Jack Kemp

The following information comes from Chapter Nine of the bestselling book "For Love of Coutnry."

Before I get into Chapter Nine, titled "Still Fighting for His Troops," I can not totally ignore the background story about the book's co-author, the Starbucks CEO Schultz. Howard Schultz has been written about on the internet as someone who may want to run for political office, maybe even the Presidency in 2020. Ironically, businessman Trump's Presidential election inspired Schultz, a Democrat, to possibly seek public office. Anyway, let's get away from the partisan politics - as best we can - and go on to the findings in "For Love of Country" about the latest attempts to manage and solve brain injury problems.

Chapter Nine, starting on page 164, is a most important chapter to read because it details the work done for veterans by retired four star U.S. Army General Peter Chiarelli. Before he left the service, he was much involved, as Chief of Staff, in getting veterans better treatment for Post Traumatic Stress and Traumatic Brain Injuries - and in stopping veterans' suicides. In fact, the authors speculate - quite plausibly - that many veteran suicides are the result of extreme physical pain from TBI or emotional pain in connection with PTS (he prefers not calling it a disease but just Post Traumatic Stress).

Among the things talked about in this chapter, are Gen. Chiarelli's championing of the use of brain scans to document PTS. He states that the level of cures today are really not that much better than the ones available in WWII. The General discussed the problems with brain researchers at UCLA's Brain Injury Research Center. After retirement, he contacted the brain researchers at the U. of Pittsburgh's sports medicine center because football head injuries, car accidents and military TBI have many, many similarities.

Gen. Chiarelli could have gotten a high paying corporate job upon his retirement, helping defense contractors negotiate deals with the Pentagon, but he chose instead to to form a non-profit brain research charity called One Mind on the West Coast. Their website is http://onemind.org ; His approach is to bring all efforts together in a concerted effort to fight the problem, such as happens in the military in war planning - and even has happened in medicine with cancer research and treatments.

In following up on the issues of a veteran Chiarelli knew who was on given "off label" (experimental) drugs while on active duty, Chiiarelli found out that one of the big problems was that the VA wouldn't allow usage or payment for many of such experimental drugs. And he even found out that doctors were doing a scientific study on one drug that was finding it was more harmful than helpful to veterans with TBI. When Chiarelli asked for the name of this dangerous drug, the doctors actually told him that they weren't allowed to announce its name until the scientific research was formally published in a journal three months later. Chiarellli got quite angry over this because if something didn't work in the military, they'd stop using it RIGHT WAY, on the spot, and do not wait for any hidebound regulations to become a barrier to getting immediate action. Chiarelli also had to look for and find the few doctors that worked together as a team to solve these problems (such as the UCLA and U. of Pittsburgh people) rather than what many others did, namely fight over their small territories and personal recognitions. A big part of the problem, the General concluded, is the essentially  Nineteenth Century conventional methods doctors use to conduct their work. Those veterans taking those worthless drugs are, once again, more likely to be the ones who commit suicide - or suffer needlessly while still living.

In one conference, because he had learned so much over recent years, a medical doctor addressed him as "Doctor Chiarelli." The General then told him he was not a physician. That's what happens when one learns to attack a problem using the knowledge of multiple disciplines, including military generalship, business management skills, scientific research and medical patient management analysis skills to improve services at both regular hospitals and Department of Veterans Affairs facilities.

The first part of "For Love of Country" book tell some great stories of military service men and women. And the second part tells of efforts mostly on the home front. Chapter Eight tells of the origins of the Semper Fi Fund - www.semperfifund.org - a charity started by wives of Marines but now helps veterans of all branches of the services with vital additional services while working with other veterans' charities run by both women and men. The coauthors are, as mentioned, Howard Schultz,CEO of Starbucks, and Rajiv Chandrasekaran, a National Book Award finalist. They have written an outstanding book whose full title  is "For Love of Country: What Our Veterans Can Teach Us About Citizenship, Heroism, and Sacrifice." And the contents live up to that title.

 

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