Rear Admiral Alan M. Steinman | |
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![]() RADM Steinman in 2013 | |
Born | Newark, Ohio | 7 February 1945
Allegiance | ![]() |
Service/ | ![]() |
Years of service | 1972–1997 |
Rank | ![]() |
Commands held | Chief Medical Officer of the U.S. Coast Guard Director of Health and Safety for the U.S. Coast Guard |
Awards | Distinguished Service Medal Legion of Merit |
Other work | Presidential Special Oversight Board for Department of Defense Investigations of Gulf-War Chemical and Biological Incidents, Transgender Military Service Commission |
Alan M. Steinman (born February 7, 1945) is an American physician, retired U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps rear admiral, who served with the U.S. Coast Guard for the majority of his commissioned corps career. His final assignment was serving as the Coast Guard's chief medical officer. [lower-alpha 1] Steinman is expert in sea survival, hypothermia and drowning, and an advocate for the open service of LGBT people in the U.S. military. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Born in Newark, Ohio, Steinman moved to Los Angeles with his family as a young boy. [2] [3] His father was a chemist and chemical plant owner and his mother was a housewife. [2] [3] Steinman earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1966 and his medical degree from Stanford University in 1971. [2] [3] Following medical school Steinman completed an internship at the Mayo Clinic. [2] [3] Steinman also has a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Washington. [4]
Attracted by the Coast Guard's image as the country's "premier search and rescue agency" he joined the U.S. Public Health Service in order to pursue his interests in emergency medicine. [2] [3] Steinman received his commission in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps as a lieutenant and was assigned to the U.S. Coast Guard in July 1972. [2] [3] [4] Following graduation from the U.S. Navy's aerospace medicine school at NAS Pensacola in 1973, Steinman qualified and served as a Coast Guard flight surgeon. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
As part of his duties as a flight surgeon, Steinman participated in numerous rescues at sea of ill and injured personnel. These occasionally required him to be lowered and recovered from vessels at sea by a helicopter rescue basket. [3] With the exception of Coast Guard Base Kodiak, Steinman was the lone physician on staff at all of his field duty stations. [3] During his time on active duty with the Coast Guard, Steinman was instrumental in establishing the Coast Guard's system of emergency medical services, including the establishment of the Coast Guard EMT School at Petaluma, California. [5] He also established the Coast Guard Wellness Program, emphasizing good nutrition, physical fitness and avoidance of tobacco products.
Steinman is best known, however, for his research into sea-survival, hypothermia and drowning, publishing numerous scientific articles and book chapters and making numerous presentations at medical and search and rescue conferences on these topics. [3] [5] In 1989, the Aerospace Medical Association awarded Steinman its annual Arnold D. Tuttle Award in recognition of " 'his extraordinary series of studies which characterized the protective properties of antiexposure suits under real-world conditions,' culminating in the 1987 publication in Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine of 'Immersion hypothermia: comparative protection of anti-exposure garments in calm vs. rough seas.' " [5] Steinman also co-developed an underwater escape breathing device and anti-exposure garment for use by helicopter crews and "a heated, humidified oxygen system for treating hypothermic patients." [5]
In 1993, Steinman was selected for promotion to flag officer in the commissioned corps and assignment as the Coast Guard Director of Health and Safety. [4] Steinman retired from the U.S. Public Health Service in 1997 and later served on the Presidential Special Oversight Board for Department of Defense Investigations of Gulf War Chemical and Biological Incident investigating Gulf War syndrome. [3] [4] [6] Steinman is a Fellow of the American College of Preventive Medicine. [7]
His military awards and citations include the Distinguished Service Medal and the Legion of Merit. [8]
After his retirement, Steinman came out publicly as a gay man in a 2003 New York Times news article featuring Brigadier General Keith Kerr (CSMR, ret.) and Brigadier General Virgil A. Richard (USA, ret.). [1] [3] The three flag officers were made available to the Times by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network in a move timed to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the Clinton administration's "Don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) policy concerning U.S. military service by gays and lesbians. [1] [3] At the time, Kerr, Richard, and Steinman were the highest-ranking members of the military to publicly acknowledge being gay and they did so in an attempt to foment dialogue with the aim of getting DADT changed. [1] [3]
In 2008, Steinman joined 103 other generals and admirals in signing an open letter calling upon President-elect Barack Obama to end DADT and allow gays and lesbians to serve openly in the U.S. military. [9] In 2014, Steinman joined with former US Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders to co-chair the Transgender Military Service Commission, sponsored by the Palm Center. [4] [10] Among other things, the Commission found: "There is no compelling medical rationale for banning transgender military service, and medical regulations requiring the discharge of all transgender personnel are inconsistent with how the military regulates medical and psychological conditions." [10] The Commission's final report was published in the journal Armed Forces & Society . [4] An earlier version of the report was published online by the Palm Center. [4] : 212 [11]
"Don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) was the official United States policy on military service of non-heterosexual people. Instituted during the Clinton administration, the policy was issued under Department of Defense Directive 1304.26 on December 21, 1993, and was in effect from February 28, 1994, until September 20, 2011. The policy prohibited military personnel from discriminating against or harassing closeted homosexual or bisexual service members or applicants, while barring openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual persons from military service. This relaxation of legal restrictions on service by gays and lesbians in the armed forces was mandated by Public Law 103–160, which was signed November 30, 1993. The policy prohibited people who "demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts" from serving in the armed forces of the United States, because their presence "would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability".
Hypothermia is defined as a body core temperature below 35.0 °C (95.0 °F) in humans. Symptoms depend on the temperature. In mild hypothermia, there is shivering and mental confusion. In moderate hypothermia, shivering stops and confusion increases. In severe hypothermia, there may be hallucinations and paradoxical undressing, in which a person removes their clothing, as well as an increased risk of the heart stopping.
Frostbite is a skin injury that occurs when exposed to extremely low temperatures, causing the freezing of the skin or other tissues, commonly affecting the fingers, toes, nose, ears, cheeks and chin areas. Most often, frostbite occurs in the hands and feet. The initial symptoms are typically a feeling of cold and tingling or numbing. This may be followed by clumsiness with a white or bluish color to the skin. Swelling or blistering may occur following treatment. Complications may include hypothermia or compartment syndrome.
Aviation medicine, also called flight medicine or aerospace medicine, is a preventive or occupational medicine in which the patients/subjects are pilots, aircrews, or astronauts. The specialty strives to treat or prevent conditions to which aircrews are particularly susceptible, applies medical knowledge to the human factors in aviation and is thus a critical component of aviation safety. A military practitioner of aviation medicine may be called a flight surgeon and a civilian practitioner is an aviation medical examiner. One of the biggest differences between the military and civilian flight doctors is the military flight surgeon's requirement to log flight hours.
Airsickness is a specific form of motion sickness which is induced by air travel and is considered a normal response in healthy individuals. Airsickness occurs when the central nervous system receives conflicting messages from the body affecting balance and equilibrium. Whereas commercial airline passengers may simply feel poorly, the effect of airsickness on military aircrew may lead to a decrement in performance and adversely affect the mission.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) personnel are able to serve in the armed forces of some countries around the world: the vast majority of industrialized, Western countries including some South American countries such as Argentina and Chile in addition to South Africa, and Israel. The rights concerning intersex people are more vague.
The Varying Permeability Model, Variable Permeability Model or VPM is an algorithm that is used to calculate the decompression stops needed for ambient pressure dive profiles using specified breathing gases. It was developed by D.E. Yount and others for use in professional diving and recreational diving. It was developed to model laboratory observations of bubble formation and growth in both inanimate and in vivo systems exposed to pressure. In 1986, this model was applied by researchers at the University of Hawaii to calculate diving decompression tables.
The U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine (USARIEM) is the U.S Army’s main institution and facility for military environmental medicine and exercise physiology research. It is located at Natick, Massachusetts, within the U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center (SSC) installation, but is a subordinate lab of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC), headquartered at Fort Detrick, Maryland, USA.
The Aerospace Medical Association (AsMA) is the largest professional organization in the fields of aviation, space, and environmental medicine. The AsMA membership includes aerospace and hyperbaric medical specialists, scientists, flight nurses, physiologists, and researchers from all over the world.
The United States military formerly excluded gay men, bisexuals, and lesbians from service. In 1993, the United States Congress passed, and President Bill Clinton signed, a law instituting the policy commonly referred to as "Don't ask, don't tell" (DADT), which allowed gay, lesbian, and bisexual people to serve as long as they did not reveal their sexual orientation. Although there were isolated instances in which service personnel were met with limited success through lawsuits, efforts to end the ban on openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual people serving either legislatively or through the courts initially proved unsuccessful.
Cold injury is damage to the body from cold exposure, including hypothermia and several skin injuries. Cold-related skin injuries are categorized into freezing and nonfreezing cold injuries. Freezing cold injuries involve tissue damage when exposed to temperatures below freezing. Nonfreezing cold injuries involve tissue damage when exposed to temperatures often between 0-15 degrees Celsius for extended periods of time. While these injuries have disproportionally affected military members, recreational winter activities have also increased the risk and incidence within civilian populations. Additional risk factors include homelessness, inadequate or wet clothing, alcohol abuse or tobacco abuse, and pre-existing medical conditions that impair blood flow.
OutServe-SLDN was a network of LGBT military personnel, formed as a result of the merger between OutServe and the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. OutServe-SLDN was one of the largest LGBT employee resource groups in the world. OutServe was founded by a 2009 graduate of the US Air Force Academy, Josh Seefried and Ty Walrod. There were over 7,000 members and 80 chapters worldwide.
The Outwords Archive (OUTWORDS) is a nonprofit organization based in Los Angeles. It records and archives on-camera interviews with elders from the LGBTQ+ community throughout the United States.
Gordon Grant Giesbrecht is a Canadian physiologist who operates the Laboratory for Exercise and Environmental Medicine at the University of Manitoba in Manitoba, Canada. He studies the effects of extreme environments, including cold, heat, hypoxia, and hypobaria on the human body. His laboratory motto is vitas salvantas. He was dubbed "Professor Popsicle" in a feature article in Outside Magazine.
Not all armed forces have policies explicitly permitting LGBT personnel. Generally speaking, Western European militaries show a greater tendency toward inclusion of LGBT individuals. As of January 2021, 21 countries allow transgender military personnel to serve openly: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Cuba and Thailand reportedly allowed transgender service in a limited capacity. In 1974, the Netherlands was the first country to allow transgender military personnel. The United States has allowed transgender personnel to serve in the military under varying conditions since President Joe Biden signed an executive order that allowed them to do so.
Aaron Belkin is a political scientist, researcher and professor. He currently teaches political science at San Francisco State University and is the director of the Palm Center, a think tank that commissions and disseminates research on gender, sexuality and the military.
The United States Armed Forces have a long history of transgender service personnel, dating back to at least the Civil War. Initially, most such service members were women, who disguised themselves as men in order to serve in combat roles. Many reverted to their female identities upon leaving their service, but others maintained their male identities. In more recent years, openly transgender people have served or sought to serve in the military. The subject began to engender some political controversy starting with transgender servicemembers being banned in 1960 and possibly earlier. This controversy came to a head in the 2010s and was subjected to relatively rapid changes for the next few years. As of 2021, transgender individuals are expressly permitted to serve openly as their identified gender. A brief timeline is as follows:
In the past most lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) personnel had major restrictions placed on them in terms of service in the United States military. As of 2010 sexual orientation and gender identity in the United States military varies greatly as the United States Armed Forces have become increasingly openly diverse in the regards of LGBTQ people and acceptance towards them.
The regulations regarding the service of intersex people in the United States Armed Forces are vague and inconsistent due to the broad nature of humans with intersex conditions. The United States Armed Forces as a whole does not officially ban intersex people from service but does exclude many based on the form of their status. Policies regarding all intersex people are not addressed formally although depending on the type of sex variation some intersex people are allowed to serve. The United States military and their requirements for service makes it so they are frequently in a unique predicament when it comes to intersex bodies. With their position of needing to discern between male and female bodies, they are exposed to a broad variety of people, such as those who are intersex whose bodies may not match either classification and are more difficult to make decisions on. This ambiguity leads to confusion regarding military medical, behavioral, and legal laws.
Non-freezing cold injuries (NFCI) is a class of tissue damage caused by sustained exposure to low temperature without actual freezing. There are several forms of NFCI, and the common names may refer to the circumstances in which they commonly occur or were first described, such as trench foot, which was named after its association with trench warfare. NFCI is caused by microvascular endothelial damage, stasis and vascular occlusion and is characterised by peripheral neuropathy. NFCI generally affects the hands or feet during exposure to temperatures just above freezing, often wet, and is typically found in soldiers.