The 2019 Annual Meeting is Less Than 3 Months Away — Register Now

Our 2019 Annual Meeting is approaching fast! Please ensure that you make plans now to attend our second Annual Meeting, to be held Monday, April 29 through Tuesday, April 30, 2019, in the Vermont Room of the historic Hotel Coolidge in beautiful and historic downtown White River Junction, Vermont.

Register now to secure the special two-day rate of only $50 per attendee. Our two-day meeting will feature a variety of educational sessions, including the annual Sue Rose Memorial Lecture, a panel discussion on distinguishing symptoms of PTSD from those of mefloquine poisoning, a review of the current National Academies study, and various question-and-answer sessions. This is your best opportunity to meet with others affected by quinism and learn about the condition from experts in the field. If you missed last year’s meeting, please consider attending this year.

A full agenda will be released shortly, but in the meantime, you can register now to reserve your space at the meeting or visit our meeting page to show your support for our meeting directly. Thank you for your support of this effort!

The VA Disappoints Veterans with the National Academies Study

At the invitation of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, executive director Dr. Nevin recently travelled to Washington, DC to speak at the opening meeting of a distinguished committee studying the long-term adverse health effects of antimalarial drugs. To learn more about this meeting and the study, we encourage you to read these reports from WUSA9, Military Times, and Military.com, and to read the foundation’s press release regarding the meeting.

The foundation is deeply disappointed that the VA did not ask the committee to examine individual veterans’ medical records as part of its charge, and is concerned that thus far, the committee has not committed to expanding its study to include an independent review of such records.

During his talk, Dr. Nevin was also deeply critical of the presentations of DoD and CDC representatives to the committee, and shared his concerns that the VA continues to neglect calls to screen veterans for a history of symptomatic exposure to mefloquine and to update its website to correct misleading, incomplete, and inaccurate information related to the drug. Dr. Nevin also noted that “certain powerful and entrenched interests would love nothing more than for the National Academies to conclude after 18 months that there is insufficient evidence for the existence of quinism, or insufficient evidence to justify VA acting.” However, Dr. Nevin told the committee that it “cannot validly come to these conclusions because of the limitations that have been set on the evidence that you will review.”

The Quinism Foundation has heard from many concerned veterans who share the foundation’s disappointment that the study committee will not be conducting its own independent review of veterans’ medical records. As Dr. Nevin noted to the committee, these records are critical, and lead to a conclusion “beyond a reasonable doubt that the long-term adverse effects of anti-malarial drugs that you are investigating are in fact signs and symptoms of a disease… quinism.”

The Quinism Foundation’s board of directors will be meeting to discuss how it may be able to facilitate the committee’s access to this critical information. Further details regarding how veterans’ may be able to contribute to the study committee’s 18-month work will be announced in due course. In the meantime, we encourage veterans to support its existing calls to the VA to screen veterans, update its website, and consider mefloquine in disability evaluations.

Dr. Nevin was able to travel on short-notice to speak to the committee thanks to the generosity of those who donate to support the foundation’s efforts. To show your support for our work, please consider creating a Facebook fundraiser, and encourage your friends and family to support this cause. The foundation is proud to be listed as a registered charity in the PayPal Giving Fund, on Amazon Smile, and in the Network for Good’s donor-advised fund. You can read more about the foundation’s charitable activities by reviewing our listing on Guidestar. Every dollar donated counts towards these efforts, and no donation is too small to be of assistance in this work. We thank you in advance for your generous support!