Passage 16

“In 2009, it was Hovda who delivered the Pentagon the recommendation that because multiple concussions could cause serious long-term injury”

• Causal claim. 
• Evaluative claim
• This quote fits in with being an evaluative claim because of how Hovda feels that the situation should be handled. This claim is also causal because of how concussions are stated as potentially causing long-term injury 

“concussions need time to heal”

• Recommendation claim. 
• Factual claim.
• This claim is a statement that downtime is needed after a concussion. It can also be construed as a recommendation to the recipient. 

“Hovda says some of the Army’s best doctors implied that if soldiers were told they needed rest after concussions”

• Attributive claim
• The relaying of information by a named author to unnamed ones distances the author from the statement through a lens. This attributive claim is greatly utilized by Hovda to get an idea of what the government thought of concussions and their effects prior to the protocol reforms.

“If 25 mph punches to the head cause brain damage, IED blasts that hit at 330 mph probably do too.”

• Illustrative claim
• Causal claim
• This statement is illustrative because it uses descriptive language to compare two ways brain damage can occur. The causal aspect also comes from how it shows that both a punch to the head causes brain damage and so can an explosion.

“These days, there are MRIs in theater, assessments after blasts, mandatory rest periods after a concussion”

• Factual claim
• This claim is stating how that there are now multiple ways that concussions can be dealt with after the reforms. These new implementations are great for concussions as they allow for greater detection and prevention of PTSD.

“But those reforms came seven years into the Iraq War, after Caleb and a million other soldiers were already home”

• Quantitative claim
• The statement is quantitative because it mentions the millions of PTSD sufferers and how it took several years for concussion reforms to be implemented in the military and those men suffering have already left the military. 

“researchers “have tried hyperbaric oxygen, hundreds of clinical trials; we’re just failing miserably in trying to make a difference”—but that they should not panic”

• Attributive claim
• The author of the article passes on this statement to unnamed researchers to put out how there are multiple ways that treatments are being researched. 

“There’s good rehabilitation strategies: learn what your deficits are, learn that you’re not going crazy, that you just can’t do what you used to do,” 

• Evaluative claim
• This quote is a researcher explaining how specific strategies can be undertaken to help the sufferer. Learning one’s deficits is important to identify how problems can be avoided and this is especially great in dealing with PTSD symptoms.