Chairman Hall, Distinguished Members of the Subcommittee on Disability Assistance & Memorial Affairs, and Guests. Thank you for inviting us to participate in your legislative hearings on several bills now pending in the House Committee on Veterans Affairs. We will confine our remarks to H.R. 1197 Improved Veterans’ Benefits for Former Prisoners of War.

Ninety nine percent of former Prisoners of War are from WWII and Korea and are now living in their sunset years. We are grateful that Congress has through the years provided benefits for former Prisoners of War where it has been determined that the causal effect of an injury or illness is from the captive experience.

For more than 50 years the National Academy of Sciences has been conducting scientific research to identify medical conditions that, beyond any doubt, are the direct consequences of the brutal conditions of captivity.

There are two medical conditions sited that still deserve presumptive status. These are osteoporosis and diabetes. Osteoporosis is bone loss attributed to starvation during captivity. Similarly, diabetes is the result of prolonged stress and permanent damage to the body’s basic defense system as a result of months and years of grossly inadequate diet as a Prisoner of War.

These two proposed presumptives have again been introduced by Representative Gus Bilirakis (R-FL). We are deeply thankful to him and strongly urge your committee’s support by codifying these two conditions into law without further delay.

Also, very important to former Prisoners of War and their survivors is H.R. 156, to amend 38, U.S. Code, to provide for the payment of DIC to survivors of former POWs who died before September 30, 1999, with the same eligibility as applied to payment of DIC to Survivors of former POWs who die after that date. This will be of great financial aid to the surviving spouses of POWs.  Thank you.