Whistleblowing: A Story of Death and Neglect

            It has been exhibited many times that both our government and our businesses need whistleblowers in order to address misconduct or institutional problems. A whistleblower is defined someone who reveals institutional problems of an organization, specifically an organization the individual is a part of. Whistleblowing laws have been set up to protect individuals from the organization’s retaliation.

            However, there are some major difficulties. From state to state there are different protections in place for whistleblowers, however they vary, most making it difficult to gain whistleblower status, maintain status, and the laws do not always have the broadest reach. In the resent VA scandal to surface in the media, the former chief of psychiatry at the local St. Louis VA health system was demoted multiple times after filing complaints against the system.

            This chief of psychiatry’s story goes against the fabric of what our country preaches: we take care of the ones who are willing to die for our freedom. And yet, on this topic alone, there have been continuous reports of neglect and misconduct within the VA for almost sixty years. This article states that the VA inspector general has issued 18 reports that identified problems with the system since 2005. In 1988, President Bush set a committee to clean up the program and swore in Anthony Principi as secretary of the VA. Principi was later involved in a long-term contract that overcharged the VA $6 million dollars.

            There are countless other examples of this problem however, one of the most disturbing issues is not necessarily that this neglect has most likely lead to the deaths of U.S. veterans, but the manner in which the organizations conduct themselves even after they are criticized. In the St. Louis Psychiatrist’s case, he was demoted. And when the media does expose wrong doing, the administrations amputate themselves from the directly guilty parties and claim they had no prior knowledge at all to the poor conditions or conduct of the programs.

            The U.S. government agreed to allocate over 17 billion dollars to the program to fix the problems, yet one must wonder if a lack o funds is the root of this issue.

            As stated before, this conduct has been rampant for more than sixty years, and yet it has seen little coverage and momentum despite the nation’s participation in more than five wars since that time. If we cannot tolerate criticism and use it to make our country better, then we will inevitably be left in ruin, for those who do not change, mutate, and evolve eventually die.