of some cancer patients. a new study of 14,000 people with gastrointestinal cancers shows those who took aspirin regularly were twice as likely to be alive in a four-year period. and that s some news, elisabeth and brian. thanks, steve. the v.a. medical center supposed to be taking care of our heroes is accused of mishandling medications and cleanliness issues so bad that patient safety was at risk. the employee who exposed it all has gone as far as to take pictures to document the problems. he s out of work and barred from the premises. he was fired. here to explain is pharmacist andrew carmichael. andrew, you were fired for what reason did they say? they said that i was fired for conduct unbefitting of a government employee under probationary status. you said they fabricated that. they did. how did you get on probation?
you bring this up, you know about the scandal in the v.a. that s being rocked achbd needs to be reconstructed and and you find yourself fired. you want your job back, though, why? i have a lot of veterans in my fie f family and my wife s family. it s important to me. i always wanted to take care of veterans for this reason. i can t think of serving a better population than the people that serve us as a nation. where have you reached out to? has anybody in congress, washington or anywhere else taking up your cause? i did actually talk to senator cane and he asked for my reinstatement, but the director of the facility flatly denied him. how terrible for doing what was best for the veterans. you re exposing this so they can get better care and you lose your job. we ll stay on top of this. we did reach out to hunter homes mcguire v.a. and did not hear back.
well, all government employees typically have a probationary status when they join the v.a. sometimes a year, sometimes two years. andrew, what issues did you specifically flag and document in photos? one was the iv room, correct? correct. i had four concerns. the first one was the iv room as you were saying and the condition it was in. essentially what was going on was not only was it not being cleaned correctly, but the people that were working in it weren t making i.d. s appropriately. it wasn t even constructed right. one of the biggest things is we had multiple outbreaks of things like fungus and bacteria within it. there it goes. that backs up your contention that there is a risk there. failure to restock the medications also showed the pictures. mishandling of controlled substances that you talk about. you re a doctor. a dangerous workload for people that work there.