Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2007--Continued
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2007--Continued -- (Senate - August 02, 2006)
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
AMENDMENT NO. 4781
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside so I may call up amendment No. 4781 for debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The clerk will report the amendment.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Illinois [Mr. Durbin], for himself, Mr. Obama, and Mr. Lautenberg, proposes an amendment numbered 4781.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:
(Purpose: To make available from Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Army, up to $2,000,000 for the improvement of imaging for traumatic brain injuries)
At the end of title VIII, add the following:
Sec. 8109. Of the amount appropriated or otherwise made available by title IV under the heading ``Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Army'', up to $2,000,000 may be available for the improvement of imaging for traumatic brain injuries and the adaptation of current technologies to treat brain injuries suffered in combat.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is recognized.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask the Senate to join me for a few minutes to consider this amendment. It relates to traumatic brain injury. It is a very serious problem with soldiers who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. This amendment addresses the very real medical issues and problems they are facing with these serious wounds. Senator Obama shares my concern of this issue. That is why we are offering this amendment together today.
Our goal is to improve the treatment of the devastating injuries which are suffered by many of our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Traumatic brain injuries can range from large, penetrating skull fractures to concussions which may not be immediately detected.
As of January of this year, the Department of Defense reported that nearly 12,000 members of the military have been directly or indirectly wounded in explosions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Mr. President, I am going to display a chart at this moment which is painful to see. I talked it over with a man who has served in Iraq who commanded troops in Iraq who saw one of his soldiers suffer a very serious injury similar to the one I am about to show. I asked whether he thought it was appropriate for me to show this image on the floor. He said, Yes, it is important that the people of this country understand the kinds of injuries that our soldiers are experiencing and why this issue of traumatic brain injury is so important for us to discuss with this amendment.
This is an actual x-ray of an American soldier who has been the victim of a traumatic brain injury. Because of an explosion, one can see that a major portion of this soldier's skull was blown off. We are told that there are soldiers who have experienced injuries that are even more grievous, and they survived. Through the miracle of evacuation and medical treatment, they survive. They go through extensive surgeries, and some, this officer told me, end up wearing helmets for long periods of time during their recuperation until they can finally rebuild their skulls so they can start to go through rehabilitation and recuperation.
This is amazing when we see an image of an x-ray such as this and understand that many of our soldiers have been subjected to traumatic brain injury of lesser and greater extent and are now returning to the United States.
These brain injuries are often caused by bullet wounds or penetrating head injuries and can also be the result of blasts, obviously bombs, grenades, landmines, missiles, mortar, artillery shells.
In the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, traumatic brain injury accounts for 22 percent or more of injuries, a larger proportion of casualties than in any other recent war of the United States. It is a serious medical challenge for those who treat our soldiers, certainly for the soldiers who are victims of these injuries and their families.
With the frequency of attack by rocket-propelled grenades, improvised explosive devices in Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers are more likely to encounter an explosion. Improvements in protective devices, such as Kevlar helmets and body armor, may make the soldiers more likely to survive these terrible explosions.
More than 1,700 of those wounded in Iraq are known to have sustained serious brain injury--1,700 soldiers. Half of these injuries are severe enough to permanently impair thinking, memory, mood, behavior, and their ability to work.
This information I am sharing is from official documentation of the Department of Defense.
Mr. President, you may recall, however, that back in January, ABC News co-anchor Bob Woodruff sustained a traumatic brain injury from an IED when he was embedded with the Army's 4th Infantry Division in Iraq.
In a recent survey of 115 soldiers wounded from blast injuries, 62 percent had brain injuries, according to the Defense and Veterans Injury Center at Walter Reed.
According to a recent study by researchers at Harvard and Columbia, it is estimated that the cost of medical treatment for those individuals with brain injuries from the Iraqi war will be at least $14 billion over the next 20 years. In Vietnam and previous 20th century wars, brain injuries accounted for less than 20 percent of injuries.
The effect of these injuries range from short-term minor impairment to long-term serious disability. One of the common long-term residual effects of traumatic brain injury is the onset of epileptic seizures. These symptoms may begin months or even years after the injury occurs. The more brain tissue a soldier loses as a result of a brain injury, the more likely he or she is to develop seizures.
I can recall recently seeing another television show. There was a young woman, a beautiful young woman, who had volunteered to serve in the Army and was in Iraq. She was the victim of one of these blast injuries and lost a major portion of her skull. She had gone through numerous
surgeries and long periods of recuperation. When you saw her on television, she looked perfect, beautiful as can be, perfectly normal, as if nothing had ever happened to her. It is a tribute to the men and women who treat our soldiers that they do return to this moment in their lives where they have a chance.
When she was asked what life was like, she said: It is still a battle every day, but it is one I am willing to face--double vision, pain, these are things which I am just going to work with.
Unfortunately, we know that these brain seizures are also a challenge for these victims. Recurrent late seizures are considered post-traumatic epilepsy, or PTE. Studies have estimated that over 50 percent of Vietnam veterans with penetrating head injuries acquired epilepsy as a result of their injuries.
The same statistics apply in Iraq. It means that we will have massive numbers of our soldiers in years to come who have suffered head injuries of varying degrees at least subject to the possibility of these seizures. Unfortunately, our veterans in Iraq and Afghanistan may face that future. I hope they do not, but it could happen.
Given the heavy incidence of closed head trauma in this war, which is less well understood, we may see even more cases.
The Army currently does not have a program focused on advanced traumatic brain injury diagnosis that will treat combat wounds and related ailments, such as PTE. Clearly, such a program would help the more than 1,700 soldiers with brain injuries sustained in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Army estimates that there is an annual investment gap of $20 million in research, development, test, and evaluation for improved diagnostics and other long-term rehabilitative treatments of traumatic brain injuries. These are the Army's own estimates: That they are falling short $20 million for what they need to deal with this serious problem.
Senator Obama and I are offering this amendment so that we can focus a small part of a large bill on defense funds, using them to acquire and use technology that can best diagnose, identify, and help us treat traumatic brain injury.
Currently, there is a promising technology called diffusion tensor imaging, DTI, that could help identify traumatic brain injury that might not be apparent. DTI is similar to an MRI, but it is twice as powerful in scanning the brain. DTI identifies damage to the white matter in the brain that frequently causes traumatic brain injury.
However, today DTI is currently used primarily to identify noncombat diseases, such as multiple sclerosis and schizophrenia, not for diagnosing combat-related injuries.
Before we can deploy this promising technology to help treat our soldiers who suffer traumatic brain injury, we need a greater understanding of how to use it more effectively. If this research isn't focused soon, we won't be able to deploy DTI technology to combat field hospitals or regional medical treatment facilities in places such as Baghdad or Landstuhl, Germany, that are very close to the scene of battle.
In order to reach the point where DTI can be deployed closer to combat, we need to fund a program that pairs the Army with premier brain institutes in America to focus primarily on diagnosing brain injuries sustained in combat.
The amendment that Senator Obama and I offer would do just that. It would allocate $2 million--$2 million--a significant sum for the average person, but in the context of this bill involving billions of dollars a very small amount. It would allocate $2 million to premier brain scientists at the University of Chicago where this research is underway and enable them to partner with the U.S. Army to test and evaluate DTI technology so that we can establish a standard of care for traumatic brain injury that would bring the advantages of DTI closer to the troops in the field.
This will allow us to immediately detect and treat the increasing number of traumatic brain injury cases caused by combat. In addition, these funds will allow the university to partner with the Army Medical Research and Materiel Command and associated epilepsy advocacy to treat traumatic brain injury survivors with post-traumatic epilepsy.
As my colleagues can see, this project is directly related to the real-life needs of our soldiers who have served us so valiantly in Iraq and Afghanistan and other theaters. It is a small amount by the standards of this bill, but it could provide the promise of recovery for soldiers who face these traumatic brain injuries. It will go a long way toward treating what may be the signature wound of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I know this is not included in the bill as it comes before us. I hope, despite the debate in the committee, that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will consider this amendment.
Mr. President, $2 million seems a small price to pay to give these soldiers who have paid such a greater price for America, a chance for full recovery; $2 million doesn't seem like an unreasonable amount to bring the very best, modern technology closer to the battlefield so that our soldiers can be treated and treated effectively and treated quickly. I hope my colleagues will support our injured troops fighting this war by supporting this amendment.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
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