Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) will be conducting research to identify potential genes that interact with the environmental conditions (e.g.,combat) to mediate responses to stress and which may serve as potential targets for identifying Soldiers at risk, improving Soldier resilience, and treating stress-related disorders (e.g., PTSD). USU is the Nation’s federal health sciences university and serves the uniformed services and the Nation as an outstanding academic health sciences center.

Military Tasking Order for DNA Collection to Find Markers for PTSD

The “Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences” is an interesting institution where money drops into a black hole and the bodies of dead soldiers are carved up to check their cholesterol.

And that’s just what gets disclosed.

Some surprising names have sprung forth from the USUHS.

One of them is Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the United States Army officer who premeditatedly slaughtered 14 people after repeatedly corresponding with his American-born handler and frequenter of the Pentagon, Anwar al Awlaki.

Another is Peter M. Rhee, the attending doctor for Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords after she was shot in Tucson, AZ (he need not have attended the invisible circuit court judge John Roll, his injuries were slightly more severe). The Tucson shooting has threads of craziness that are still unraveling.

Massive amounts of data on the human genome has been collected and many are starting to have concerns of both privacy and end-state use.

Once markers for PTSD are identified, military researchers will have the keys to the ultimate remorseless killer.

The era of The Terminator, the perfect robotic killing machine, is decades away; to date, all efforts to create a humanoid robot that can climb the stairs, let alone fight the Taliban, have been risible. But scientists are reporting breakthroughs with the next-best thing – the creation of human terminators, who feel less pain, less terror and less fatigue than “non-enhanced” soldiers and whose very bodies may be augmented by powerful machines.

Efforts to understand the brain of the soldier and put this knowledge to good use have been going on for some time. Professor Jonathan Moreno, a bioethicist at Pennsylvania State University, studies the way neuroscience is being co-opted by the military. “Right now, this is the fastest-growing area of science,” he says.

The Pentagon is currently spending $400m a year researching ways to “enhance” the human fighter. ~ “Super Soldiers”: The Quest For The Ultimate Human Killing Machine, Michael Hanlon, The U.K. Independent

The leaked document was corroborated by this paper from the “Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine” prepared for the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

The results of this small molecular epidemiology study will lay the foundation for future epigenetic studies based on the longitudinally collected serum samples (multiple samples per service member) housed at the DoDSR, a vast resource of bio-specimens which can be linked to detailed demographic, deployment, and medical data. …

All cases and controls were selected from among the active duty Army and Marines with at least two years of continuous active duty prior to their first OIF/OEF deployment. All subjects carried out their first OIF/OEF deployment between January 01, 2004 and December 31, 2006 and were deployed for a period of 6 – 18 months.

A quick search of Democrat Congressman Henry “Scoop” Jackson and “military medicine” pulls up the “T.R.U.E. Research Foundation”, a now-defunct military medical research enterprise that got entangled in scandal due to mismanagement of funds. Here, again, the Tucson shooting resurfaced:

Two whistle-blowers accused [pharmaceutical mega-corporation] Novo Nordisk of paying for grants, travel expenses, honoraria and other perks that went to influential physicians and researchers at the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research at Brooke Army Medical Center.

The doctors included trauma surgeon John Holcomb, who had served as commander of the Institute of Surgical Research and recently led the medical team in Houston that treated U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords after a gunman in Arizona critically injured her. ~ Military Medicine Scheme Is Alleged: S.A. Nonprofit Tied To Alleged Scam To Influence Decisions By Doctors, John Tedesco, San Antonio Express-News

Fort Detrick is the military facility where the United States military has conducted controversial research in biological warfare.

Detrick was the source of the anthrax attacks on Washington D.C. that took place just one week after 9/11 in which 17 people became ill and 5 died. Rather than leading to al Qaeda, the trail lead to this Army facility where a key scientist was implicated and was later found dead, ostensibly by his own hand.

As hundreds of human/animal chimera clones are created by “science” we could be in for a real “Island of Dr. Moreau” where remorseless killers have superhuman abilities, murder at will and answer only to their Elitist creators.

Being an obsessive/compulsive is far more burden than joy. Just ask my wife: my sock drawer is impeccable but the stress of everyone in my home is a little higher than what is considered “normal”.

But every once in a while it will open a door that would’ve been closed otherwise.

Like when you read a story about a veteran who was raided by the local police and the news account calls him an Air Force crash rescue helicopter pilot from the 1960s. The phrase doesn’t sit well. Why not just say he was a Vietnam helicopter pilot? There’s no leap there…really.

My OCD wouldn’t let it sit. I couldn’t just state what was so obvious about the man. Once you make one “leap” than you make another. Each successive assumption logarithmically raises the chances of you stating something that is false. In the field of “alternative news” (real news) where you are constantly covering astounding issues that have never before seen the light of day, getting caught in making an unfounded or exaggerated claim means instant death to your credibility.

So I surfed and found that there were several sites stating Mr. Arthur Lovi was a Vietnam helicopter pilot.

But they were blogs. Blogs mean “opinion” and we’ve all heard what opinions are like.

Time to hit “tactical pause” and move away from the story I was working on and drill down into Mr. Lovi’s case. That meant sleuthing his phone number and giving him a call. Chances are you won’t find the current number and if you do, you won’t be able to talk to him for any number of reasons.

I did get through but the voice of an older man said he wasn’t in. I left a message and thought, “That was him, he’s screening calls and isn’t interested.”

Less than 10 minutes later my phone rang. “Is this Johnny?” said the voice. “Yes it is,” I answered. “This is Arthur Lovi.”

I asked Mr. Lovi if he would talk to me about the day his guns were taken by the police. He, in turn, asked me if I would like him to start at the beginning. Intrigued at what “the beginning” was, I said, “Of course, sir.”

It began the day Arthur’s beloved wife Cindy came up the stairs with a basketful of laundry. As she walked in to the room, she collapsed onto the floor and said, “I’m just so tired all of the sudden.”

Immediately, he knew something wasn’t right. She was never sick, least of all like this. Now she was always tired and began to bruise easily. It was clear she needed to see a doctor.

The Asian man she saw was nice enough. She was a learning disability teacher and he said he was sure she had just picked up a “bug” from one of her kids. He prescribed her antibiotics and told her to come back in 3 days.

Later that night, Lovi heard his wife talking to a family friend who was an EMT. When she said that the doctor didn’t draw blood from her, he was furious and told her to go back immediately and ask to see a different doctor.

Blood was drawn this time. By 3 PM the results were in. By 5 PM the couple was sitting in front of the doctor wondering what was so urgent.

Cindy was diagnosed with Acute Myelogenous Leukemia—a fast-growing cancer of the blood and bone marrow. It was 9 years later and Lovi was able to give me the details like he had lived through them yesterday.

Cindy was immediately admitted into the hospital where she received 2 units of blood.

A doctor stopped in to visit. She was visiting from Northwestern University. It was her opinion that Cindy should be seen by a specialist, so she was brought into Chicago.

However, she deteriorated rapidly. On his next visit to her bedside, Lovi was shocked to see his wife on a respirator. Overnight, her heart had stopped and no one could explain to him why. The doctors decided to force her into a coma to aid her in her fight to live.

On a subsequent visit, the doctor told Lovi that his wife had flatlined again during the night. He asked Lovi that if her heart failed again, did he want to bring her back? “Of course!” was the grieving man’s reply.

But the cancer was ravaging every organ in Cindy’s body.

10 days later, she was gone.

Arthur Lovi never got to say goodbye to his wife.

___________________

It was supposed to be a routine check-up but the Physician’s Assistant told Lovi that his blood pressure was high. She asked if he knew what was causing it. “Stress” was the answer he gave.

Since the death of his wife, Lovi had lost his mother, his son-in-law, his 3 year old granddaughter (drowning victim) and was forced to put his dog down.

The PA asked him if he would be willing to talk to a therapist. He figured that it couldn’t hurt.

If he only knew…

The first visit was strictly background information. He would need to come back for another.

The returning visit went differently. For some reason, the therapist seemed fixated on Cindy. The old wound had never healed and Lovi was starting to get upset. It was then that she asked him if he harbored any anger or ill will towards the doctor that had misdiagnosed his wife and cost them precious time in fighting her cancer.

He responded by saying that, he didn’t want to go to jail, but 9 years ago, if he had seen that doctor on the street, he would’ve punched him in the nose.

Finally, Lovi had had enough. What should’ve been a helpful therapy session had turned into a draining interrogation.

He got up and told the psychologist, “We’re through here. This isn’t doing me any good. Not only am I not coming back for another session but I’m done with the VA as well.”

The psychologist looked as if she had been slapped.

She then pulled out her trump card, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to inform this doctor of how you feel about him.”

“Go ahead and tell him,” Lovi exclaimed, “he already knows and avoids me as soon as he sees me.”

“I’m also going to have to tell the police,” she said.

Later that day, Lovi got the call from the Arlington Heights, Illinois police. They wanted to know if he had any guns.

Lovi didn’t hesitate. Yes he did. —Two antique revolvers and a blackpowder musket.

At 11PM that night, Lovi’s son told him that he need to come to the door. What he described to me as a “SWAT team” was standing outside. Lead by a short officer whom Lovi called a “pompous little ass” they began to throw threatening questions at him; “So we hear you want to break the legs and slit the throat of the doctor that mishandled your wife’s disease.” Lovi was stunned at the exaggeration and wondered where the accusation had originated; the psychologist or the police?

“Where are your guns?” he demanded. “On the mantel,” Lovi explained—displayed as any antique would be.

As Lovi turned to get them for his accusers, they all rushed into his home. Immediately he said, “Hold on! You need a warrant to enter my home.”

The short cop shot back, “If I come back with a warrant I will tear the ____ out of this house.”

The tactic did exactly has they had planned; thoroughly intimidated and wanting to preserve his home, Lovi allowed the cops to enter.

Immediately they snatched up his weapons but were confounded by them. “How do you get the bullets out?!” they asked. The single-action .22 and top-break .38 were obviously too confusing for these defenders of the peace. Lovi told them, “I’ve never loaded them. I have 5 grandkids. You can look here and see that they are empty.”

Upon examining his custom-finish .22, one of the officers said, “Oh this is a keeper!” Startled, Lovi shot back, “Just what does that mean?”

Arthur Lovi was on edge. Perhaps if he knew that selling firearms taken in by failed gun “buy-back” programs was proving lucrative for some precincts, he might’ve been even more upset.

“Do you have an FIOD card?” the quick-tempered cop asked. In the state of Illinois, any citizen wishing to exercise their 2^nd Amendment rights must first subject themselves to an extensive identification program and personal history check, the results of which are a “Firearm Owner’s ID” card granted them by the Illinois State Police.

Lovi presented it to the angry man standing in front of him. “I’ll hold on to this for a while,” the cop stated. “And we’ll be keeping these as ‘evidence’,” he added.

“Evidence for what?” Lovi shot back, “I haven’t committed any crime!”

Instead of answering him, the feisty officer replied, “Come to the station tomorrow and get a receipt.”

And they were gone.

Lovi was in shock.

But it didn’t take long for him to regain his senses.

Via a Freedom of Information Act request, he was made privy to the conversation between the Arlington Heights PD and his psychologist. It turned out that she did not say she felt Lovi was a threat to himself or anyone else.

Arthur Lovi began to get angry. He told me “I don’t look for trouble, but I’ll go to the Nth degree to straighten something out.”

He wasn’t exaggerating.

In 1995, Lovi was with his family in Venice, Florida. They took a little drive to Sarasota to look upon the beautiful beaches and waters of the Keys. While they were driving through a large parking lot, Lovi was cited by a local police officer for driving the wrong way in a posted area.

The only problem was, it wasn’t posted.

When the officer asked, “How would you like to pay for this?” Lovi sensed a racket at work. He noticed that there were a lot of college kids there and many of them were being pulled into the same net he had been. He found it upsetting to see some of them so desperate that they were begging people for money to pay their ransoms.

Lovi refused to pay the ticket.

When he got back to Venice, he called the Sarasota PD to make them admit the parking lot was not posted. He spoke to a female sergeant who agreed with him but when he asked “Are you tearing it up?” she said, “We’re amending it.”

Amending it? That didn’t sound legal.

Not only did they “amend” the ticket (with several new infractions), but they sent an officer to Venice to get the original back from Lovi.

This was a scam that would make any third world banana republic smile.

Arthur Lovi then spent well over $1,000 in cost and effort to return for court, fight the citation and win (Cindy told him he was crazy).

The original fine was for $69.50.

___________________

The Arlington Heights Police Department began to sense they had stuck their hands into a badger’s den.

Lovi got a call from an officer that used to work with his wife. Was it OK if he came for a visit?

Whatever, Lovi thought.

The “visit” seemed somewhat less friendly when the officer showed up with two more beside him. What did they want?

Lovi noticed they seemed uncomfortable and that they weren’t making much eye contact.

Soon the officer who originally called started to talk about Cindy, what a good person she was and how the kids used to call her “mom”.

If they came to upset him, it was working. Finally Lovi had had enough, “Shut your ___ ___ mouth. What do you want?”

“I’m afraid for your health,” the officer said, “I’m going to call an ambulance.”

Shocked, Lovi said, “You can call but I won’t’ get in it.”

“Then I’ll have to cuff you and force you in it,” the officer said.

Four minutes later, an ambulance was in front of his home. A few minutes later, Lovi was forcibly stripped, given a hospital gown and sitting on a gurney, waiting for a doctor to examine him.

When the doctor came in, he exclaimed, “What the hell’s going on?” Lovi immediately demanded to be given his clothes back and vehemently refused to be seen, especially to have blood drawn.

The doctor made him wait.

In time, he came back and said, “I want you to talk to someone,” and produced a psychologist who began barraging him with questions. “How do you feel?” she asked.

“I want out,” Lovi defiantly stated.

Eventually, he was released and his son drove him home.

It was time to get a lawyer.

A local attorney demanded $5,000 to work the case. Lovi knew he could do better than that. He called the NRA and, after the representative heard his story, they proclaimed, “Wow! You need a lawyer.”

The NRA recommended Louis Meyer, a defense attorney and expert on the Bill of Rights. After hearing what Lovi had to say, Meyer took the case on a contingency basis, without the exorbitant charge up front.

I spoke with Mr. Meyer who informed me that there was another reason the Arlington Heights PD tried to manipulate Arthur Lovi into being diagnosed as mentally unstable: this would’ve allowed them to revoke his Firearm Owner’s ID card.

It was research for my column on the use of mental disorders to rob citizens of their 2^nd Amendment rights that caused me to look into Mr. Lovi’s case in the first place.

Meyer, along with attorney David Mierswa of Skokie, Illinois, got fast at work forcing Arlington Heights to return Lovi’s guns to him.

When he did receive them back, there was over $350 in damage done to his custom .22 revolver. Mr. Meyer told me it was because the Arlington Heights Police Department was in the process of dismantling them.

Photo by Daily Herald Staff Photographer Matt Welsh

What he did not receive was his FOID card. He was told it was in the mail to Springfield. Upon further investigation, however, Lovi found out that he had been lied to and his card was sitting in the Arlington Heights PD evidence vault.

Thanks to the work of his attorneys, Arthur Lovi is on the road to recovery and a jury trial has been demanded.

Several lines of the complaint accent this disturbing story:

Defendant LAVIN, from the Arlington Heights Police Department, spoke with Plaintiff’s therapist regarding Plaintiff’s statements. Plaintiff’s therapist told Defendant LAVIN what Plaintiff had said. Additionally, Plaintiff’s therapist told Defendant LAVIN that she did not believe that Plaintiff was a threat to himself or others and that an immediate medical evaluation was not necessary.

The doctor that treated Plaintiff’s wife was contacted by the Arlington Heights Police Department. The doctor informed the Arlington Heights Police Department that he did not feel his safety was in jeopardy. …

The Defendant-Officers did not have a search warrant, probable cause, exigent circumstances, or any other legal justification to seize Plaintiff’s antique firearms and FOID card.

If this could happen to a 72 year old veteran in good standing with the community, do you think it could happen to you?

Thanks to many new laws and regulations, making an unfounded accusation that brings a militarized SWAT team down on you at 3 AM is all too easy, as the latest rash of “SWATTING” pranks has shown in the haven-state for such laws, California.

That power is in the hands of any neighbor who doesn’t like your lawn clippings falling onto his property. Imagine a government official who has access to every electronic or voice communication you’ve ever sent or received, all coming across their desk simply because they looked you up, as NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has claimed. One bad joke about a public official, one angry thing said after that late-night drink…suddenly the promise of surveillance advocates that “If you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to hide,” no-longer gives you any confidence.

Lovi had just seen the Snowden story, himself. In light of what happened to him and where it was all heading for citizens in general, he asked me with pained emotion, “Do we live in a Communist country?!”

I couldn’t answer.

After hanging up, I had to sit for a few minutes while the severity of what I had learned weighed down on me. It was then that I realized I had forgotten to ask Arthur Lovi if he had ever flown in Vietnam.

___________________

FURTHER READING

* ARTHUR LOVI v. VILLAGE OF ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Arlington Heignts Police Department – COMPLAINT
* Overkill in the Suburbs – Courthouse News Service
* Arlington Heights Man, Police In Dispute Over Confiscating His Guns – The Daily Herald
* Arlington Heights Resident, Antique Gun Owner Arthur Lovi Challenges Village of Arlington Heights on 2nd and 4th Amendments – The Arlington Cardinal
* Police Confiscate Veteran’s Antique Guns Following a Visit With His Therapist – The Blaze
* Illinois Veteran Suing Police for Confiscating His Firearms Following Therapy Session – Guns.com

A decorated combat veteran, recently honored for going to extreme lengths to take care of a brother soldier is stopped for a “random vehicle check”, found to have 30 round AR15 magazines (now illegal in the state of New York) and is arrested. He now faces an astounding seven years in prison.

It was the perfect time.

I had just made myself a gin and tonic that would’ve required a small loan had I got it at the pub.

All I wanted to do was listen to a scary episode of Coast to Coast, sip my drink and play some violent video games (completely inappropriate for teens but good escapism for an adult with anger issues).

The “ding” of an e-mail alert went off. It was a young friend I had made via social networking. We had a lot in common: we hated being deployed and we loved America. He was worth breaking out of my stupor to see what was going on.

“Is this legit?” he asked. It was a story from a blog I wasn’t familiar with claiming that the VA was sending out notifications to veterans telling them that if they were adjudicated “mentally incompetent” that a section of the “Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act” prohibited them from purchasing or even possessing a firearm.

I looked at the blog and realized there was way too much research to be done in order to give him a fair answer. My cynical nature wanted to say, “Of course,” or “I wouldn’t doubt it” but the journalist in me forced something more rational, “I’ll have to look it up and get back to you, kid.”

A short time later, another e-mail alert went off. This time from a friend currently deployed. He was taken from my unit and forced to fill a partial mission requirement that left me in garrison. When he writes, I always stop what I’m doing to respond…even when I have to shake some gin fog out of my eyes. He wanted to know if, when he got back, some do-gooder at the VA was going to label him with PTSD and take his guns away.

He referenced the same blog.

After blinking hard a few times, my cowardice got the best of me and I wrote, “I’ll look it up and get back to you, brother.”

I closed Microsoft Outlook on my computer and attempted to stretch out my arthritic back in a way that would give me a good view of the virtual carnage about to appear on my TV screen.

—When I realized that I had left my Facebook account logged in and the annoying e-mail noise went off. It was my researcher, co-worker and friend, the Sergeant Major. He wanted to know if I had seen the story about the VA helping take away soldier’s guns.

But this time, I had an ace up my sleeve: the Sergeant Major was on the team and I knew just how to get to him, “Looks shady. Get me another source so that I can verify it.” All he could come up with were pictures and pdf’s of the same letter from the blog.

“I’ll track it down tomorrow!” I snapped, logged off of Facebook, took a big pull from my drink and grabbed my game controller.

_______________________

The next morning brought some urgency and I pushed hard to get my work accomplished so that I could squeeze in time to address this upsetting allegation.

As I began to dig, it seemed that this was an issue that came to a head all last year. Since 2007, well-meaning legislators have been pushing the “Veterans Second Amendment Protection Act”—a bill that sought to safeguard veterans from losing their Constitutional right to keep and bear arms should the Veterans Administration deem them incapable of handling their own financial affairs. Perhaps not surprisingly, it has repeatedly failed in the Senate.

For a short period of time, Tom Coburn (R-OK) sought to add a similar protection to this year’s National Defense Authorization Act—the annual funding legislation whose previous incarnation included some disconcerting language about indefinite detention of “terrorists”. Tough-as-nails fighter that he is, Coburn eventually withdrew the amendment after the objections of his friend Charles Schumer (D-NY) who claimed to “love” veterans and “vote for them all the time” and then equated a veteran with PTSD as no different than any other “felon”.

So it was time for me to go to work.

Um…besides the real job that paid my bills.

As soon as I had the opportunity, I began making calls to the VA. The first thing I realized was that, unless you proclaim that you are ready to hurt yourself, the Veterans Administration was as responsive as Lily Tomlin with a switchboard in front of her. The main 800 number wouldn’t even allow you to leave a voicemail, you just got hung up on after the automated message finished telling you how important your call was.

Time to get inventive. The letter in question appeared to come from the Portland Oregon VA. After several different department personnel admitting they really had no idea what I was talking about, I was finally given the information of someone who would: Mental Health official and Suicide Prevention Manager Rob Tell.

And had to leave a message.

Fortunately, Rob wasn’t like the typical VA administrator, he returned my call.

The information he gave me was that mental incompetence adjudication was different for every state, and he assured me that the process in Oregon erred on the side of caution. The weight necessary to require the VA to submit a soldier to the FBI’s “National Instant Criminal Background Check System” was similar to what would be required in a legal commitment proceeding. In his experience, he had only seen it happen once.

But what he did admit was happening more often, was when local law enforcement was involved in responding to a troubled vet call and they found out the soldier had a concealed carry permit. These required almost no effort for law enforcement to revoke and they frequently did just that.

The Huffington Post and Associated Press dismiss the issue with the disgustingly deceptive statistic that:

Only 185 out of some 127,000 veterans added to the gun-check registry since 1998 have sought to have their names taken off, according to data that the VA shared with lawmakers during a hearing last June.

So of the 127,000 veterans stripped of their Constitutional Rights, only 185 had the desire or the means to fight it…this “honesty” from the very institution that conducted the travesty.

This outrageous number was confirmed by the office of Senator Richard Burr (R-NC).

Besides bureaucrats at the VA gunning for their guns, soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines face their very own chain of command who pushed last year to take their already draconian privately-owned firearms restrictions even further for the sake of their “safety”. These are the same restrictions that made the massacre at Fort Hood by the Islamist-non-terrorist Army Major Nidal Hassan easy to pull off.

The Department of Homeland Security recently labeled returning veterans as a terror risk because they “possess combat skills and experience that are attractive to right-wing extremists…”

The FBI—an organization whose premier occupation seems to be entrapping mentally-defective dupes into terror activities and then swooping in to stop them—joined in the push to demonize veterans based upon their “confidential sources”.

With “gratitude” like this for disrupting their lives, destroying their families, ruining their souls and mutilating their bodies, it’s hard to imagine why there’s so much trouble getting soldiers to re-up these days.

UPDATE: 25 February, 2013, 08:55 am EST

What constitutes “incompetency”? Johnny’s brother has the answer.