the breakout from Omaha Beach. While some of
these individuals were marginal in that they drank far too
much, and a few were involved in petty crime, none exhibited
the bizarre behavior of latest veterans. It is highly
doubtful the gene pool changed in a generation, so something
else must have occurred. One of the more obvious changes is
the proliferation of legal and illegal psychoactive drugs,
far beyond sedatives and pain pills. The data required for
a full scale epidemiological study is not available, and is
highly unlikely to be made available to a NGO, even through
FOIA requests. Therefore it is suggested that sampling
techniques, commonly used in quality control and statistical
process control [SPC] to estimate the attributes of an
entire population or collection from a minimal sample be
used. While there is the problem of the so-called “self
reporting bias,” a reasonably random sample with only a few
hundred responses should prove adequate to either disprove
the role of increased use of the psychoactive drugs (and
most or all of the corollary questions below) or to justify,
even mandate/force, a full blown epidemiological study, with
data from the FDA, DoD, etc., subpenaed from these agencies
by Congressional committee if necessary.

=== end of excerpts


--
Unka' George

"Gold is the money of kings,
silver is the money of gentlemen,
barter is the money of peasants,
but debt is the money of slaves"

-Norm Franz, "Money and Wealth in the New Millenium"