VA To Provide Full Benefits for All Veterans With ALS
The Department of Veterans Affairs on Tuesday announced that all veterans with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, will receive full disability, lifetime health and death benefits, a move that effectively acknowledges a general link between the condition and military service, the New York Times reports. According to VA, all veterans with ALS will qualify for disability benefits, regardless of when or where they served.
VA expects 416 new cases of ALS among veterans in 2009 and a total of about 700 veterans who qualify for the benefits annually. Disability and death benefits will cost about $23 million in 2009 and $505,839,000 over 10 years, according to Tom Pamperin, deputy director of the compensation and pension service at VA. VA based the decision to provide the benefits on studies that found veterans are more likely than the general population to develop ALS, although the reason for the link remains undetermined.
Pamperin said that VA Secretary James Peake "felt the right thing to do was to give veterans the benefit of the doubt, particularly since this disease is so debilitating." Jinsy Andrews, a neurologist at the center for ALS at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, said, "There are many theories of why veterans may be having an increased risk of ALS, which include psychological or physical stress, or even vaccinations or exposure to electromagnetic fields, or to toxic agents that have been used in the Gulf War," adding, "And that may lead [us to] discover possible associations and mechanisms involved in the disease that have been unknown for so long" (Grady, New York Times, 9/24).
