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Depicting brain damage, scans distinguish between a trio of syndromes, researchers say SALT LAKE CITY Nearly two decades after vets began returning from the Middle East complaining of Gulf War Syndrome, the federal government has yet to formally accept that their vague jumble of symptoms constitutes a legitimate illness. Here, at the Society of Toxicology annual meeting, yesterday, researchers rolled out a host of brain images – various types of magnetic-resonance scans and brain-wave measurements – that they say graphically and unambiguously depict Gulf War Syndrome. Or syndromes. Because Robert Haley of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in...

"I have good days, I have bad days," said M. Sterry, of New Haven. "There were eight of us that served together. Six of my friends are dead."

WASHINGTON - The Veterans Affairs Department no longer will pay for studies that seek to show stress is the primary cause of mysterious ailments afflicting thousands of veterans of the 1991 Gulf War. For years the federal government has pointed to stress as the likely reason for the sicknesses. But Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony J. Principi is to announce the VA will set aside up to $15 million for a year of Gulf War illness research. A stipulation is that the money not pay for studies that propose stress as the only explanation for the ailments, said Stephan Fihn, the...

US in U-turn over Gulf war syndrome 19:00 03 November 04 Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues. Terence Walker is one of the lucky ones. On 19 January 1991 he was with 6000 British troops at Al Jubayl in Saudi Arabia, as the first Gulf war was beginning. At around 3am there were loud bangs and flashes, and troops scrambled into gas masks as chemical detector alarms sounded. Some detectors in the area registered the nerve gas sarin, but the UK’s Ministry of Defence later said that these alerts were false alarms. Since Walker...

A British military doctor is backing claims that the cocktail of vaccines given to soldiers prior to the 1991 war in Iraq caused Gulf War Syndrome. Lieutenant Colonel Graham Howe has become the first expert to directly link the inoculations to severe health problems suffered by vaccinated troops. For 13 years Britain’s Ministry of Defence as vigorously denied that vaccines could be blamed for the diseases. Independent research has also failed to find conclusive proof of a common link between the vaccines and a Gulf War-related syndrome, a debilitating condition. Lt Howe, clinical director of psychiatry with the British...

Soldiers to sue over new Gulf War syndrome Mark Townsend Sunday November 23, 2003 The Observer Dozens of soldiers who served in Iraq are to sue the Government, claiming they are suffering from a new form of Gulf War syndrome. Multiple vaccinations given in the run-up to the conflict are being blamed for chronic pains, stomach problems, rashes, swelling, fever, depression and anxiety. Lawyers and medical experts say the symptoms are identical to those which affected thousands of veterans after the 1991 Gulf conflict. The Observer has learnt that 13 soldiers have launched legal actions against the Ministry of Defence...

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. Gulf war vets are actually a remarkably healthy bunch. 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...