Military says wasted money & lives on psychiatric idiocy; abused GW Veterans

[Mort Zuckerman]

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Subject: Military says wasted money & lives on psychiatric idiocy;
abused GW Veterans

http://www.actionlyme.org

Date: Nov 17, 2008 1:09 AM

http://news.mywebpal.com/partners/680/public/news936004.html

Panel finds widespread Gulf War illness

11/16/08
ANNE USHER/Cox News Service
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WASHINGTON - At least one in four U.S. veterans of the 1991 Gulf War
suffers from
a multi-symptom illness caused by exposure to toxic chemicals during
the conflict,
a congressionally mandated report being released Monday found.

For much of the past 17 years, government officials have maintained
that these veterans
-- more than 175,000 out of about 697,000 deployed -- are merely
suffering the effects
of wartime stress, even as more have come forward recently with severe
ailments.

“The extensive body of scientific research now available consistently
indicates
that ’Gulf War illness’ is real, that it is the result of neurotoxic
exposures during
Gulf War deployment, and that few veterans have recovered or
substantially improved
with time,” said the report, being released Monday by a panel of
scientists and
veterans. A copy was obtained by Cox Newspapers.

Gulf War illness is typically characterized by a combination of memory
and concentration
problems, persistent headaches, unexplained fatigue and widespread
pain. It may
also include chronic digestive problems, respiratory symptoms and skin
rashes.

Two things the military provided to troops in large quantities to
protect them --
pesticides and pyridostigmine bromide (PB), aimed at thwarting the
effects of nerve
gas -- are the most likely culprits, the panel found.

The Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses,
created by Congress
in 2002, presented its 450-page report to Secretary of Veterans
Affairs James Peake
on Monday. It said its report is the first to review the hundreds of
U.S. and international
studies on Gulf War vets since that have been conducted the mid-1990s.

In a 2004 draft report to Congress, the panel said that many Gulf
veterans were
suffering from neurological damage caused by exposure to toxic
chemicals.

The new report goes further by pinpointing known causes and it
criticizes past U.S.
studies, which have cost more than $340 million, as “overly simplistic
and compartmentalized.”

It recommends that the Department of Veterans Affairs order a re-do of
past Gulf
War and Health reports, calling them “skewed” because they did not
include evaluations
of toxic exposure studies in lab animals, as Congress had requested.

The panel examined such tests and noted that recent ones -- unethical
to carry out
on humans - have identified biological effects from Gulf War exposures
that were
previously unknown.

While it called some new VA and DOD programs promising, it noted that
overall federal
funding for Gulf War research has dropped sharply in recent years.
Those studies
that have been funded, it said, “have little or no relevance to the
health of Gulf
War veterans, and for research on stress and psychiatric illness.”

“Veterans of the 1990-1991 Gulf War had the distinction of serving
their country
in a military operation that was a tremendous success, achieved in
short order.
But many had the misfortune of developing lasting health consequences
that were
poorly understood and, for too long, denied or trivialized,” the
committee’s report
says.

The report also faults the Pentagon, saying it clearly recognized
scientific evidence
substantiating Gulf War illness in 2001 but did not acknowledge it
publicly.

It said that Acting Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for
Gulf War illnesses
Lt. Gen. Dale Vesser remarked that year that although Saddam Hussein
didn’t use
nuclear, biological, or chemical agents against coalition forces
during the war
-- an assertion still debated -- “It never dawned on us ././. that we
may have done
it to ourselves.”

“We know that at least 40,000 American troops may have been
overexposed to pesticides,”
Vesser said, adding that more than 250,000 American troops took the
small, white
PB pills. “Both of these substances may (be) consistent with the
symptoms that some
Gulf War veterans have.”

The panel is urging Congress to spend at least $60 million annually
for Gulf War
research. It notes that no effective treatments have yet been found.

The VA declined to comment until it has a chance to review the report.

The panel focused its research on comparing the brain and nervous
system of healthy
adults with those of sick Gulf War vets, as well as analyzing changes
to the neuroendocrine
and immune systems.

It found that in terms of brain function, exposure to pesticides and
the PB pills
hurts people’s memory, attention and mood. Some people, it notes, are
genetically
more susceptible to exposures than others.

About half of Gulf War personnel are believed to have taken PB tablets
during deployment,
with the greatest use among ground troops and those in forward
positions.

Many veterans say they were forced to take the pills, which had not
been approved
by the FDA, and some said they immediately became sickened.

“Many of us got sick from the pills,” said retired Staff Sgt. Anthony
Hardie, a
Wisconsin native who was with a multinational unit that crossed from
Saudi Arabia
into Kuwait and then Iraq.

He said he was required to take them for several weeks and soon
suffered from watery
eyes and vision problems, diarrhea, muscle twitching and a runny nose.
A fellow
Special Forces officer, he said, lost about 20 pounds in short order.
“All of us
had concerns at the time.”

To ward off swarms of sand flies in Kuwait City and the eastern Saudi
province of
Dhahran, Hardie said trucks would come through at 3 a.m. and spray
“clouds” of pesticides.

Fly strips that smelled toxic hung “everywhere,” especially near food.
“The pesticide
use was far and away (more) than what you’d see in daily life,” he
said.

Several soldiers interviewed said they were ordered to dunk their
uniforms in the
pesticide DEET and to spray pesticide routinely on exposed skin and in
their boots
to ward off scorpions. Others wore pet flea collars around their
ankles.

The federal panel added that it also could not rule out an association
between Gulf
War illness and the prolonged exposure to oil fires, as well as low-
level exposures
to nerve agents, injections of many vaccines and combinations of
neurotoxic exposures.

Hardie, a panel member, is convinced that he was later exposed to the
chemical warfare
agent Lewisite in a freshly abandoned Iraqi bunker; he noted its
signature strong
geranium smell.

He said he and others in his unit who ran miles a day past burning oil
wells later
hacked up black chunks of mucus and what he says his doctors think
were pieces of
his lung tissue. He said civilian doctors have diagnosed him with
fibromyalgia,
chronic fatigue, dizziness, confusion, acid reflux disease and chronic
sinusitis.

He was not among the 100,000 U.S. troops who were potentially exposed
to low-levels
of Sarin gas, a nerve agent, as a result of large-scale U.S.
demolitions of Iraqi
munitions near Khamisiyah, Iraq, in 1991.

Troops who were downwind from the demolitions have died from brain
cancer at twice
the rate of other Gulf War veterans, the report stated.

A panel member, Dr. Roberta White, chair of environmental health at
the Boston University
School of Public Health, found evidence last year linking low-level
exposure to
nerve gas among in Persian Gulf troops with lasting brain deficits.

The extent of the deficits - less brain “white matter” and reduced
cognitive function
-- corresponded to the extent of the exposure.

In addition, the panel said, Gulf War veterans have significantly
higher rates of
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) than other veterans.

White said that while there is a lot of anecdotal evidence of Gulf War
vets contracting
multiple sclerosis (MS), studies haven’t confirmed a combat link to
that degenerative
disease. Questions also remain about rates of cancers, disease-
specific mortality
rates in Gulf War veterans and the health of veterans’ children.

Conversely, the panel said there is little evidence supporting an
association or
major link with depleted uranium, anthrax vaccine, fuels, solvents,
sand and particulates,
infectious diseases, and chemical agent resistant coating (CARC).

The fact that veterans repeatedly still find that their complaints are
met with
cynicism, she said, “upsets me as a scientist, as someone who cares
about veterans.”

Hardie said the Gulf War veterans have felt profound frustration that
the health
community as a whole has only been treating affected veterans’
symptoms.

“If you have MS - ’here’s some Motrin.’ How long can you take nasal
steroids without
getting at root cause -- the brain damage?” he said. “The sad thing is
scientists
are saying in more precise terms what veterans were saying all along:
We are sick,
sickened by Gulf War service, and we need health care to help us.”

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