Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

New drugs and consumer products are almost always tested for safety on rats, rabbits, chimpanzees and other animals, but advances in technology could bring an end to such experiments. Testing on animals could be phased out over the next couple of decades — putting to rest ethical, efficiency and reliability questions — if new systems are accepted by researchers and government regulators, according to several experts gathering to debate the subject this week. "We're trying to find out how we can save animals and make risk assessment of consumer products more reliable," said Dr. Thomas Hartung, director of Johns Hopkins University's Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing, a co-sponsor of the Washington conference called Animals, Research, and Alternatives: Measuring Progress 50 Years Later.

A Baltimore police sergeant who says he shot and killed a young man in 2005 is suing the agency, saying it refused to help him with his post traumatic stress disorder. The sergeant, Richard A. Willard, is not on active duty. He owns the gourmet grill cheese food truck parks in various parts of the city. City officials declined to comment on the suit, citing policy of not addressing pending litigation. Willard, who has been an officer since 1992, says in the suit that he shot the man to protect fellow officers, but "nevertheless felt regret for killing the young man, despite the justified and even necessary nature of his action.

Through floods, crashes, tornadoes, fires and every other conceivable form of disaster, the American Red Cross has provided victims with shelter, food, first aid and other physical relief. Now the Central Maryland Red Cross is helping to pioneer another form of aid -- help for the emotional trauma that often afflicts people touched by disasters. These needy people fall into two categories: primary victims, who are directly affected by the disaster, and secondary victims, including families and members of the community in which the disaster occurred as well as the rescue workers who respond to the crisis.

The seismic sea waves that pummeled Asia and Africa at the end of 2004 forever altered the course of life for hundreds of thousands of residents. But following closely behind the devastation was a more humane wave - of generosity and good will that sprang from all corners of the world to help, heal, repair and rebuild what the tsunami wrought. Karen McClure, 51, a family nurse practitioner from Millersville who teaches at the University of Maryland School of Nursing, was a part of that second swell.

In an effort to avert a controversy like that surrounding Agent Orange, federal officials plan a Persian Gulf Registry to address questions about health problems being attributed to the Kuwaiti oil fires and other illnesses being reported by scores of Gulf War veterans.The Department of Veterans Affairs has asked Congress to create the registry and appropriate about $1 million to track the health of those who served in the gulf."It's a way for us to monitor," said Terry Jemison, a VA spokesman.

As a psychologist who has spent more than a year in the Middle East, I have been following with great interest the commentary following the massacre in Afghanistan by the U.S. soldier last Saturday ("Killings of 16 appall Afghans," March 12). Almost all of the opinions expressed by leaders, pundits and talk show listeners betray a fundamental cultural myopia. They seek to find the pathology in the individual and not in the wider society. We think that the soldier must suffer combat fatigue from multiple deployments or suffer from post traumatic stress disorder or another mental illness and rush to declare the incident an isolated one of a rogue soldier.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced Friday a plan to immediately evaluate and pay the oldest disability claims, a move that advocates expect will bring relief to Maryland servicemen and women who face one of the largest backlogs in the country. The agency will make provisional decisions on claims that are at least a year old and have not been acted upon. Based on a rating of the severity of the veteran's disability, benefits will range from about $125 to $3,000 a month, or more if a veteran requires extraordinary care.

Eighteen months after she enlisted in the Army, Wanda Porter fell from a 50-foot tower, shattering her feet and ending her military career. Today, after three surgeries, a year in a veterans hospital, a failed marriage, bouts of depression and 17 years of therapy, Porter is taking classes at Baltimore County Community College and planning to complete a degree in psychology. She credits Veterans Affairs with helping her recover and was eager to attend a networking fair especially for women veterans at the Baltimore VA Medical Center on Saturday.

A Wounded Warrior and employee with the U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC) here recently got a new best friend, courtesy of Hero Dogs, a Maryland charity that provides service dogs to injured or disabled veterans. Kelly Keck, an equal employment opportunity specialist in ATEC's EEO Office, and Lady Liberty recently met when representatives from the charity introduced him to the 3-year-old golden retriever, called "Libby" for short. Keck and Libby are still in training but warmed to each other enough to begin spending 24 hours a day in each other's company, organizers said.

The mourners wore blue nail polish, blue-striped ties, blue jewelry and crisp blue dress shirts. Blue hoodies and blue hair bands. Blue was Grace McComas' favorite color, so that's what mourners at her visitation wore Friday in memory of the 15-year-old Glenelg High School sophomore who took her life recently to end the pain, her family said, of a cyber-bullying campaign against her. Meanwhile, a social media "event" — blue4grace — was begun...