Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) sent a letter to Unissant, the company that manages the Department of Defense’s Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED), to get answers on alleged errors that showed a rise in medical conditions of service members in 2021 compared to the four previous years, Breitbart News has exclusively learned.
Johnson sent the letter to Unissant, Inc.’s Chairman and CEO Manish Malhotra on March 7, 2022, after a company employee said they would not discuss its management of the DMED database, which came to Johnson’s attention during a roundtable he held with doctors and medical professionals on COVID-19 in January.
A lawyer representing three DOD whistleblowers presented Johnson with data from the database, which showed spikes in a variety of illnesses and health conditions in 2021 compared to the five-year average during the 2016-2020 period. The DOD has said the data for 2016-2020 was incorrect, and that the database was taken down temporarily and updated with accurate figures.
Johnson sent three queries to the DOD, requesting that they preserve the original data and explain why it was inaccurate. The senator said that on February 15, 2022, the DOD informed his staff that they had preserved the data, but they did not provide a “detailed explanation regarding the data issues in DMED.”
Johnson said when he contacted Unissant to discuss what they knew about the DMED problems, an employee said, “This request will need to be made to our government customer. We are not in a position nor are we willing to engage in this discussion.”
Johnson wrote in his letter to Malhotra:
I was disappointed to hear of Unissant’s refusal to provide information informally about its management of DMED. Because of the concerns and unanswered questions relating to the potential increases of medical diagnoses in DMED, as well as the alleged data issues on the system, I hope Unissant will cooperate with this Senate examination and respond to this formal request for information:
1. Please explain Unissant’s contractual obligations with managing data in DMED. Please provide all contracts with government entities concerning this relationship.
2. Is Unissant aware of data issues on DMED? If so, what are those issues, when were those issues uncovered, who uncovered those issues, and to what extent did Unissant communicate those issues to DoD?
3. Please list all other instances where issues were found in DMED (e.g. data corruption).
4. Please provide all documents and communications between Unissant and DoD referring or relating to DMED from Aug. 1, 2021 to present.Finally, I request Unissant preserve all records referring, relating, or reported to the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database.8 Please immediately confirm to my office the completion of the records preservation and provide all other responses by March 21, 2022.
The Defense Department in August ordered all service members to be fully-vaccinated against the coronavirus and has so far discharged about 1,500 service members for not complying.
Follow Breitbart News’s Kristina Wong on Twitter or on Facebook.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.