Mindfully.org note:
We never thought of GWS as one disease. Perhaps the myth was propagated by the industrial war machine to confuse people. So, get over the name and get on with understanding that soldiers serving in the Gulf Region get sicker at higher rates than in other places and past wars and conflicts. It will be even more interesting to see new data for present casualties and how they are fairing after being contaminated with depleted uranium along with all the toxicants from previous wars. What is needed is the realization that we just cannot use these weapons and expect the human species to continue. It just isn't going to happen. Through the magnificence of technology, we are literally destroying the possibility of having children in the very near future. This is not going to happen in several generations, but during the lifetimes of many people alive today. Just as we are discovering that global warming has been occuring at a significantly faster pace than previously thought, so to is the pace at which our vitality is decreasing. For all you macho types out there who feel impervious to the tools of the war trade we want you to know that, "You're shootin' blanks buddy."
The unexplained symptoms that afflict thousands of Persian Gulf war veterans do not constitute a single illness, a federally financed study concludes. Even though veterans of the 1991 war report more symptoms of illness than do soldiers who did not serve in the Persian Gulf, there is no such thing as gulf war syndrome, according to the report. “There’s no unique pattern of symptoms,” said Dr. Lynn Goldman of the Johns Hopkins University, who headed the Institute of Medicine committee that prepared the report for the Department of Veterans Affairs. “Every pattern identified in gulf war veterans also seems to exist in other veterans, though it is important to note the symptom rate is higher, and it is a serious issue.” Steve Robinson of Veterans for America said the report “confirms that many gulf war veterans are seriously ill and that they were exposed to many types of poisons, but the link remains unclear because the military failed to collect exposure data in 1991.”
source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/13/washington/13brfs-006.html?pagewanted=print 13sep2006
WASHINGTON -- The unexplained symptoms that afflict thousands of Persian Gulf war veterans do not constitute a single illness, a federally funded study concludes.
Even though U.S. and foreign veterans of the 1991 war report more symptoms of illness than do soldiers who did not serve in the Persian Gulf, there is no such thing as gulf war syndrome, according to the Veterans Affairs-sponsored report released Tuesday.
Nearly 30 percent of all those who served in the brief war have reported problems.
"There's no unique pattern of symptoms. Every pattern identified in gulf war veterans also seems to exist in other veterans, though it is important to note the symptom rate is higher, and it is a serious issue," said Dr. Lynn Goldman of Johns Hopkins University, who headed the Institute of Medicine committee that prepared the report.
The report did find evidence of an elevated risk of the rare nerve disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also called Lou Gehrig's disease, among gulf war veterans. Those veterans also face an increased risk of anxiety disorders, depression and substance abuse, it said.
The VA contracted with the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, to review scientific studies and probe the issue at the direction of Congress. Department of Veterans Affairs spokesman Phil Budahn said the VA would not comment until it had a chance to study the report.
Tuesday's report is the latest in a series that the VA will rely on to determine whether gulf war veterans are eligible for special disability benefits if they are found to suffer from illnesses that can be linked to their service.
Veterans can now claim those benefits only by making an undiagnosed illness claim, said Steve Robinson, a gulf war Army veteran and government relations director for Veterans for America.
"They keep saying it over and over, every year. We know . . . that there is no single thing that made veterans sick. We know this thing is likely a combination of various exposures," Robinson said in pushing for new studies he hopes will find what ails tens of thousands of his fellow vets.
Soldiers who served in the Persian Gulf after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 have reported symptoms that include fatigue, memory loss, muscle and joint pain, rashes and difficulty sleeping.
For years, the government denied the mysterious illnesses were linked to the war. It now acknowledges that at least some were due to wartime service.
source: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0609130150sep13,1,2207680,print.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true 13sep2006
WASHINGTON — Troops deployed during the 1990-1991 Gulf War get sicker than most other veterans, but a panel of experts looking for evidence of a suspected Gulf War Syndrome said on Wednesday they could not find it.
There is some evidence that Gulf War veterans from all countries develop a rare, deadly and paralyzing illness known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig's disease, the Institute of Medicine panel found in a wide review of previous studies on veterans' health.
Exposed to combat stress in an environment with abundant sources of potentially harmful chemicals, nearly 30 percent of Gulf War veterans have suffered some kind of illness with multiple symptoms, compared with 16 percent of service members who did not go there. But there is no coherent set of symptoms that points to an overall syndrome, the panel reported.
"Gulf War veterans consistently report experiencing a wide range of symptoms, and this the case for both American veterans and military personnel from Canada, Australia, and other countries who served in the Persian Gulf," said Lynn Goldman, a professor of occupational and environmental health at Johns Hopkins University Baltimore.
"But because the symptoms vary greatly among individuals, they do not point to a syndrome unique to these veterans," added Goldman, who chaired the panel of medical and occupational experts.
A lack of "baseline" studies of the health of the 700,000 personnel before they were deployed makes it harder to identify a specific syndrome.
The Institute of Medicine report details the many sources of chemicals that could have harmed the health of the veterans.
"Most alarming are the smoke from oil-well fires that were set by Iraqis as they retreated at the end of the war and the potential exposures arising from the U.S. military bombing of a poison-gas munitions dump at a location called Khamisiyah," the report reads.
"Military personnel have also been reported to have had other exposures, such as to fuels, vaccines, pharmaceuticals, and pathogens. Most recently, the Department of Defense published a report documenting a large amount of pesticide use in the war theater."
But there is no way to determine how much exposure any individual serviceman or woman had, the panelists said.
"The situation is compounded by the stress experienced by many veterans during deployment and in some cases after deployment," the report adds.
There is evidence that Gulf veterans have a higher risk of anxiety disorders, depression, and substance-abuse problems, said the committee.
It recommends thorough pre- and post-deployment medical screening of military personnel for future studies.
The committee reviewed 850 studies that have been done about Gulf War veterans, some of which relied on self-reporting of symptoms from veterans, and others that used objective measures of symptoms and exposures.
Three studies suggest a possibly higher risk of ALS, also known as motor neuron disease, in Gulf veterans, as well as brain tumors.
"Because ALS occurs so rarely, any individual veteran's chances of developing the disease are still generally low," Goldman said in a statement.
"Although the reports linking Gulf War service to ALS and brain cancer are inconclusive at this time, we do recommend follow-up studies to monitor rates of these diseases in Gulf War veterans," she added.
source: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=A6CE91443F690D0979D788694448382D 13sep2006
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