Orthopedic surgeon Eugene Carragee spent four months in Iraq in 2005, as a doctor with the U.S. Army Reserves.
The physician returned to Iraq in late 2007, but his deployment was cut short by an attempted suicide bomb attack in January 2008. He was awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for his injuries and heroic actions.
Now Carragee?s military record is being used in an attempt to discredit his research indicating that the Medtronic spine surgery product known as Infuse may increase the risk of a complication that causes sterility in men. That research countered earlier papers by doctors with financial ties to Medtronic – including University of Wisconsin-Madison orthopedic surgeon Thomas Zdeblick – that failed to link Infuse to the male sterility complication.