I'm gonna get on my soapbox for a minute.
I just read this article on CNN. It's about the new 9/11 first responders health care program. To bring you up to speed:
Congress is finally getting around to starting a program to cover the medical expenses of the emergency responders to the World Trade Center. A lot of them got really sick over the years and all signs pretty much point to their exposure to various toxins and pollutants at Ground Zero. Now, I won't even bother asking why it took ten damn years to get this going. What concerns me is the headline of the article that says that the program won't include cancer treatments.
Hold up, what?
Apparently a good number of cops, firemen and EMTs have come down with rare forms of cancer and the government says that there is no scientific evidence to prove that they got it from the various things they inhaled while digging through the nine-story tall pile of smoldering steel, concrete and ash that remained from the collapse of two 110-story buildings filled with 3,000 people. Some of the cops are in their 30's and doctors which makes it even more rare (and kind of common sense) to consider the common denominator that they all were there on that day.
Everyone remembers where they were on 9/11 and everyone remembers some piece of news footage that showed those people not just trying to get people to safety when the first tower collapsed, but running right back toward the second one before the smoke could even clear. The news heralded them for working 24-7, using buckets and moving debris by hand in what looked like a futile attempt to find survivors, becoming deathly quiet at the faintest sound that could be a whimper or a cry from a survivor under the debris. They were modern day Hercules in the weeks following. Ten years later, they can't even get a claim paid.
What the hell have we become?
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