No More Gulf War Syndromes

The war is winding down, with remarkably few coalition casualties. Yet soon somebody will try to start another casualty list, that of a second Gulf War Syndrome (GWS). The only way to stop it is to finally acknowledge that, in any meaningful sense, no such thing as GWS exists.

Over a decade of published scientific studies have shown that while naturally some of the 700,000 Gulf vets have died in the 12 years since the war and others have acquired various illnesses, on the whole they are at least as healthy as people their age who didn't deploy.

Consider the mother of all GWS epidemiological studies, which appeared in the January 2000 issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology. It matched the medical records of 650,000 Gulf vets to those of 650,000 non-deployed vets of similar age and demographic backgrounds.

Researchers looked at illness ranging from cancer to heart disease to mental disorders to skin diseases for a total of 14 diseases. They further divided these by the three hospital systems involved, for a total of 42 data "slices." Statistically significant increased problems were found in four of the 42 slices. But the researchers also found significantly decreased levels of illness in 11 slices.

Smaller epidemiological studies have repeatedly come to the same conclusion, that Gulf vets as a group are a remarkably healthy bunch. Researchers have also repeatedly found that they are no more likely to have miscarried children or children with birth defects.

After a reported birth defect "cluster" in Mississippi, the state Department of Health investigated and found exactly the average number of defects. "It's unconscionable to frighten people out of reproducing unless you have some good data to support that contention," said Dr. Russell Tarver, who headed the study. It's "a crime against those veterans," he told me.

The VA does make presumptive disability payments to Gulf vets with Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS) because of a study showing a slightly higher-than-expected rate of that illness among those vets. But a follow-up study found no statistically significant increased rate of the disease.

So why, despite the massive epidemiological evidence, do so many people believe GWS is real? Primarily driving the myth is the simplest of logical fallacies: If something happens after a given event, it must have been caused by that event. The vets were obviously healthy when they went to the Gulf; therefore, says the fallacy, if they're sick now it must have been from exposure to something while there.

Yet suspect causes have been tested and retested and keep coming up negative. None of which prevents reporters and GWS activists with overactive imaginations from trying to invent new ones. Consider these headlines, all from stories authored by John Hanchette, a Pulitzer Prize winner and then a writer for Gannett News Service:

"Experimental Drugs on Gulf Troops Rapped by Panel" "Key to Gulf War Syndrome May Be Flies" "Doctor Says Gulf Illnesses Stem from Vaccines" "CIA Document: Scud Fuel May Be Involved in Gulf War Illnesses" "U.N. Intelligence Representatives Show Iraq Could Have Spread Deadly Aflatoxin"

Just can't make up our minds, can we? Sometimes a doctor claims he's found evidence that this or that causes GWS and the media gleefully flash it around the world. But almost inevitably the research comprises a handful of vets, is published nowhere, and is never replicated.

The true definition of GWS is nothing more than any disease that any Gulf vet has or thinks he has. The symptom lists stands at over 120, including: hair loss, graying hair, weight gain, weight loss, irritability, heartburn, rashes, sore throat, kidney stones, sore gums, constipation, sneezing, leg cramps and athlete's foot.

If you haven't suffered a dozen "GWS symptoms" over the last year, it's bad news because it means you're an android. One major new newsmagazine even reported the claim of a vet who said that GWS gave him genital herpes. How convenient!

"If you go out on the street in any city in this country, you'll find people who have exactly the same things and they've never been to the Gulf," declared Dr. Edward Young, head of the VA Medical Center in Houston until the VA sacked him for that "insensitive" observation.

Yet true insensitivity is putting our vets in permanent fear of contracting a disease that doesn't exist. It may be too late to remove the ingrained myth of GWS, but we can and must prevent the crime that would be the fabrication of GWS II.

Michael Fumento (U.S. Army, 1978-82) is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a syndicated columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service.

These studies are too broad

As in Vietnam's Agent Orange studies..

There were the Ranch Hands...upon whose cancer deaths had their livers removed for study and then went missing under the watchful eyes of the CDC

The studies included veterans on ships far from where spraying took place or merely decided with maps who was or wasnt exposed based upon where spraying occured..

It didnt matter whether one was a pogue working in a billet with air conditioning or out in the jungle taking drinking water out of empty bomb craters or going for days after being exposed to spray without showers and due to the heat having the compounds more readily abosorbed do to open pours..

The study also didnt account for those in engineering companies who used the stuff in backpack sprayers and used it almost daily for 12 months..having it blow back in their faces and soaked into their clothes..

These guys had their data thrown in with guys on ships 500 miles from the spraying or who were exposed for only a short time and were able to shower daily..and change clothes...

The studies the govt conducted and the ones the chemical companies conducted were useless imo especially when considering the power of their varrious lobbys of the chem companies, their subsidiaries, parent companies, and other holdings...

If there is anything to this ...then we owe it to the men and women who served to find out inspite of what the pogues have to say..

Since when is it anti Bush or anti Republican or anti American to do so...
I've watched the Repubs through the years in their treatment of combat vets...and frankly they havent been all that much better at taking care of vets than the democrats..and in some cases worse..

Clinton sucked ...and Carter was pretty good..the rest were imo mediocre...

I remember the acid words of David Stockman... (who never served a day in uniform) that VietNam vets considered the Govt. to be a vending machine for them to punch buttons and get benefits..( a matter of public record)

It was the dems that fought him ..and won benefits that were promised and mandated that Stockman wanted cut..

Of course the dems were looking for votes...but the Repubs were pretty hypocritical with their parades and speeches then screwing vets where the metal meets the meat....imo

According to the US Department of Defense Œs Clinical Evaluation Program, out of 700.000 soldiers sent to the Gulf War in 1991, more than one hundred thousand veterans are suffering from debilitating related illnesses and, 10.000 have already died ; in UK 12.000 veterans are sick and 300 have died -.

The Gulf War Syndrome is an illness which affects the immune system causing different symptoms such as joint pain, chronique fatigue, memory loss, rashes , paralysis , cancer or veterans¹ children born with devastating birth defects such as water in brain, spina bifida or missing organs etc. The Government does not admit that it exist , but is researching the possibility.

Military doctors mostly dismissed the symptoms as psychosomatic or stress-related.
In 1998 the Pentagon admitted that there has been a chemical contamination during the bombing of Iraq Œs chemical factories in 1991 The fall-out of chemical substances over the military camps in Iraq could have been one of the reasons of the sickness.

But the main problem seem to be the use of experimental vaccines against biological weapons given to all soldiers without precautions .

The compositions of these vaccines are still kept as military secrets and this make it very hard for independent medical researchers to proove the real cause of the illness. There is a big discussion also around the use of Deplited Uranium in many weapons, as another reason of the illness.

The most dangerous fact is that this illness is contagious and 77% of the veterans¹wife are suffering from the same symptoms of their husbands. There is also a high percentage of children who have born with unusual birth defects right after the Gulf War.

Many soldiers are in debilitating conditions and they feel betrayed by their own Government . Yet many of them are still in the Army because it is the only way they can get medical care for free.

The old 40 minutes version of this film was broadcasted on RAI 3 only in 2001. For its highly controversial content caused an astonishing press coverage and a mobilising effect with more than 100 screenings all over Italy organized by University and cultural associations.

.The director was invited in 40 public debates in different cities . More than 22.000 people watched the film through these public screenings .

The new english version of the film has a new editing and more and 20 minutes new footage. It depicts the debate around the Gulf War Syndrome giving voice to different points of view : the sick soldiers and their families, especially those who had abnormal children born right after the War ; the Clinton Commission which was investigating the possible causes , an independent researcher and ex-CIA member , medical experts.

Most of the soldiers have lost their hope in the American justice system and in the military system . The Clinton Commission Œs investigation team concluded that there was no single disease and no single cause and there was only little compensations for a few soldiers while the majority have to deal with their situation with their own strenght

The film follows some parallel soldiers¹s stories such as : veterans Steven Miller, Brad Minns, Herberth Smith and their families in four different States in America .

TEXAS : .
Veteran Steven Miller's son , Cedrik , 7 years old , was born with his trachea and esophagus fused ; the left half of his face is shrunken with a missing ear and a blind eye. His internal problems include hydrocephalus and the hearth in the wrong place .

Cedrick¹s handicap have left his parents Steve and Bianca terrified of having more children . They have no history of birth defects in their family and they are sure that the birth defects are linked to the Gulf War.

Steve, a former Army medic, thinks chemical damaged his sperm when he was in the Gulf.- He believes statistical evidence is at hand and he claims already the Government once with no success .

He never received any funding for the expensive care of his child. Once a month he has to take Cedrick to the hospital to replace his fake eye- His 10 years old sister Larissa must be careful when they play together : a fall could dislodge the shunt in his head and lead to brain damage

Sgt. Brad Minns son, Casey was born with Goldenhar¹s syndrome characterized by a lopsided head and spine- His left ear was missing , his digestive track disconnected .

Trying to repair his scrambled innards surgeons at Walter Reed Medical Center damaged for ever his vocal cord and colon. Casey will never talk . His parents feed him and remove his waste through holes in his belly .

The Minns family lives in a typical military village , Fort Meade , near Washington.
During the 1991 war Brad Minns was posted mainly at an airfield in Saudi Arabia and along with other American soldiers he took on his commander¹s orders a secret vaccine against weapon borne anthrax (biological weapon).

Then he took another vaccine against botulisme. Both these vaccines were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration but the last day before the beginning of the war -

Marilyn, Casey¹s mother , tries to do her best to deal with the terrible problems of her child trying to assure him a decent future. She is afraid of taking him back to the Military Hospital after what he lost his vocal cord- She thinks that only young and not-experienced doctors are working in Military Hospital which are like a training session for them

MARYLAND : Colonel Herberth Smith used to be a strong man with an unbelievable athletic body and he always ran physical training program in the Army . Now he¹s forced to use a wheel chair and take lots of medecines to survive.

The syntomps first appear in 1991 when he got his first shot of something that does not appear in his immunization card . - a mysterious vaccine describes as ³VAC A² In the Gulf he felt so bad that he was sent back in the States for treatment. But in the military hospital the doctors accused him of bleeding himself to fake anemia and they said that he just had a pshycosomatic illness.

Luckily an independent doctor , Pam Esa, started to take care of him for free , to study his illness and discovered that he suffers from Lupus , a severe illness of the immune system with damage to the nerves .

Now Smith and Doctor Esa are conducting an investigation on the mysterious vaccine testing different blood of sick veterans with possible substances which could have been the cause of the Syndrome.

With the help of Doct. Robert Garry at Tulane University in NEW ORLEANS the tests revealed that many Veterans were positive for antibodies to ³squalene² Smith is one of the few Veterans to receive some compensation for his disability but he doesn¹t care. What he and his family want is to understand why he became so sick and if soldiers are really used as ³guinea pig² to experiment new vaccines

Other main characters :
Jim Tuite former CIA agent. He is conducting an investigation about The Gulf war syndrome for the U.S. government.

Joice Riley represents the American Gulf war veterans association.

Melina Le Duck is paralized after being in Gulf war, as a nurse. She thinks her illness is related to vaccines inoculations.

This film will show a cruel and often ignored aspect of the War which affects many people even 10 years after the War ended.

It¹s a documentary against the War machine and the military system in general and it shows that the big fear of the future for the most powerful Army in the world is that of finding a perfect vaccine for a biological attack .

The main question arousing from the film is : will the civilians be forced to use the same vaccine in the future to protect themselves from biological weapons?

Dr. Garth L. Nicolson and Dr. Nancy L. Nicolson
Institute for Molecular Medicine
June 26, 1997

Subcommittee on Human Resources and Intergovernmental Relations, House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight
We are here today as medical researchers who have been engaged in studying Gulf War Illnesses (GWI) but also as a family that has suffered from GWI.

Our step-daughter returned from service in Desert Storm in 1991 as a Staff Sergeant and Crew Chief of a Blackhawk helicopter in the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) and developed the unusual, multiple signs and symptoms of GWI that prevented her from finishing pilot training.

She eventually left the Army,and we have been involved since that time in a research effort to identify some of the possible causes of GWI and develop treatments for GWI patients. Our hypothesis is that GWI is not caused by stress, it is caused by multiple exposures to chemical, environmental, radiological and/or biological agents that cause chronic multisystem signs and symptoms that for the most part can be diagnosed as existing dieeases.

We have been particularly interested in veterans with GWI whose family members are now also sick with similar signs and symptoms, suggesting that many GWI patients suffer from biological, not chemical or radiological origins for their illnesses. Illnesses caused by chemical or radiological exposures should not be transmitted to family members.

GWI in immediate family members is officially denied by the Departments of Defense (DoD) and Veterans Affairs (DVA).

Although some family members could have developed their illnesses by contact with war souvenirs, packs or uniforms, only biological causes of GWI can account for the overwhelming fraction of family members contracting the same illness in this important subset of GWI patients. Our research into GWI and the laboratory tests for GWI-associated pathogens that we developed have been done completely without compensation or funding from the U.S. Government.

Since the Institute for Molecular Medicine is a not-for-profit private research institute dedicated to discovering new diagnostic and therapeutic solutions for chronic human diseases, we do not charge veterans or their family members for our assistance and services.

In fact, we are assisting without compensation Desert Storm veterans from other Coalition countries that also have GWI casualties.

here is the complete part to read

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.