Reply #9: Well, this is certainly a limit case for the review board

[alcibiades_mystery]

These get into rather thorny questions of the "directness" of causation. I don't know how the board would rule, but it would be a very difficult hearing, to be sure. But like I said, this is a kind of limit case owing to the extremely complex nature of quadriplegic injury, which produces a suspended state of "stabilization." In other words, even a death years later (as in, say, Christopher Reeves) can theoretically be directly related to the injury in theater, even if some extended period of "stabilization" has intervened.That makes such cases qualitatively different from other types of injuries. I'd be curious to see how review boards have ruled for such injuries in the past; the problem is that we have much better technology to maintain a stable state in quadriplegics than we've had in past wars, so the boards would essentially be dealing with a novel situation.