Key U.S. government health care policy consulting firm is owned
by America's largest health insurance company
Since 2006 U.S. Army censors have scrutinized hundreds of medical studies, posters,
abstracts and Powerpoint presentations authored by doctors and scientists at Walter
Reed and other Army medical research centers—part of a little-known pre-publication
process called "Actionable Medical Information Review."
More than 300 scientific documents have been reviewed by Army censors to date.
Fewer than half of them have been cleared for public disclosure in their original form.
The program is intended to deny Iraqi and Afghan insurgents sensitive data from combat
zones. But dozens of studies reviewed under the program were unrelated to combat
operations. Instead, they described controversial topics like the effects of war on soldiers'
children, hospital-acquired infections, post-deployment adjustment issues, refugees,
suicide, alcoholism, vaccines, cancer among veterans and problems with military health
care databases.
epiNewswire archives
U.S. Army delays, alters medical studies under obscure
anti-terror censorship program, 'stifling scientific discourse'
Medical News & Exposé
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A firm that provides independent policy analysis to Congress and federal agencies was quietly
purchased last year by UnitedHealth's Ingenix during the insurance giant's push to win health
care contracts with federal agencies. No formal policy exists to prevent the company from
interfering with its new subsidiary's analyses, officials admit.
The Ship Breakers
Betrayed: Meet whistleblower Hank Langhjelm.
His stubborn refusal to ignore concerns about shipyard worker's health led him
from an award-winning career to financial ruin.
Federal investigators discovered repeated serious health and safety violations
at the Navy shipyard in Bremerton, Washington. Then they gave the shipyard
the government's top safety award and left workers to fend for themselves.
Leaked report: Without consent, Pentagon stores civilians'
blood specimens for research and criminal prosecutions
The Pentagon has stored blood serum samples from millions of civilians, including
military spouses and those who applied for military service but did not join, without
their knowledge or consent. The samples are kept for use in health research and
criminal investigations, according to U.S. Army documents and a leaked RAND study.
The father who discovered the Fallon, Nevada childhood leukemia cluster may have
been accompanied by an adult brain cancer cluster — and who was subsequently
diagnosed with brain cancer himself — has died.
Floyd Sands, 56, whose daughter was one of three children to die in the Fallon
childhood leukemia cluster, died May 29 in Pennsylvania.
Fallon cancer cluster activist dies of brain cancer