The third anniversary at the formal end of the Gulf War falls on February 27. To hundreds of U.S. veterans the date marks the third year of being sick. "The man I got back just wasn't the same person that I let out of my hands to go over to the war," said Penny Larrisey of Philadelphia. Her husband, a reserve Air Force engine mechanic, spent 129 days in Oman in 1990-91. His letters from that period read like a narrative of debilitation, through which Penny traced rage, loss of confidence, insecurity, a handwriting change and a trail of illness, exhaustion and depression. By March 1991, she recalls, "It was like I was reading something from someone who had died."
Bob Larrisey was stationed in a tent camp that the U.S, military sprayed every four days with pesticides. The standing water he used for showering was often unprotected and soldiers joked about its green color. Bob didn't worry too much about that, or about the "alternative malaria pill" he was given by his commanding officer, but now he's sick and getting sicker, and he and his wife want to know why.
"Bob's a 52-year-old jet mechanic who can't be around chemicals," said Penny. He's been out of a job since returning from the gulf, and even perfume can send him to bed with headaches, low blood pressure, fever, blurry vision and nausea. As for Penny, like many soldiers' wives, she's experienced a rash of vaginal infections. She's also developed white patches on her skin, just like the ones that Bob brought home with him from the gulf. When she told her doctor that intercourse hurts and that her husband's semen stings, the doctor said that she was suffering from stress.
"Will America stand behind disabled soldiers and their families? I don't think so," says Penny now. "Americans did their bit when they flew yellow flags three years ago."
"Gulf Syndrome," the catch-all term that has been applied to health problems like those experienced by the Larriseys, has been attributed to causes as diverse as pollution from the 600-plus oilfield fires in Kuwait to sand flies carrying a parasitic infection indigenous to the gulf region. But quite possibly the largest threat to veterans' health may prove to be their own government's use of depleted uranium in artillery shells, its administration of experimental drugs and the irresponsible destruction of Iraqi weapons arsenals, some of which may have been stocked with chemical and biological weapons manufactured and exported by the United States.
Sgt. Carol Picou was an active duty Army nurse for fifteen years before going to the gulf with the 41st Combat Hospital. At the start of the ground war, when several men in her unit begged off front-line duty, Sergeant Picou was asked to recruit seven women to accompany combat troops into Iraq. As they moved forward they came upon an area that had been pummeled by U.S. artillery. Scrap metal and the still-smoldering bodies of animals and humans covered the ground. "I've seen burnt bodies," said Picou. "And they were nothing like that. These were charred black. It wasn't normal."
It wasn't until her return to the United States that Picou learned about the depleted uranium that U.S. forces had used in artillery rounds, a substance that radiation experts say burns at extreme temperatures and creates an oxide dust that can be easily inhaled and ingested. With no special protection, Picou and her squad set up tamp just two miles down the road from the contaminated battlefield, near the populous Iraqi town of Basra.
After several weeks, Picou's urinary control had gone. She couldn't keep food down and she was passing black, tarry stools that Army doctors attributed to "drinking too much water" and the change in diet. Picou had been taking the pills the military demanded she consume: a new, anti-nerve gas medication called pyridostigmine bromide. She had also been injected with two special vaccinations: pentavalent botulinumtoxoid, an unproven drug used to combat botulism, and an anti-anthrax vaccine that can come in various forms, one of which involves a live, recombinant DNA process that is highly experimental and unlicensed.
"Soon after taking the bromide, I couldn't control my eyes, nose and facial muscles. I was overtaken with chronic sneezing, a running nose and deltoid twitching." She tried skipping the pills to regain control over her sight, but her local health officer demanded that she resume taking them: 90 milligrams a day for fifteen days, just like Bob Larrisey.
Now Carol Picou is on 70 percent disability retirement from the Army. Her doctor, Thomas Callender, has diagnosed depleted blood supplies reaching her left thalamus gland and neurological damage to the left side of her brain affecting her memory, vision and speech. She's jacked with respiratory problems, abdominal distention, a rash on her face and neck, and regular fevers. Unable to control either bowel or bladder movements, she is forced to catheterize herself to urinate and to wear diapers. She also wears a permanent sanitary pad—her period comes in semimonthly cycles, one week black and tarry, the next week clotted and profuse.
After speaking with Picou, Patricia Axelrod, a weapons specialist with a ten-year history of writing and research, dedicated part of a $60,000 MacArthur Foundation grant to a study of the diseases contracted by Desert Storm survivors. She says Picou's symptoms look just like those associated with the drugs she was forced to consume in the gulf.
Pyridostigmine bromide has been prescribed since 1955 for some rare autoimmune diseases involving faulty transmission of nerve impulses to the muscles. According to Dr. Bary Wilson, a pharmaceutical scientist at Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratories in Washington, the drug initially stimulates muscular strength and activity but eventually decreases nerve action, possibly resulting in paralysis. Side effects are known to include watering of the eyes, diarrhea and the urge to urinate, as well as allergic reactions from skin rashes to loss of hair and of muscle control.
Under FDA regulations, pyridostigmine must be administered with careful monitoring, but the agency gave the Pentagon a waiver to use the drug randomly in the gulf. Military officials have testified in Congress that the drug was taken voluntarily, but soldiers relate being forced to stand in formation to receive their three daily doses of pyridostigmine as well as the other medications. "There was absolutely nothing voluntary about it;' both Larrisey and Picou agreed.
And now the effects of Gulf Syndrome ate carrying over to a new generation, Last December, Susie Spear, a health writer for the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi, reported that among her local unit of the National Guard severe birth defects had affected thirteen of fifteen babies conceived by veterans or their spouses since the end of the war. Since then, a Veterans Administration survey of 251 parents statewide has revealed that 67 percent of their children conceived since the war are afflicted with illnesses rated severe or have birth defects including missing eyes and ears, blood infections, respiratory problems and fused fingers.
Birth defects would be consistent with the effects of radiation from depleted uranium and the sand fly-borne infection. (In November 1991 the Pentagon ordered a two-year ban on blood donations from Gulf War veterans for fear of spreading the infection; that ban was lifted early, in January 1993.)
Birth defects are also associated with the use of live, recombinant DNA contained in the anti-anthrax vaccine administered to soldiers. Patricia Axelrod says, "Desert Storm medical personnel warned people taking the vaccine against having a child for three to four years."
No one told Olivia Fowler of Mississippi about the vaccine's possible repercussions. Both she and her husband served in Saudi Arabia. Now their baby, born with life-threatening damage to his bladder, kidneys and urethra, is another casualty of the Gulf War.
The federal government has refused to acknowledge research like Axelrod's, though numerous federal agencies have agreed to hold hearings on the veterans situation. Meanwhile, people are without any diagnoses that could aid treatment. On February 9, Senator Don Riegle called on the Administration to respond to charges that gulf veterans may have been attacked by biological agents purchased by Iraq from the United States before the war. The evidence is weak that Iraq actually used biological weapons. It's more likely that such agents were released when U.S. munitions teams detonated Iraqi weapons stockpiles without ascertaining whether they contained chemical or biological stores.
Axelrod, who witnessed some of the cleanup in the gulf, does not preclude the possibility that the Iraqis released chemical or biological agents, but she raised another possibility that, given recent revelations of the history of drug testing, also cannot be discounted. "The U.S. had a perfect proving ground, a perfect enemy and a perfect living laboratory for testing new vaccines that we need for out own biological weapons industry. It's part of the Department of Defense's scheme to relinquish responsibility. If you're only concerned about dollars and cents, It's cheapest to have hearings until every last vet is dead."
Laura Flanders is the host and executive producer of CounterSpin, a syndicated radio show.
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