Texas PTSD Veterans Spinning in Their Chairs,,,,For Real

Texas taxpayers pay to spin vets in chair
Experts say $2.2 million paid for shoddy PTSD research
By Sue Ambrose | Staff Writer and Scott Gordon | NBC5
Published September 23, 2015

But the clinic still won a no-bid contract. There were virtually no checks and balances on the study. The number of patients grew from about 50 to about 140. The original cost was $800,000 but grew to $2.2 million.

The clinic claimed “remarkable results.”

Scientists say the research was a waste.

The gyrating chair, cocooned inside a gleaming oval capsule, looks like an astronaut’s training device.

Patients spin upside down and sideways after they buckle in. White-coated healers sitting at a computer control the angle and speed.

Aging Dallas Cowboys like Tony Dorsett and Randy White, their brains and bodies battered, said it made them feel better. A retired general said it improved his vision. And a Texas governor with presidential aspirations wanted to use it to treat post-traumatic stress disorder and brain injuries in war heroes.

So the state of Texas said yes, sure, and poured 2 million taxpayer dollars into a study to see whether a spinning chair — described as an “Off Vertical Axis Rotational Device” — could help.

Experts say there was no medical reason to think that spinning traumatized combat veterans upside down could help them — and every reason to think it wouldn’t. Most of the researchers in the study were chiropractors, not medical doctors. They didn’t work at an established research lab, but at the Carrick Brain Centers, a chiropractic clinic in Irving that opened its doors about six months before the state funding began.
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