I can't remember exactly when Gulf War Syndrome first showed up on my radar as a nagging blip, but I remember being somewhat stunned by the statistic I saw a year in recent years that a full third of first Gulf War veterans, numbering over 200,000 were now receiving disability benefits. I assumed that with such a large body of chronically ill service men and women, there would be a healthy flow of cash directed towards research of the condition(s).
Thus, I was rather surprised to see this extended lede in the NYTimes yesterday:
V.A. to Study Toxins' Effects From 1991 Gulf War
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 - The government will spend $15 million over the next year for research on the illnesses of veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, the secretary of veterans affairs, Anthony J. Principi, announced Friday. He said it would concentrate on the role of neurotoxins, and not the stress and psychological conditions often implicated as a cause of the veterans' health complaints.Mr. Principi also said the department would establish a research center to develop treatments for gulf war illnesses.
"The men and women who fought there deserve our undivided attention to their questions, to their symptoms, to their futures," he said. "They have been frustrated far too long."
He said his decision was guided by the findings of a committee of scientists and veterans that he appointed in 2002 to study the ailments of thousands of servicemen and women that persisted after the war.
In a report released at a news conference here, the panel, the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses, broke with earlier study groups by pointing to chemical exposures during the war, not the effects of combat stress, as the primary cause of what has sometimes been called Gulf War Syndrome.
The committee found a "probable link" between veterans' illnesses and neurotoxins, possibly including Iraqi nerve agents. That conclusion has heartened veterans, who resented earlier studies suggesting a psychiatric cause for their problems, but it disturbed some scientists who do not believe it is supported by solid data.
Seems that for the past 8 years, the VA, along with most of the government medical community, has argued that Gulf War Syndrome, if there even was such a thing, was caused by stress. Yes, stress.
In 1997, Dr. Robert Haley of the University of Texas published his research team's first conclusions that Gulf War Syndrome was a result of the interactions of a combination of neurotoxins and chemicals. Not just any neurotoxin/chemical combination, but specifically Iraqi sarin nerve gas dispersed when weapons caches were destroyed; pesticides such as DEET and chlorpyrifos, used in insect sprays and flea collars; and the drug pyridostigmine bromide (PB), given to troops to protect them against nerve gas. In addition, several "clusters" of severe birth defects associated with chemical exposure have appeared in the children of Gulf War I veterans. Yet it stil took seven years for the US government to commit research funding to investigate the health effects of modern war.