Bill Moyers and Michael Winship write: We honor our war dead this Memorial Day weekend. The greatest respect we could pay them would be to pledge no more wars for erroneous and misleading reasons; no more killing and wounding except for the defense of our country and our freedoms.

We also could honor our dead by caring for the living, and do better at it than we are right now.

There has been a flurry of allegations concerning neglect, malpractice and corner cutting at the Veterans Administration especially for those suffering from post traumatic stress disorder — PTSD — or major depression, brought on by combat.

A report released by the Rand Corporation last month indicates that approximately 300,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans suffer PTSD or major depression. That’s one of every five military men and women who have served over there.

Last Friday’s Washington Post reported the contents of an e-mail sent to staff at a VA hospital in Temple, Texas. A psychologist wrote, “Given that we are having more and more compensation seeking veterans, I’d like to suggest that you refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out.” She further suggested that a diagnosis of a less serious Adjustment Disorder be made instead, especially as she and her colleagues “really don’t have time to do the extensive testing that should be done to determine PTSD.”

Now PTSD is not a diagnosis arrived at without careful, thorough examination. But to possibly misdiagnose such a volatile and harmful disorder for the sake of saving time or money is reprehensible.

Veterans Affairs Secretary James Peake immediately said the psychologist’s statement had been “repudiated at the highest level of our health care organization.” Nonetheless, there’s plenty of other evidence to raise concern.

The rate of attempted and successful suicides is so scary, the head of the VA’s mental health division, Dr. Ira Katz, wondered in a February e-mail how it should be spun. “Shh!” he wrote. “Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among the veterans we see in our medical facilities.” …

Only about half of those service members diagnosed with PTSD or depression have sought treatment and about half of those received what the RAND study describes as “minimally adequate treatment.” Minimally adequate treatment for what could be a matter of life and death.

Once upon a time, kids asked their fathers, “What did you do in the war, daddy?” It’s a question the next generation could ask all of us who stood by as our government invaded Iraq to start a war whose purpose and rationale keep shifting and whose end is nowhere in sight, and who look now with nonchalance upon the unseen scars of those who are fighting it. (05/24/08)
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BBC Medicine – The best exercise of all might be the easiest and the cheapest: a stroll in the park, or a country ramble. The secret ingredient? Greenery. Those of us who live in towns and cities, and even some who live in the countryside, don’t get enough of it.

The result for most of us is highly stressful; we get irritable and depressed, and even physically ill (because high levels of stress mean higher risk of things like heart disease and diabetes). Yet put us in contact with trees and grass and levels of stress fall away. …

Scientific support for the belief in the benefit of Nature walks comes from Dr William Bird, who
combines a career as a GP with a part-time role as health adviser to
Natural England. Last year he produced a report for Natural England and the RSPB arguing
that contact with nature and green space has a positive effect on
mental health, especially among children.

Some have gone further still. An American journalist, Richard
Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, coined the term “nature
deficit disorder” (an echo of the medically-established condition,
attention deficit disorder) to describe the deprivation, sometimes
amounting to mental illness, of children who grow up without contact
with the natural environment.

“Nature deficit disorder” is not a condition the medical profession recognises, though common sense suggests that children who take virtually no exercise and rarely get into the great outdoors are unlikely to be healthy and are missing out on a lot of pleasurable experiences.

Behind the scenes at BBC One’s Springwatch programme Dr Bird is urging his fellow GPs to prescribe regular walks and exercise in green spaces for patients suffering from heart disease, depression, obesity and the like. (05/24/08)
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BBC Environmental Science – Higher atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas methane noted last year are probably related to emissions from wetlands, especially around the Arctic. Scientists have found indications that extra amounts of the gas in the Arctic region are of biological origin. Global levels of methane had been roughly stable for almost a decade.

Rising levels in the Arctic could mean that some of the methane stored away in permafrost is being released, which would have major climatic implications. The gas is about 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, though it survives for a shorter time in the atmosphere before being broken down by natural chemical processes.

Indications that methane levels might be rising after almost a decade of stability came last month, when the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) released a preliminary analysis of readings taken at monitoring stations worldwide.

Ed Dlugokencky, the scientist at Noaa’s Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) who collates and analyses data from atmospheric monitoring stations, agrees that the 2007 rise has a biological cause. “We’re pretty sure it’s not biomass burning; and I think 2007 is probably down to wetland emissions,” he said. “In boreal regions it was warmer and wetter than usual, and microbes there produce methane faster at higher temperatures.”

Dr Dlugokencky also suggested that the drastic reduction in summer sea ice around the Arctic between 2006 and 2007 could have increased release of methane from seawater into the atmosphere. A further possibility is that the gas is being released in increasing amounts from permafrost as temperatures rise.

Researchers will be keeping a close eye on this year’s data which will indicate whether 2007 was just a blip or the beginning of a sustained rise. (05/24/08)
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BBC Weather Science – Dramatic evidence of the break-up of the Arctic ice-cap has emerged from research during an expedition by the Canadian military.

Scientists travelling with the troops found major new fractures during an assessment of the state of giant ice shelves in Canada’s far north. The team found a network of cracks that stretched for more than 10 miles (16km) on Ward Hunt, the area’s largest shelf.

The fate of the vast ice blocks is seen as a key indicator of climate change.

One of the expedition’s scientists, Derek Mueller of Trent University, Ontario, told me: “I was astonished to see these new cracks. It means the ice shelf is disintegrating, the pieces are pinned together like a jigsaw but could float away.”

According to another scientist on the expedition, Dr Luke Copland of the University of Ottawa, the new cracks fit into a pattern of change in the Arctic.

He said, “We’re seeing very dramatic changes; from the retreat of the glaciers, to the melting of the sea ice. We had 23% less (sea ice) last year than we’ve ever had, and what’s happening to the ice shelves is part of that picture.”

When ice shelves break apart, they drift offshore into the ocean as “ice islands”, transforming the very geography of the coastline. (05/24/08)
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