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A Gruesome Success
MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.— “The blast wave can kill, but more often, due to improved helmets and body armor, the soldier is injured with an invisible wound—a TBI, or traumatic brain injury. Because of this improved protection, the wounded now outnumber the dead by 16:1. Compare that to the 2.6:1 in Vietnam and the 2.4:1 in World War II and you have a gruesome success,” says Dr. Ronald J. Glasser, former Army doctor and author of Wounded: Vietnam to Iraq. The most powerful effect of an improvised explosive device (IED) explosion is the blast wave. When an explosion occurs, incredibly hot gases, between 3000 and 7000 degrees Fahrenheit expand within ten-thousandths of a second. The gases exert pressures of 70 tons per square inch on the atmosphere surrounding the detonation and the blast wave travels at about 13,000 mph. We find ourselves in a dire situation, because last year, the government cut funding for TBI research by 50% because they said they didn’t have enough money for it. The blast injuries our soldiers are suffering from are different than other head injuries. For example, if you hit your head in a motorcycle accident, the neurosurgeons know what things to do. The doctors are trying all of these things for TBIs and it’s not working. Dr. Ronald J. Glasser reveals the new medical realities of this war. He conducted an unflinching investigation into this war's medical situation, in his book, Wounded: Vietnam to Iraq. Dr. Glasser is speaking at venues across the country, including at the 10th Annual Force Health Protection conference in August 2007 put on by the Deployment Health Clinical Center of Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Media Experience Dr. Glasser has appeared on The Today Show, CNN, MPR, and PBS. His articles have appeared in The Washington Post, Harper's Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Monthly, and Law & Politics. His books include 365 Days (a pivotal book on the Vietnam War)—nominated for the National Book Award and translated into nine languages, the best-selling Ward 402, and The Body is the Hero, Another War/Another Peace, The Greatest Battle, and The Light in the Skull. -30-
Wounded: Vietnam to Iraq
365 Days “The stories I have tried to tell here are true,” says Glasser in his preface. “Those that happened in Japan I was part of; the rest are from the boys I met. I would have liked to have disbelieved some of them, and at first I did, but I was there long enough to hear the same stories again and again, and then to see part of it myself.” Assigned to Zama, an Army hospital in Japan, Glasser arrived there in September 1968 as a pediatrician in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, primarily to care for the children of officers and high-ranking government officials. But with an average of six to eight thousand wounded per month, Glasser, along with all other available physicians, was called on to treat the soldiers. The death and suffering he witnessed were staggering. The soldiers counted their days by the length of their tour—one year, or 365 days—and they knew, down to the day, how much time they had left. Glasser tells their stories—their lives shockingly interrupted by the tragedies of war—with humane eloquence. Ronald Glasser  |
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