Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Massachusetts Bar Association Offering Free Program to Assists Veterans

I try to list all free legal services for veterans but this one seems a bit weak, only offering 2 hrs of free legal help for veterans. Come on guys and gals you can do better than that, how about a weekend full of free help?

Massachusetts Bar Association Pro Bono Program Assists Veterans

Published: March 02, 2010

On Thursday, April 29, the Massachusetts Bar Association is sponsoring a pro bono legal service called Veterans Dial-A-Lawyer. The voluntary program runs from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

Volunteer attorneys will offer free legal advice and information to veterans and their families who are experiencing legal problems such as access to benefits, family issues, employment concerns and landlord/tenant matters.

This successful program is undertaken each fall and spring as a supplement to the "Dial-A-Lawyer" program held each month by the bar and volunteer attorney members.

If you are an attorney who would like to volunteer for Veterans Dial-A-Lawyer, contact the MBA's Boston office at (617) 338-0556 or the Springfield office at (413) 731-5134.

For information visit CLE Events on The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel website at www.metrocorpcounsel.com.

To register, call (617) 338-0556, or to fill out a registration form, visit www.massbar.org. For email inquiries contact LRS@massbar.org.

Veterans Groups Threaten Lawsuit if VA Fails to publish Agent Orange Related Diseases by March 12th

Full Article at: VA delay may stall benefits for Vietnam vets

By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Mar 2, 2010 9:40:58 EST

Three veterans groups have threatened the Veterans Affairs Department with a lawsuit if VA does not publish regulations by March 12 about three Agent Orange-related diseases that the Institute of Medicine has deemed should be presumed connected to military service.

Every two years, the IoM reviews scientific evidence to determine if diseases could have been caused by dioxin, the harmful ingredient in Agent Orange. Agent Orange is an exfoliate widely used during the Vietnam War to clear forests.

In its latest review, IoM found that ischemic heart disease, Parkinson’s disease and B-cell leukemias all could be linked to Agent Orange exposure. VA is required by the Agent Orange Act of 1991 to publish a regulation, making veterans eligible for benefits, within 210 days of such findings. In this case, that would have been Feb. 19. VA doesn’t have to pay out benefits until after the regulation is actually published.

The American Legion, Military Order of the Purple Heart, and the National Veterans Legal Services Program sent a letter to VA on Monday demanding that the organization publish the regulation by March 12"

Hippocampal Changes Detected in PTSD Veterans

This is a very small study, but the results are definitely worth exploring with a larger group to see what that yields.

Full Article at: Stress-affected brain region is smaller in veterans with PTSD
March 2, 2010

(PhysOrg.com) -- A specific region of the hippocampus, a brain structure that is essential to memory, is significantly smaller in veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder than in those without the condition, according to a study by researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center and University of California, San Francisco.

The researchers used magnetic resonance imaging to scan the brains of 40 veterans - 20 with combat-related PTSD and 20 without - and found that the region known as the CA3/dentate gyrus was more than 11 percent smaller on average in the veterans with PTSD.

Just as significantly, the CA1 region of the hippocampus, which shrinks as a part of normal aging, was not significantly affected in the veterans with PTSD, according to principal investigator Norbert Schuff, PhD, a senior research scientist at the SFVAMC Center for Imaging of Neurodegenerative Diseases and professor of radiology at UCSF.


“This is the first time in human subjects that PTSD has been shown to be associated with changes in certain specific hippocampal regions and not in others,” says Schuff.

The hippocampus, a finger-joint size structure found in both hemispheres of the brain, is essential for laying down memories, as well as for retrieving them, explains study author Thomas C. Neylan, MD, director of the PTSD program at SFVAMC and a professor of psychiatry at UCSF. He notes that recurring or intrusive memory of traumatic events is a common symptom of PTSD, “and thus the hippocampus is of great interest in PTSD research.”

The dentate gyrus contains adult neural stem cells, and is a site for the creation of new neurons, while the CA3 region contains receptors for glucocorticoids, which are steroids that are elevated in the brain during stress. Previous studies in animals had shown that these regions are the parts of the hippocampus most directly affected by stress, says Neylan, “so we thought these changes might show up in people with PTSD, and they did.” He notes that the two regions are too closely intertwined physically to be imaged separately by current MRI technology, and so are measured together.

Neylan says the results raise the intriguing possibility that since the dentate gyrus has the ability to create new neurons, “these changes might actually be reversible through treatment.”

Schuff cautions that while the results are highly suggestive, they cannot yet be used by clinicians to identify individuals with PTSD. “This is a research finding, which deals in group comparisons,” he says. “We can only observe that these changes have occurred on average across the entire group with PTSD. We can’t yet nail it down to an individual. That will require much further study.” He emphasizes that the findings also need to be replicated independently in a new and larger population of PTSD subjects in order to eliminate the possibility of spurious results.

“This is an incremental step toward establishing a physical biomarker for PTSD,” adds Neylan. “A biomarker is our ultimate goal, since, currently, PTSD is diagnosed based on a subjective neuropsychiatric examination rather than on physical symptoms.”

Neylan predicts that a biomarker would provide clinicians and researchers with an objective way to measure the progress of PTSD treatment, “which would also allow us to no longer think of PTSD as a mental health diagnosis, with all of its associated stigma for our veteran and military patients, but to view it as a physical wound instead.”

Provided by University of California, San Francisco