How common was claiming bone spurs as a Vietnam draft deferment among draft-age men?

1. Bone spurs as a named reason — common in reportage, ambiguous in totals

News articles and retrospectives routinely list “bone spurs” as one of several familiar medical grounds cited to avoid the draft, and journalists invoked the diagnosis when recounting well-known cases such as Donald Trump’s deferment ^{[2] [4]}; outlets explicitly call bone spurs a “somewhat common” reason for deferments during the era ^{[1] [5]}. Those characterizations reflect media synthesis rather than census-style tabulation: the reporting indicates frequency in cultural memory and political discourse but does not provide a statistical share of all draft registrants who received medical deferments for heel spurs ^{[1] [2]}.

2. Who used medical excuses — a skew toward the affluent is widely reported

Multiple sources frame medical deferments, including bone spurs, as disproportionately benefiting men with resources or influence — students and those able to obtain sympathetic physicians — producing a socio-economic skew in who actually served in Vietnam ^{[6] [1] [5]}. Commentators and politicians argued that higher-income men could secure medical letters or extended student deferments while lower-income men were more likely to be drafted, a theme repeated in news analysis and historical summaries of draft demographics ^{[6] [7]}.

3. Medical plausibility and how the system treated heel spurs

Medical writers and podiatrists explain that heel spurs are real and can be painful, sometimes associated with plantar fasciitis, and in certain cases could legitimately impact military fitness — which helps explain why they appeared on draft boards’ radars ^{[4] [8]}. But reporting on specific prominent deferments also records discrepancies — surviving documentation and later interviews left uncertainties about diagnosis details in some high-profile cases, underlining how medical determinations could be both genuine health adjudications and vulnerable to manipulation ^[2].

4. Bone spurs in context — one of many deferment routes

Bone-spur medical exemptions existed alongside student (2-S), paternity/hardship (III-A), and other medical or occupational deferments that collectively shaped who went to war, with scholars showing large demographic effects from paternity deferments in particular ^{[6] [9] [10]}. Historical surveys and cultural artifacts even lampoon the full menu of possible exemptions — from asthma to flat feet — indicating that bone spurs were part of a broader system of avoidances rather than the dominant single mechanism ^{[3] [7]}.

5. Politics, rhetoric and motives — why “bone spurs” became a symbol

Because the bone-spur diagnosis was attached to prominent public figures, it evolved from a medical note into a political symbol of elite avoidance; critics used it to argue that the draft system favored the well-connected, while defenders pointed to plausible pathology or honest error ^{[6] [2] [5]}. Reporting shows both motives: political opponents weaponized the diagnosis to question character, and some physicians later described their actions as favors or routine clinical judgment, revealing implicit agendas at both the individual and institutional levels ^[2].

6. Bottom line and limits of available evidence

The best-supported conclusion is that bone-spur deferments were a known and commonly referenced medical route to avoid Vietnam-era service and that they disproportionately benefited those with means to secure deferments; nevertheless, the provided sources stop short of giving a precise numeric prevalence of bone-spur claims among all draft-age men, so any claim about how many men in percentage terms used that specific diagnosis cannot be substantiated from this reporting alone ^{[1] [6] [3]}.