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Gulf War Syndrome a genuine illness
Randy Boswell
CanWest News Service
November 5, 2004
Six years after a federal study in this country said Gulf War Syndrome
doesn't exist, a powerful U.S. government panel is poised to declare it
a genuine illness apparently caused by exposure to a host of toxic
chemicals - including the nerve gas sarin.
The report by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, to be officially
released next week but parts of which were leaked to the New York Times,
has already caught the attention of the Canadian government.
A spokeswoman with Veterans Affairs Canada said Thursday the department
is awaiting next week's release and preparing for "any implications" the
U.S. study could have on its stance toward Gulf War Syndrome.
The U.S. panel cites a range of recent scientific studies to back its
conclusion that "a substantial proportion of Gulf War veterans are ill
with multi-symptom conditions not explained by wartime stress or
psychiatric illness," the Times revealed.
And New Scientist reported this week that a fresh study by University of
Alberta epidemiologist Dr. Nicola Cherry - a member of the expert panel
hired by the U.S. DVA to examine Gulf War Syndrome - found a telling
link between the crippling symptoms suffered by many British veterans of
the 1991 conflict and their exposure to an insecticide sprayed on tents
to ward off disease-carrying mosquitoes and sand-flies.
Another member of the U.S. panel, University of Texas epidemiologist Dr.
Robert Haley, has predicted an end to a "10-year misadventure" during
which thousands of veterans from the U.S., Canada, Britain and Australia
who claimed to be suffering from Gulf War Syndrome were dismissed as
victims of stress and shellshock.
Dr. Lea Steele, scientific director of the U.S. government's Research
Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses, told CanWest News
Service that the panel's report "will be a divergence" from conventional
opinion on Gulf War Syndrome and is sure to draw reaction from all of
the countries belonging to the military coalition that reversed Iraq's
invasion of Kuwait.
The stress of war, she said, "explains only a very small proportion of
the illnesses exhibited by Gulf War veterans."
Steele added that when the report is tabled next Friday, the U.S.
government will immediately announce what it plans to do for sufferers
of the syndrome.
Hundreds of Canada's Gulf War veterans struggled unsuccessfully for
years to gain official recognition that the chronic fatigue, muscle pain
and other afflictions they suffered following their 1991 tour of duty
had some kind of physical cause.
Some blamed vaccinations they'd received before deployment; others
believed exposure to depleted uranium may have been the cause. All
argued their symptoms must have had some chemical cause that scientists
simply hadn't identified.
However, a 1998 study commissioned by the military's medical branch
concluded that the only common root of their health problems was the
stress they endured during the Gulf War.
Two years later, the federal government added post-traumatic stress to a
list of ailments that could qualify former soldiers and peacekeepers for
special pension benefits.
That move was welcomed by some Gulf War veterans as a way of receiving
compensation - if not acknowledgement - for the mysterious illness they'
d contracted overseas. But opposition MP Peter Goldring, then the Reform
party's critic on veterans issues, condemned the change as a way of
taking the Gulf War Syndrome controversy and "sweeping it under the
carpet."
New Scientist, which also obtained an advance copy of the U.S. report,
said the expert panel "blames damage caused by nerve gas and its
antidotes, and organophosphate insecticides (OPs), which all block the
enzyme that normally destroys acetylcholine, an important neural
signalling chemical."
Haley told New Scientist: "If you ask people, do you have aches and
pains, people will say yes. But if you ask, do you have severe joint
pains that keep you awake and last all day and for months, healthy
people don't. Gulf veterans do."
Cherry is described in the magazine as having found among Gulf War
veterans "a neurological syndrome significantly associated with the
direct handling of OPs."
Source:
http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=501ebfb6-ca30-41b3-90c0-8a30d7f60d00
© CanWest News Service 2004
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