Veterans Affairs Extends Presumption Period for Persian Gulf War Veterans to December 31, 2021
Beginning in 1994, Congress implemented a statutory provision, 38 U.S.C. 1117, for a presumption of service connection for undiagnosed chronic multi-symptom illnesses for veterans who served in the Southwest Area theater of operations during the Persian Gulf War. Because the Persian Gulf War is still considered a statutorily defined period of war, 38 U.S.C. 1117 applies to more recent...
Secretary McDonald’s Q&A Regarding Gulf War Illness
I previous blogs, we have written about the regulations governing what is now called Gulf War Illness (GWI). As prescribed in regulation, the terms of art “undiagnosed illness” and “medically unexplained chronic multi-symptom illness (MUCMI)” are little understood and difficult for veterans and physicians to understand. In handling claims involving exposure to...
Fed. Cir. Opinion in Tyrues v. Shinseki, Non-Remanded Must be Appealed Within 120 Days to the CAVC
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) adjudication process “‘is not meant to be a trap for the unwary . . . a stratagem to deny compensation a minefield” for claimants. Percy v. Shinseki, 23 Vet. App. 37, 47 (2009) (quoting Comer v. Peake, 552 F.3d 1362, 1369 (Fed. Cir. 2009). For Veteran Larry Tyrues, the majority in Tyrues v. Shinseki did not believe this tenet had...
Gulf War Syndrome Explained
After the 1991 Gulf War, veterans were returning from theater with unexplained symptoms with no identifiable causation. In the subsequent years, scientific and medical literature have attributed these symptoms to exposure to toxins, chemical weapons, and/or bacteria. On a personal note, I returned to the United States in 2005 to discover that my unit at Camp Ar Ramadi was exposed to...