[Dialogue] Pentagon, Big Pharma: Drug Troops to Numb Them to Horrors of War

Fri Jan 11 15:17:50 EST 2008

AlterNet

Pentagon, Big Pharma: Drug Troops to Numb Them to Horrors of War

By Penny Coleman, AlterNet
Posted on January 10, 2008, Printed on January 11, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/72956/

In June, the Department of Defense Task Force on Mental Health acknowledged
"daunting and growing" psychological problems among our troops: Nearly 40
percent of soldiers, a third of Marines and half of National Guard members
are presenting with serious mental health issues. They also reported
"fundamental weaknesses" in the U.S. military's approach to psychological
health. That report was followed in August by the Army Suicide Event Report
(ASER), which reported that 2006 saw the highest rate of military suicides
in 26 years. And last month, CBS News reported that, based on its own
extensive research, over 6,250 American veterans took their own lives in
2005 alone -- that works out to a little more than 17 suicides every day.

That's all pretty bleak, but there is reason for optimism in the
long-overdue attention being paid to the emotional and psychic cost of these
new wars. The shrill hypocrisy of an administration that has decked itself
in yellow ribbons and mandatory lapel pins while ignoring a human crisis of
monumental proportion is finally being exposed.

On Dec. 12, Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., chairman of the House Veterans
Affairs Committee, called a hearing on "Stopping Suicides: Mental Health
Challenges Within the Department of Veterans Affairs." At that hearing
suggestions were raised and conversations begun that hopefully will bear
fruit.

But I find myself extremely anxious in the face of some of these new
suggestions, specifically what is being called the Psychological Kevlar Act
of 2007 and use of the drug propranalol to treat the symptoms of
posttraumatic stress injuries. Though both, at least in theory, sound
entirely reasonable, even desirable, in the wrong hands, under the wrong
leadership, they could make the sci-fi fantasies of Blade Runner seem
prescient.

The Psychological Kevlar Act "directs the secretary of defense to develop
and implement a plan to incorporate preventive and early-intervention
measures, practices or procedures that reduce the likelihood that personnel
in combat will develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or other
stress-related psychopathologies, including substance use conditions.
(Kevlar, a DuPont fiber, is an essential component of U.S. military helmets
and bullet-proof vests advertised to be "five times stronger than steel.")
The stated purpose of this legislation is to make American soldiers less
vulnerable to the combat stressors that so often result in psychic injuries.

On the face of it, the bill sounds logical and even compassionate. After
all, our soldiers are supplied with physical armor -- at least in theory. So
why not mental? My guess is that the representatives who have signed on to
this bill are genuinely concerned about the welfare of troops and their
families. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., is the bill's sponsor, and I have no
reason to question his genuine commitment to mental health issues, both
within and outside of the military. Still, I find myself chilled at the
prospects. To explain my discomfort, I need to go briefly into the history
of military training.

Since World War II, our military has sought and found any number of ways to
override the values and belief systems recruits have absorbed from their
families, schools, communities and religions. Using the principles of
operant conditioning, the military has found ways to reprogram their human
software, overriding those characteristics that are inconvenient in a
military context, most particularly the inherent resistance human beings
have to killing others of their own species. "Modern combat training
conditions soldiers to act reflexively to stimuli," says Lt. Col. Peter
Kilner, a professor of philosophy and ethics at West Point, "and this
maximizes soldiers' lethality, but it does so by bypassing their moral
autonomy. Soldiers are conditioned to act without considering the moral
repercussions of their actions; they are enabled to kill without making the
conscious decision to do so. If they are unable to justify to themselves the
fact that they killed another human being, they will likely -- and
understandably -- suffer enormous guilt. This guilt manifests itself as
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and it has damaged the lives of
thousands of men who performed their duty in combat."

By military standards, operant conditioning has been highly effective. It's
enabled American soldiers to kill more often and more efficiently, and that
ability continues to exact a terrible toll on those we have designated as
the "enemy." But the toll on the troops themselves is also tragic. Even when
troops struggle honorably with the difference between a protected person and
a permissible target (and I believe that the vast majority do so struggle,
though the distinction is one I find both ethically and humanely
problematic) in war "shit happens." When soldiers are witness to
overwhelming horror, or because of a reflexive accident, an illegitimate
order, or because multiple deployments have thoroughly distorted their
perceptions, or simply because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time
-- those are the moments that will continue to haunt them, the memories they
will not be able to forgive or forget, and the stuff of posttraumatic stress
injuries.

And it's not just the inherent conscientious objector our military finds
inconvenient: current U.S. military training also includes a
<http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0304,baard,41331,1.html>  component to
desensitize male soldiers to the sounds of women being raped, so the enemy
cannot use the cries of their fellow soldiers to leverage information. I
think it not unreasonable to connect such desensitization techniques to the
rates of domestic violence in the military, which are, according to the DoD,
five <http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2005/07/base_crimes.html>
times those in the civilian population. Is anyone really surprised that men
who have been specifically trained to ignore the pain and fear of women have
a difficult time coming home to their wives and families? And clearly they
do. There were 2,374 reported cases of sexual assault in the military in
2005, a 40 percent increase over 2004. But that figure represents only
reported cases, and, as Air Force Brig. Gen. K.C. McClain, commander of
DoD's Joint Task Force for Sexual Assault Prevention and Response pointed
out <http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=15162> , "Studies
indicate that only 5 percent of sexual assaults are reported."

I have thought a lot about the implications of "psychological Kevlar" --
what kind of "preventive and early-intervention measures, practices or
procedures" might be developed that would "reduce the likelihood that
personnel in combat will develop post-traumatic stress disorder." How would
a soldier with a shield against moral response "five times stronger than
steel" behave?

I cannot convince myself that what is really being promoted isn't a form of
moral lobotomy.

I cannot imagine what aspects of selfhood will have to be excised or
paralyzed so soldiers will no longer be troubled by what they, not to
mention we, would otherwise consider morally repugnant. A soldier who has
lost an arm can be welcomed home because he or she still shares fundamental
societal values. But the soldier who sees her friend emulsified by a bomb,
or who is ordered to run over children in the road rather than slow down the
convoy, or who realizes too late that the woman was carrying a baby, not a
bomb -- if that soldier's ability to feel terror and horror has been
amputated, if he or she can no longer be appalled or haunted, something far
more precious has been lost. I am afraid that the training or conditioning
or drug that will be developed to protect soldiers from such injuries will
leave an indifference to violence that will make them unrecognizable to
themselves and to those who love them. They will be alienated and isolated,
and finally unable to come home.

Posttraumatic stress injuries can devastate the lives of soldiers and their
families. The suicides that are so often the result of such injuries make it
clear that they can be every bit as lethal as bullets or bombs, and to date
no cure has been found. Treatment and disability payments, both for injured
troops and their families, are a huge budgetary concern that becomes ever
more daunting as these wars drag on. The Psychological Kevlar Act perhaps
holds out the promise of a prophylactic remedy, but it should come as no
surprise that Big Pharma has been looking for a chemical intervention.

What they have come up with has already been dubbed "the mourning after
pill." Propranalol, if taken immediately following a traumatic event, can
subdue a victim's stress response and so soften his or her perception of the
memory. That does not mean the memory has been erased, but proponents claim
that the drug can render it emotionally toothless.

If your daughter were raped, the argument goes, wouldn't you want to spare
her a traumatic memory that might well ruin her life? As the mother of a
23-year old daughter, I can certainly understand the appeal of that
argument. And a drug that could prevent the terrible effects of traumatic
injuries in soldiers? If I were the parent of a soldier suffering from such
a life-altering injury, I can imagine being similarly persuaded.

Not surprisingly, the Army is already on board. Propranolol is a
well-tolerated medication that has been used for years for other purposes.

And it is inexpensive.

But is it moral to weaken memories of horrendous acts a person has
committed? Some would say that there is no difference between offering
injured soldiers penicillin to prevent an infection and giving a drug that
prevents them from suffering from a posttraumatic stress injury for the rest
of their lives. Others, like Leon Kass, former chairman of the President's
Council on Bioethics, object to propranolol's use on the grounds that it
medicates away one's conscience. "It's the morning-after pill for just about
anything that produces regret, remorse, pain or guilt," he says. Barry Romo,
a national coordinator for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, is even more
blunt. "That's the devil pill," he says. "That's the monster pill, the
anti-morality pill. That's the pill that can make men and women do anything
and think they can get away with it. Even if it doesn't work, what's scary
is that a young soldier could believe it will."

It doesn't take a neuroscientist to see the problem with both of these
solutions. Though both hold the promise of relief from the effects of an
injury that causes unspeakable pain, they do so at what appears to be great
cost. Whatever research projects might be funded by the Psychological Kevlar
Act and whatever use is made of propranolol, they will almost certainly
involve a diminished range of feelings and memory, without which soldiers
and veterans will be different. But in what ways?

I wish I could trust the leadership of our country to prioritize the lives
and well-being of our citizens. I don't. The last six years have clearly
shown the extent to which this administration is willing to go to use
soldiers for its own ends, discarding them when they are damaged. Will
efforts be made to fix what has been broken? Return what has been taken?
Bring them home? Will citizens be enlightened about what we are condoning in
our ignorance, dispassion or indifference? Or will these two solutions
simply bring us closer to realizing the bullet-proof mind, devoid of the
inconvenient vulnerability of decent human beings to atrocity and horror?
And finally, these are all questions about the morality of proposals that
are trying to prevent injuries without changing the social circumstances
that bring them about, which sidestep the most fundamental moral dilemma:
that of sending people to war in the first place. 

Penny Coleman is the widow of a Vietnam veteran who took his own life after
coming home. Her latest book, Flashback: Posttraumatic
<http://alternet.bookswelike.net/isbn/0807050407>  Stress Disorder, Suicide
and the Lessons of War, was released on Memorial Day, 2006. Her blog is
Flashback <http://www.flashbackhome.com/> . 

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