The U.S. Army will begin conducting cognitive assessments on new soldiers and is exploring ways to provide servicemembers who are routinely exposed to blast pressure with additional protective equipment, a top Army official revealed during a recent hearing on Capitol Hill.
The move comes after a brain tissue analysis of Lewiston mass shooter Robert Card revealed that he likely had a traumatic brain injury from his time serving as a hand grenade instructor with the Army.
Card was a U.S. Army Reservist and was a longtime instructor at an Army hand grenade training range, where he was exposed to thousands of low-level blasts.
A post-mortem study of Card’s brain by the Boston University chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) Center revealed that Card’s brain showed “significant degeneration, axonal and myelin loss, inflammation, and small blood vessel injury.”
“While I cannot say with certainty that these pathological findings underlie Mr. Card’s behavioral changes in the last 10 months of life, based on our previous work, brain injury likely played a role in his symptoms,” Dr. Ann McKee, leader of the CTE Center’s post-mortem analysis said.
Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth revealed the new measures in a recent hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, during which she was questioned by U.S. Senator from Maine Angus King (I) about the Army’s plans to better protect servicemembers’ health from shockwave trauma produced by repeated explosions in combat and in training.
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“I hope that you will continue research on the effects of blasts on your people. We had a tragedy in Lewiston, Maine last year. It turns out the fellow was a munitions test instructor. He experienced blast after blast after blast. Analysis of his brain indicates that it was severely damaged,” Sen. King told Secretary Wormuth.
“So, please attend to that risk because it is now clearly contributing to the tragedy we had but also suicide and long-term damage to our soldiers,” Sen. King said.
Wormuth responded that the Army will begin doing “a cognitive assessment on every new soldier coming into basic training” starting this June, to “set a baseline” before being exposed to blast trauma.
“High school football teams have been doing that for years, by the way. It’s nice that we’re now starting,” King told Wormuth.
“We are going to start doing it this June. Again, every single new soldier,” Wormuth said. “We are also looking at what additional personal protective equipment we could provide to our folks, especially instructors and others who are routinely exposed to blast pressure.”Â
“We are looking into wearable gauges that would allow us to continuously track what soldiers are being exposed to,” she said. “The challenge we have had to date is that we haven’t been able to find sufficiently ruggedized gauges. So, we need to do some more work on that.”
Secretary Wormuth added that the Army is “very attentive to the brain induced injury issues.”
The Independent Commission investigating the Oct. 25 Lewiston shootings is slated to continue hearing testimony from members of the U.S. Army Reserve during an upcoming public meeting on Thursday, April 25.
Next Thursday’s meeting is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m., and will be held in the Farber Forum located inside Jewett Auditorium, 46 University Drive at the University of Maine at Augusta.
The stupidity never ends! He was a nutjob. Open Carter’s closed asylums and this will go away. Thanks Jimmy……you f’d America. I’m old enough to remember your dirty deeds to unravel America. Rot in hell soon!