Appendix: I Caught Hypertension at my Draft Physical
I assume that in 1968, Selective Service guidelines identified a limit for systolic blood pressure, above which men could not be drafted due to hypertension. For purposes of discussion, let's say that the number was 141. That is, if an otherwise healthy man had a reading of 142, he would be rejected due to hypertension. On the other hand...
You know, 142, or even 143, is pretty damned close to acceptable, especially when so many men are needed. That's only minor hypertension, right? Let's overlook it and draft these fellows anyway. Of course, if we draft them, their files can't show that they were over the limit, so we'll have to write down that their systolic reading was around 138 or 139. No one else is watching when they're tested, so no one will know that the number we write down is not the same number we saw on the blood pressure manometer. We can do it.
Wait a minute. They keep statistics of how many of the men who come in have different conditions. If it looks like we're always below the normal number of people with hypertension, somebody will catch on. Hmmmm.... I've got it! Lots of guys have already failed the physical before we check their blood pressure. What we can do is give those people hypertension on paper. Same as before, only for these we write down a higher false reading instead of a lower one. That way, the total numbers will look right. Yeah, that's it.
I suspect that thinking like that was the reason I got my bogus hypertension.
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