erm… Make that Capital Hill.  Well, in a roundabout way.  They’re starting in California.

On Monday Vets of OIF, OEF, and other U.S. wars will be heading to federal court after filing a lawsuit that states they have not been receiving proper medical care since they’re deployments.

The lawsuit before a judge in U.S. District Court for Northern California claims the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs was unable to deal with the growing number of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, cases emerging from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Unless systemic and drastic measures are instituted immediately, the costs to these veterans, their families, and our nation will be incalculable, including broken families, a new generation of unemployed and homeless veterans, increases in drug abuse and alcoholism, and crushing burdens on the health care delivery system and other social services in our communities,” the suit said.

Some of those in the suit say they have suffered from PTSD for many years, even before the most recent wars highlighted the fate of many Americans who served in difficult combat abroad.

Those saying the VA failed them include Barbara Bachmeier, 54, who reports she was sexually harassed and raped in South Korea in the 1980s while working in military intelligence for the U.S. Army, and then received insufficient care.

“I was having all these various flashbacks and nightmares,” the Alaska resident said in an interview. “But the VA does not want to pay disability payments unless they really have to.”

“Their attitude is not what can we do to help you,” she said, explaining she once considered suicide. “It was very difficult to navigate the VA system.”

In proceedings that could last through May 1, the court will hear testimony not from former service members such as Bachmeier, but from administrators and officials involved in the system.

“He (the judge) can’t actually make decisions about individual issues and while having a veteran talking about their individual experiences is emblematic of the problem, it’s not particularly useful for the judge because he needs to hear about systemic problems,” said Kasey Corbit, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs.

How this will play out in court remains to be seen- but if nothing else it will shine an even bigger spotlight on a very real, long term, continuing problem that is plaguing troops today.

We’ll continue our coverage on this case as it happens until it’s conclusion- for better or worse.

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PTSD or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a topic that sits in the forefront of most veteran’s minds and can affect our lives from minor nuisance, to debilitating condition. Of course, it’s not only a veteran’s issue. Statistics show that over a quarter of a million Americans will develop PTSD in the course of their lives. Not surprisingly the biggest groups are war vets and those who live in high-crime areas.

Studies being conducted now into biological factors that could contribute to PTSD show that there are specific genes that influence how a person may respond to a traumatic event. And not only that, but events in childhood can even cause changes in the genes themselves, for better or worse.

Researchers found that specific variations in a stress-related gene appeared to be influenced by trauma at a young age — in this case child abuse. That interaction strongly increased the chances for adult survivors of abuse to develop signs of PTSD.

Among adult survivors of severe child abuse, those with the specific gene variations scored more than twice as high (31) on a scale of post-traumatic stress, compared with those without the variations (13).

The worse the abuse, the stronger the risk in people with those gene variations.

The study of 900 adults is among the first to show that genes can be influenced by outside, non genetic factors to trigger signs of PTSD. It is the largest of just two reports to show molecular evidence of a genetic influence on PTSD.

Basically, past traumas can cause genetic predispositions to bad reactions to new traumas.

One has to wonder what this could mean for the future, both in treating those with PTSD, and perhaps preventing genetic factors that could lead to PTSD. As the science and technology become available, could it be possible to designate those at high risk before they go through a trauma, treat them, and prevent the reaction that could devastate their lives? Perhaps, but by that same token, could that be removing a genuine factor in our very humanity, the toll that some of the world’s hard realities can take on our souls?

No matter what comes of these studies, it’s important to remember the scars that we all carry- physical, and emotional- and acknowledge the roll they play in our lives.

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