The Damage of War



Like thousands of Gulf War vets, James Stutts went to Iraq healthy and came back to illness. With new troops headed to the region, the government still can't explain the cause of their sickness


By Richard Leiby
THE WASHINGTON POST

January 15: 2003

BEREA, KY. -- The doctor sits at home, filling the hours with television, writing himself reminders that look like prescriptions. "From the desk of Dr. James Stutts," says his notepad, itself a reminder that he practiced medicine until, one day, he knew it was no longer safe. He could not remember faces and names.

Before he retired, Lt. Col. Stutts commanded medical staffs on military bases. He used to helicopter into combat zones to treat the wounded. He still keeps his Army uniform pressed and ready, as if someday he might return to duty.

He is 54 and disabled by dementia. He is a casualty of the Persian Gulf War - one of the tens of thousands of men and women who left feeling healthy but fell sick after coming home. They filed disability claims at a rate far higher than veterans of other wars.

As the United States deploys troops in anticipation of another battle with Iraq, the Pentagon says it still has no answer for an enigma that has confounded experts for more than a decade: What caused all those Gulf veterans' symptoms? The memory lapses, fatigue, joint pains, rashes, headaches, dizzy spells ... not to mention the cancer, Lou Gehrig's disease and birth defects.

Many vets speculated that they were poisoned by a combination of vaccines, pesticides, oil fire pollution and other battlefield toxins, including chemical and biological weapons stockpiled by Saddam Hussein. For years their maladies weren't taken seriously: It's stress, it happens after every war and it's all in your head, the military doctors said.

Stutts and his wife, Carol, believed as much. They doubted reports of this so-called Gulf War Syndrome. But by 1996, the doctor himself could no longer work. He suffered limb spasms and seizures that made him fall down stairs.

Bracing himself on a cane, Stutts deposits a pile of medical records on the kitchen counter. One file contains images of his brain. "It's like Swiss cheese," he says.

Here are notices from the Pentagon, saying he may have been exposed to the nerve gas sarin in the Persian Gulf. Here, too, is a recent determination from the Department of Veterans Affairs, ruling Stutts fully disabled and citing "neurotoxin exposure" during his deployment. Now he is a patient at a VA clinic in nearby Lexington, where 100 Gulf War vets - most in their 30s and 40s - are being treated for symptoms of early Alzheimer's.

After 11 years, the VA and Pentagon no longer dispute that troops got sick. They've spent hundreds of millions of dollars studying why.

With his medical training, Stutts understands that good science takes time and hypotheses must be rigorously tested. But as a patient, he has reached certain conclusions.

"I'm not the same person as I was when I left." And: "I would have preferred to have stepped on a land mine than to be exposed to what I was exposed to over there."

In January 1991, then-Capt. Stutts deployed to Saudi Arabia with the 138th Medical Support Company. He recalls being bored. He had served as a medical corpsman during two tours in Vietnam, swooping into jungles amid bloodbaths. Operation Desert Storm, with its 100-hour ground war, produced relatively few casualties.

Stutts volunteered for air ambulance duty with the 316th Medical Detachment that choppered into southeastern Iraq.

Was he ever close enough to see or hear the explosions at Khamisiyah? Sitting on his living room couch nearly 12 years later, he squeezes his eyes shut and strains to fill his mental screen.

He must have been because he received Pentagon letters confirming it, in 1997 and 2000. Otherwise, it's all a blank.

"That's the thing that I really hate from day to day," he says. "I can't remember things that are important."

To prod her husband's recollections, Carol Stutts leafs through old military records and photo albums. Who's this handsome guy? She laughs, knowing the answer: It's Jim as a teenage sailor on a hospital ship.

One of six kids in a working-class Milwaukee household, Stutts joined the Navy in 1965, straight out of high school. He viewed the service as his only route to medical school. It took him 17 years to get there.

In between, came active duty and the reserves. Recalling the onslaught of gunshot victims, he says, "I went from one combat zone to another." He enrolled at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1982 on a full scholarship from the Army.

By 1988, Stutts was raising a daughter and working as director of health services at an Army base in Bayonne, N.J. He'd lost his first wife to cancer.

One day, he noticed a personal ad in a local paper. It was placed by Carol, looking to get married and start a family. She quickly decided on Jim. He was stable, determined.

"I had energy I could bottle and sell," Stutts recalls. "I could work circles around the most avid worker."

When America launched Operation Desert Shield, he volunteered. He was 42. In November 1990, before deploying, the doctor had his ruptured appendix removed. Surgeons also discovered Crohn's disease, a colon disorder, which he controlled with medication and diet. But he felt strong, an officer with taut muscles and no gray in his hair.

After four months at war, Stutts returned to take a medical command in Yuma, Ariz. He never before had had trouble completing the two-mile run and calisthenics for his semiannual fitness qualifications. But that summer his muscles and joints ached. He felt fatigued. "I guess I'm just getting old," he told himself.

In 1992, Stutts left active duty, moving the family to take an emergency room job in Kentucky, near Berea, a charming college town in the Appalachian foothills. He also joined the National Guard.

Later he went into private practice, and did well financially. But his mind - and overall health - kept failing. Walking in the backyard or standing in the bathroom, he'd suddenly collapse. He had headaches, dizziness, temperature fluctuations.

Just watching TV, sharp pains shot through his legs. He recalls retreating into his den, hoping not to alarm Carol and the children as he rolled on the floor, trying to deaden the pain.

In November 1996, he shut down his practice. But repeated visits to experts showed nothing medically wrong, except some progression of his Crohn's disease. The VA enrolled him in a stress management group.

By late 1997, he was found "unfit for retention" by the National Guard.

One of his doctors, Wesson Ashford, wrote in late 1998: "The concern is that these symptoms are caused by sarin neurotoxicity and that sarin is still present in his system."

Talk to Gulf War veterans around the country and you'll hear this refrain:

"I tell my wife, 'I feel like a 60-year-old man, like I'm falling apart,'" says Todd Kelly, 36, a former Army paratrooper now working as an engineer in Portland, Ore.

After the war, Kelly experienced joint pains and concentration problems; he still has irritable bowel syndrome. The VA gave him a 60 percent VA disability rating. He was near the Khamisiyah demolition, but, like other vets, Kelly doesn't blame his symptoms on one possible toxic exposure.

"We cleaned our vehicles with scrub brushes and diesel fuel for a month," he says. "I'm sure it's not very good for you. It's not Palmolive."

The troops endured sandstorms. They inhaled ash and a mist of oil from destroyed wells. They breathed the dust of spent shells that contained depleted uranium. Bedeviled by bugs, they doused themselves with pesticides and wore flea collars.

During the air war, Kelly watched through night-vision goggles as coalition pilots pounded hundreds of targets in Iraq. Everybody knew Hussein was stockpiling nasty germs and chemicals. What became of that fallout?

Throughout the 1990s, Senate and House panels gathered documents and testimony suggesting that Gulf troops were harmed by chemical warfare agents. Today, after their own exhaustive studies, defense officials say it's all anecdotal, or wrong, and there's no proof.

But, citing "lessons learned," deployment health experts express confidence that, this time, alarms and protective equipment and training will all be better. The General Accounting Office isn't so sure; it recently cited "many problems in the Defense Department's capabilities to defend against chemical and biological weapons."

The lesson learned by vets like former Pfc. Kelly is not to trust the official story. "They knew all along there were chemicals released in the theater of operations, but they didn't want to tarnish the victory. They should be honest about it."

A standard-issue gas mask and chemical protection suit decorate one corner of Steve Robinson's small office in Silver Spring, Md. A former Army Ranger sergeant, he's head of the National Gulf War Resource Center, a veterans' advocacy group. Crunching recent VA statistics, he has come up with what he calls the "postwar casualty rate" of America's last war with Iraq.

In his view, the numbers demolish the notion of a clean or easy victory. Estimated veterans: 573,000. Number who have proved, to the satisfaction of government doctors, that they had a service-related medical problem: 160,000.

Which comes to nearly 28 percent - a rate of approved disability claims exceeding World War II (6.6 percent), Korea (5 percent) and Vietnam (9.6 percent).

Some VA and Pentagon officials say the rate is inflated by the government's recent, more liberal policies of evaluating service-related illnesses. Others say the rigors of military life - all that running and parachuting - result in higher claims in categories like musculoskeletal woes. Others postulate that previous generations of vets were just tougher.

But, at both the VA and the Pentagon, the top doctors concur on one point: The Gulf vets are not fakers or malingerers.

"This is not a psychosomatic issue," says Michael Kilpatrick, deputy director for deployment health support in the Department of Defense.

Still, after years of study, military doctors say no research has established an etiology, an underlying physical cause.

As for exposure to sarin or other toxins, "I have not seen any scientific evidence to tie those exposures to the illnesses we've seen among Gulf War veterans," says VA toxicologist Mark Brown. "We know people came back with difficult-to-diagnose illnesses. We don't know the cause, but we can provide treatment."

Activists and congressional investigators say the Pentagon wasted years by focusing on a stress explanation. In the case of sarin - developed as a pesticide in the 1930s - the Army has long been aware of its effects.

The Pentagon's official position, as stated twice on its Web site: "Current medical evidence indicates that long-term health problems from these levels of nerve agent are unlikely."

But in military-funded animal studies, evidence is slowly accumulating that exposure to nonlethal levels of sarin can later suppress the immune system, and cause brain changes and behavioral problems. Other researchers have examined survivors of the Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995, finding neurological problems and memory loss as seen in Gulf War patients.

Francis O'Donnell, a Defense Department consultant who has reviewed Japanese studies of the incident, calls the data "fuzzy." Some of those hospitalized were later shown to have subtle nervous system changes, he says, but he also notes that among them were alcohol users. "Is that important or not? I don't know."

***

A sharp sound, like a bad wheel on a shopping cart, echoes through the holiday-decorated hallways of the Lexington VA hospital.

It's the noisy metal brace attached to Stutts' left leg. As the gaunt doctor-patient limps by, staffers greet him warmly by name. He's checking in with his physicians, Wes Ashford and Joel Stephenson. As usual, they can't offer much optimism. Stutts' brain scans keep showing degeneration.

The doctors do have a new memory drug that may help the symptoms, even if there's no cure. Extensive neuropsychological tests have demonstrated that the brain damage in Gulf War patients is similar to that of elderly patients with Alzheimer's.

Ashford, a psychiatrist, is an Alzheimer's specialist who runs the hospital's memory disorders clinic. On a hallway wall, he displays computer images of 10 vets' brains, pinpointing areas of reduced blood flow. Compared to the smooth gray hemispheres of a normal brain, these resemble landscapes pocked by gaping craters. Bombs come to mind.

"The striking thing is," Ashford says, "you don't see these problems in the Vietnam vets, the Korean War vets, the World War II vets."

The service was Stutts' life: 32 years, counting the reserves and the National Guard.

He doesn't want it to be over. He blames, bitterly, Saddam Hussein; the Western weapons suppliers who sold Iraq its poisons; his own government, for its "deplorable" treatment of vets.

"All I want is my health back," he says, wearing an Army sweatshirt, which he will take off and put on repeatedly as he feels chills, then fevers. "I want my military command back. I want to wear the green uniform. I want my medical practice. I want to be able to get my social and family life back."

It's a long list, but one thing isn't on it. He doesn't ask for an answer. He believes he already has one.

Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.



Gulf Vets Reporting More Problems
Thu Feb 21, 5:02 PM ET
By SUZANNE GAMBOA, Associated Press Writer


WASHINGTON (AP) - Gulf War soldiers believed to have escaped exposure to a vapor cloud from an Iraqi chemical weapons depot are dying at nearly 10 times the rate of troops the Pentagon says were exposed, a Veterans Administration analysis indicates.

The Pentagon has said about 100,000 soldiers were exposed to deadly gases when the Khamisiyah chemical weapons facility was blown up by U.S. combat engineers. But it also has said the level of exposure was not hazardous.

The analysis by the Veterans Benefits Administration, obtained by The Associated Press, included data on deaths and VA benefits applications. It did not include a review of how the veterans died - such as car accident, natural causes or service-related illness - or whether any deaths or claims were attributable to exposure to nerve gases.

The analysis did say 3,689 of 42,167 claims processed were for undiagnosed illnesses.

VA statisticians briefed veterans groups on the report Thursday but offered no explanations for the disparity in death rates, according to Patrick Eddington, associate director of government relations for Vietnam Veterans of America.

Eddington said more investigation is needed to determine exactly who was exposed and whether they could face health problems as a result.

"If there is a benign explanation for this discrepancy, we don't know what it would be," said Eddington, whose group also advocates for GulfWar veterans.

VA spokesman Jim Benson said he had not seen the analysis and had no immediate comment. Pentagon spokeswoman Barbara Goodno said, "The report is a VA report and the numbers to us appear to be raw data. For us to draw any conclusion would be premature."

For years the Pentagon discounted claims that mysterious illnesses cited by Gulf War veterans could be tied to toxic exposures. But last December, a Pentagon-supported report by the Rand Corp.'s National Defense Research Institute raised the possibility some undiagnosed illnesses could be explained by exposure to low levels of Iraqi nerve
gas.

The report called for more research into the long-term health effects of exposure such as that experienced by American soldiers at Khamisiyah,  where weapons caches were destroyed March 4 and 10, 1991. It was discovered later that the depot and a nearby pit contained hundreds of weapons filled with lethal sarin, cyclosarin and mustard gases. 
The Pentagon sent letters in 1997 to the troops it believed might have been exposed to a chemical vapor cloud from the explosion. The letter said the level of exposure was not high enough to cause health problems.

Three years later, the Pentagon said a revised computer model using new weather and troop location information showed a different track for the vapor cloud that took it over other soldiers.

A new round of letters went out. Some 34,418 soldiers were told military officials no longer believed they were exposed. An additional 65,407 were told the Pentagon still believed they might have been exposed. And 34,638 others were told officials now believed they might have been exposed.

The VA's analysis found 221 deaths among the group the Pentagon consistently said might have been exposed, a rate of 3.38 per 1,000.  There were 105 deaths, or 3.03 per 1,000, among the group military officials added after the revised computer model.

But there were 1,011 deaths, or 29.37 per 1,000, among the group that first was told it might have been exposed, then that it was not.

Dave Autry, spokesman for Disabled American Veterans, said it is important to find out why groups of mainly young males would have such differing death rates.

Erik Gustafson, a Gulf War veteran from Washington in the group with the highest death rate, called the numbers "extremely alarming."

Gustafson was with the 864th Engineer Battalion in northeast Kuwait when Khamisiyah was destroyed. He said he has not had any serious health problems, but has seen friends from his battalion experience problems.

"What's happened is any trust I might have had is gone. It's really eroded over time," Gustafson said. "When I got the second letter, it was like, 'Can't they get any of this right?' Now, this just reinforces the skepticism."

___

On the Net:

Veterans Affairs: http://www.va.gov
Vietnam Veterans of America: http://www.vva.org/
Disabled American Veterans: http://www.dav.org
or:

Articles on this page:









Online Gulf War-Related Medical Research Library Introduced
Date:  6/18/02 10:11:09 AM Eastern Daylight Time
From:  dlnews_sender@dtic.mil
Sender:    DODNEWS-L@DTIC.MIL (DOD NEWS LIST)
Reply-to:  DODNEWS-L-request@DTIC.MIL
To:    DODNEWS-L@DTIC.MIL
NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense
No. 312-02
(703)697-5131(media)
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 18, 2002
(703)428-0711(public/industry)
ONLINE GULF WAR-RELATED MEDICAL RESEARCH LIBRARY INTRODUCED
The Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs and   the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an agency of the  Department of Health and Human Services, today announced the launch of an Internet site called Medsearch, a central
repository of Gulf War-related medical research.  Medsearch can  be found on the Internet at
.
"This website, a cooperative effort in support of Gulf War veterans and their families, reflects the commitment of all  three agencies to learning more about deployment related
illnesses, and sharing what we learn," said Dr. William  Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of Defense for Health Affairs.
In July 2001, DoD, VA and CDC agreed to combine their resources  to create this one-stop source of research information.  The development team worked with veterans and researchers to ensure that Medsearch was user-friendly.  Developers designed the
website to serve the needs of both the layperson and the researcher.  The site is indexed with plain language topic headings so that anyone can readily locate information.  Those  headings include topics of particular interest to Gulf War
veterans that may not be featured in other sources, such as pesticides and depleted uranium.  Scientists, who want more specific data, will find it on Medseach as well.
The goal of Medsearch's creators is to include all the federally funded research into the illnesses of Gulf War veterans in one centralized place.  The site will be updated frequently to ensure that it contains the most recent and complete information
available.

All information on this page I have received from Doc's Vet Mailing list.  He sends out lots of great information, about current issues for all Vets.  To visit his site, click here

I am going to put a disclaimer, "just because".  I am just posting this as it may be helpful to some or all Gulf War Vets.
Online Gulf War-Related Medical Research Library Introduced
Date:  6/18/02 10:11:09 AM Eastern Daylight Time
From:  dlnews_sender@dtic.mil
Sender:    DODNEWS-L@DTIC.MIL (DOD NEWS LIST)
Reply-to:  DODNEWS-L-request@DTIC.MIL
To:    DODNEWS-L@DTIC.MIL
NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense
No. 312-02
(703)697-5131(media)
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 18, 2002
(703)428-0711(public/industry)
ONLINE GULF WAR-RELATED MEDICAL RESEARCH LIBRARY INTRODUCED
The Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs and   the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an agency of the  Department of Health and Human Services, today announced the launch of an Internet site called Medsearch, a central
repository of Gulf War-related medical research.  Medsearch can  be found on the Internet at
.
"This website, a cooperative effort in support of Gulf War veterans and their families, reflects the commitment of all  three agencies to learning more about deployment related
illnesses, and sharing what we learn," said Dr. William  Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of Defense for Health Affairs.
In July 2001, DoD, VA and CDC agreed to combine their resources  to create this one-stop source of research information.  The development team worked with veterans and researchers to ensure that Medsearch was user-friendly.  Developers designed the
website to serve the needs of both the layperson and the researcher.  The site is indexed with plain language topic headings so that anyone can readily locate information.  Those  headings include topics of particular interest to Gulf War
veterans that may not be featured in other sources, such as pesticides and depleted uranium.  Scientists, who want more specific data, will find it on Medseach as well.
The goal of Medsearch's creators is to include all the federally funded research into the illnesses of Gulf War veterans in one centralized place.  The site will be updated frequently to ensure that it contains the most recent and complete information
available.

National News
Researcher says work's tie to war illness got him fired
By DAVID OLINGER
(c) St. Petersburg Times, published January 11, 1997

GAINESVILLE - Jim Moss was looking for a better way to kill cockroaches.  He found something nobody expected: a possible clue to the mysterious ailments afflicting veterans of the Persian Gulf war.

It was a discovery that would lead some to treat him as an American hero - and others to terminate his work as a federal research scientist.

What Moss found in the bodies of dying insects was a toxic relationship between two chemicals used by an estimated 250,000 American soldiers in the gulf war.

One was a potent, experimental pill - pyridostigmine bromide, or PB - that was supposed to protect soldiers against nerve gas attacks. The other was DEET, a common repellent that soldiers slathered on themselves to ward off desert insects.

At the Medical and Veterinary Entomology Research Laboratory in Gainesville, Moss showed that PB and DEET - at least for cockroaches - are synergistic. Apply them together and the effects multiply, turning a harmless dose of each into a potentially lethal combination.

He did so in defiance of his employer, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which invented DEET in the 1950s and tested it at the lab where he worked.

In 1993, when Moss first suspected DEET might be a factor in gulf war ailments, a top USDA official called Gainesville to stop im from spreading his suspicions outside the lab, records show. The lab director told Moss to cease his "unauthorized" DEET research and warned that his career was at stake.

Clearly, the implications of Moss' research were disturbing: He thought the U.S. government might have unwittingly harmed its own troops.

By pursuing those suspicions, he demonstrated that DEET can intensify the effects of a nerve gas pill many gulf war soldiers swallowed daily without knowing its contents. He won an invitation from Sen. Jay Rockefeller to testify at a congressional hearing. He won praise from gulf war veterans and from a researcher who substantiated his findings.

But he lost his job.

In June 1994, the month after Moss appeared before Congress, his temporary appointment as a research scientist in Gainesville ended. The Agriculture Department canceled his job and his research.

Sen. Rockefeller calls that decision a shame.

Moss is a researcher "who had a tremendous amount to contribute" and a patriot who has been "junked" by his government,Rockefeller said Friday.

"He discovered through his own scientific curiosity that an insect repellent, DEET, used by perhaps 70-million Americans may in fact be implicated in a serious public problem," Rockefeller said.

Today, Moss is an unemployed scientist - and still seeking federal support to pursue his gulf war research. He has three children, a wife who works as a librarian, a house on a woodsy lane in Gainesville and a bunch of rejection letters.

"We're broke," he said.

He started with roaches

Six years after the war, gulf war illnesses remain a mystery.

Tens of thousands of soldiers have reported symptoms ranging from chronic fatigue to joint and muscle aches, memory loss and rashes. Many researchers now believe these ailments are war- related, but they differ about the causes.

This week, a presidential advisory committee suggested stress played a major part in soldiers' physical and mental symptoms. At the same time, medical school studies from the University of Iowa and University of Texas pointed to multiple chemical exposures as a more likely explanation.

Soldiers were exposed to smoke from giant oil fires Iraq ignited during the war. They were exposed to pesticides and paint fumes. They may have been exposed to chemical weapons during the war, or afterward, when the U.S. Army blew up a weapons depot that held nerve gas rockets.

Dr. Robert Haley, the author of the Texas study, attributed gulf war illnesses to "subtle brain, spinal cord and nerve damage -but not stress."

Among the chemicals his study cited as possible culprits were two that Jim Moss tested in a Florida lab three years ago: DEET and PB.

In cockroaches and in humans, there are enzymes that regulate transmissions between nerve cells. Nerve gases interfere with these enzymes, causing a massive overloading of the transmission system.  So do many pesticides. And so, to a milder degree, does the PB pill given as a shield against nerve gas.

Moss thinks some agent probably intensified some soldiers' reactions to PB. He knows of two that can affect lab animals this way: stress and DEET.

Though he discovered the latter, today "I'd be much more concerned about stress and PB than DEET and PB," he said.

Moss joined this debate largely by chance. He came to Gainesville in 1990 to conduct research on insect pests, an appointment renewed in 1992.

In 1993 he was working with boric acid, a cheap and safe but rather slow treatment for cockroaches, and looking for synergists - chemicals to heighten its effect.

That November he started testing DEET with pesticides, applying droplets of each onto cockroaches immobilized in petri dishes. One was a defoliant known to raise the toxicity of some insecticides. When Moss added the same defoliant to DEET, a repellent, he got what his lab technician described as "rapid kill."

Moss got excited. He started calling other scientists to discuss his results. One was Donald Hildebrandt, at S.C. Johnson Wax.  At the time, Moss said he didn't know Johnson makes Off, a leading repellent made with DEET.

Moss told Hildebrandt that DEET might have a promising new use. He also mentioned a hunch that DEET might have something to do with the illnesses being labeled gulf war syndrome.

According to statements later filed by laboratory officials, this is what happened next:

Hildebrandt called Carl Schreck, a scientist at the Gainesville lab known for his DEET research. Hildebrandt wanted to know who Jim Moss was and what he was doing with DEET. Schreck reported this to Richard Brenner, the lab's acting research leader.

Brenner, who described the Johnson company scientist as "very upset," decided to call Ralph Bram, their national program leader.

Bram called Gary Mount, the lab director. As Mount, who is now retired, recalled, "Dr. Bram was upset that Dr. Moss was doing toxicity research with DEET and had apparently discussed his preliminary work with several industry and government representatives."

With Brenner present, Mount called Moss in.

The lab director told Moss that DEET was marketed worldwide as an insect repellent and "that studies on its potential toxicity would obviously be of a sensitive nature." He told him not to discuss preliminary data with anyone outside the lab. He also told him not to gather any more data on DEET and to concentrate on an assigned project.

In Brenner's account, the lab director also asked Moss if he "was aware of the damage that unsubstantiated charges could have" on S.C. Johnson and the Department of Defense.

Further, "Dr. Mount indicated that Jim's reputation was at stake as a scientist and that his behavior certainly was not going to enhance his prospects for future employment," Brenner said.

Moss said he asked Mount to put those orders in writing. When none came, he continued his research.

Initially, Moss suspected DEET might be related to gulf war illnesses because it affects the toxicity of some pesticides. One was permethrin, which gulf war soldiers sprayed on their uniforms.

In December 1993, after being told to end his DEET research, he learned soldiers also had taken a nerve gas pill. It belonged to the same class of compounds as a common group of insecticides.

For six months Moss and his lab technician, Gregory Knue, tested the combined toxicity of DEET, PB and various insecticides on cockroaches.

This was done in an obviously tense environment. Brenner reported that Moss "was always seen carrying his laboratory notebook" as if he were guarding it. And when Moss' supervisor noticed he was "frequently observed meeting and talking to" a fellow researcher, Jack Seawright, he notified director Mount.

Mount had a chat with Seawright.

"I advised Dr. Seawright that under the current circumstances, he should be cautious about interacting with Dr. Moss and that he should not offer him guidance," he said. "I further said that he risked becoming involved in Dr. Moss' problems if he continued interacting with him."

Congressional hearing

In the spring of 1994, Moss found an ally in the U.S. Senate.

Jay Rockefeller, who chaired its Veterans' Affairs committee, was planning a hearing on military research and the Persian Gulf war. Moss called a committee staffer to talk about his research.

Convinced that Moss might have something important to say, Rockefeller called him as a witness.

On May 6, Rockefeller asked Moss for his preliminary research findings on PB and pesticides.

Moss replied that PB, permethrin - the insecticide sprayed on soldiers' clothing - and eight other pesticide compounds "increased the toxicity of the repellent DEET to some degree."

Rockefeller thanked Moss, noting "for the record, that the Department of Agriculture was not very happy about your coming here today to testify."

That was it. But today, Moss says that brief appearance gave his preliminary findings a future. "This stuff was buried until I went to the Senate hearings," he said. "It was buried forever."

Duke continues research

On June 30, 1994, Moss' appointment in Gainesville expired. The laboratory did not renew his appointment, and USDA did not pursue his controversial research project.

A research team led by the Duke University Medical Center's pharmacology department did.

In a 1996 study, they reported that one factor in neurological illnesses among gulf war veterans "may be the simultaneous exposure to multiple agents used to protect the health of service personnel, in particular" PB, DEET and permethrin.

That study used chickens as test animals. Mohamed B. Abou- Donia, its lead researcher, said when all three chemicals were combined, "the effect is very, very strong" - causing death at dosage levels where a single chemical was harmless.

And of Moss' research, he said, "I think he is a very fine scientist."

Matt Puglisi, the American Legion's director for gulf war veterans, credits Moss with opening a door other researchers entered.

"The ultimate flattery for Dr. Moss," he said, "is that his research seems to be getting replicated across the country."

'Outside our mission area'

After Moss lost his job in 1994, he filed a misconduct complaint against his employers. A department investigation concluded it was unfounded.

In 1996, in response to a query from Sen. Rockefeller, Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman denied that his agency had stifled Moss' findings.

"In fact we encouraged Dr. Moss to pursue this research" with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Defense, "where such biomedical work could appropriately be done," he wrote.

USDA says that it did nothing to damage Moss' career, that his DEET research was unauthorized, and that he strayed into a field outside of the department's domain and expertise.

"Let me be clear on one thing," department spokesman Robert Norton said.  "Mr. Moss knew before he ever started doing any of his kind of extracurricular investigation that his appointment was supposed to terminate."

The Gainesville entomology lab "is not geared toward doing human toxicology research," Norton said. "That's what he was getting into. What he was doing was outside of our whole mission area."

Moss says USDA officials never encouraged him to take his research elsewhere. "That's bull. That never happened," he said.

To answer the charge that his work was unauthorized, he points to his job description, which listed developing synergists for pesticides as a task.

Since July 1994, Moss has applied for patents on some of his cockroach work and managed to get his DEET toxicity research published. He has worked as a substitute teacher in Gainesville schools.He has done part-time computer research work at
home.

He has applied for support from the local Department of Veterans Affairs and for USDA and Defense Department jobs in other states, without success. He has a pending application with the Defense Department to study gulf war illnesses with another researcher.

To date, he says, nobody from the Defense Department has ever called to ask about his findings.

(c)Copyright 1996 St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.




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==========================================
* * VETERAN'S NEWS and VIEWS * *
==========================================

Gulf War researcher welcomes decision on US vets

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent


WASHINGTON, Dec 11 (Reuters) - An admission by federal officials that a link,  long-suspected by veterans, exists between service in the Gulf War and a   deadly disease may mean more dollars for research into the poorly defined  syndrome, an expert said on Tuesday.

The Department of Veterans' Affairs announced on Monday night that a study had shown a clear link between service in the 1990-91 war against Iraq and  amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease. It said 40 Gulf War veterans had been affected and would be compensated.

ALS is a progressive and deadly neurological disease that eventually  paralyzes its victims. There is no cure.

"In today's battlefield, we need to recognize that non-traumatic illnesses and injuries can be as deadly as a bullet wound," Secretary of Veterans'  Affairs Anthony Principi told a news conference.

"And where we can show scientific evidence of an association between service and illness, we must compensate veterans with that illness."

Veterans have long complained that their service in Iraq and Kuwait left them suffering from an illness come to be known as "Gulf War Syndrome."

But Veterans' Affairs and the Department of Defense reports are the first to show any sign that Gulf War veterans suffer from any one illness more than the general population. Last year the Institute of Medicine said not enough research had been done to show whether Gulf War Syndrome existed.

Principi said research into the possible links and treatments for ALS, also known as motor neuron disease, would be stepped up.

"I intend to fully focus our medical resources and research capabilities on this issue," he said.

"We will now turn our expertise to ALS. We will work with others to pursue a  cause, a treatment, and a cure."

Dr. Robert Haley, a researcher at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas who has done much research about Gulf War Syndrome, said the announcement may mean more funds for labs such as his.

'VERY COURAGEOUS'

"I think this was very courageous and the right thing to do," Haley said in a telephone interview.

The VA said it had done a new study that showed a link. The study has not been published in a scientific journal yet, so details are not available. Also, it has not been subjected to peer review -- the process by which experts analyze and often tear apart work by other experts, so the VA stressed that the results are preliminary.

"This study, begun in March 2000, involved nearly 700,000 service members deployed to Southwest Asia, and 1.8 million who were not deployed to the Gulf during the period Aug. 2, 1990 to July 31, 1991," the VA said in a statement.

It found 40 cases of ALS in the Gulf War veterans, when 33 would have been expected in a general population that size.

Haley, who has become an advocate for Gulf War veterans who say they have the
syndrome, said the results matched a study his lab did, which is also being submitted for publication. He said he believed the change of government in 2000 allowed the VA to change its stand that Gulf War Syndrome did not exist.

"By giving over our government to new parties from time to time we bring in new players. They are free to make conclusions on the basis of emerging evidence and are not tied to the honor of the people going before," Haley said.

He thinks more evidence of Gulf War Syndrome will come out.

"Our studies show Gulf War veterans with Gulf War Syndrome have brain cell injury in the basal cell ganglia, deep structures in the brain," he said. Between 20,000 and 100,000 veterans could be affected, he said.

In the case of ALS, Haley believes a combination of genetic susceptibility and exposure to a poison were to blame.

"What horrible environmental toxin did they come in contact with?" he asked. The most likely culprit, he thinks, is sarin gas -- although Haley stresses that no studies have shown this link.

18:42 12-11-01
Copyright 2001 Reuters Limited.


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Gulf Vets Reporting More Problems
Thu Feb 21, 5:02 PM ET
By SUZANNE GAMBOA, Associated Press Writer


WASHINGTON (AP) - Gulf War soldiers believed to have escaped exposure to a vapor cloud from an Iraqi chemical weapons depot are dying at nearly 10 times the rate of troops the Pentagon says were exposed, a Veterans Administration analysis indicates.

The Pentagon has said about 100,000 soldiers were exposed to deadly gases when the Khamisiyah chemical weapons facility was blown up by U.S. combat engineers. But it also has said the level of exposure was not hazardous.

The analysis by the Veterans Benefits Administration, obtained by The Associated Press, included data on deaths and VA benefits applications. It did not include a review of how the veterans died - such as car accident, natural causes or service-related illness - or whether any deaths or claims were attributable to exposure to nerve gases.

The analysis did say 3,689 of 42,167 claims processed were for undiagnosed illnesses.

VA statisticians briefed veterans groups on the report Thursday but offered no explanations for the disparity in death rates, according to Patrick Eddington, associate director of government relations for Vietnam Veterans of America.

Eddington said more investigation is needed to determine exactly who was exposed and whether they could face health problems as a result.

"If there is a benign explanation for this discrepancy, we don't know what it would be," said Eddington, whose group also advocates for GulfWar veterans.

VA spokesman Jim Benson said he had not seen the analysis and had no immediate comment. Pentagon spokeswoman Barbara Goodno said, "The report is a VA report and the numbers to us appear to be raw data. For us to draw any conclusion would be premature."

For years the Pentagon discounted claims that mysterious illnesses cited by Gulf War veterans could be tied to toxic exposures. But last December, a Pentagon-supported report by the Rand Corp.'s National Defense Research Institute raised the possibility some undiagnosed illnesses could be explained by exposure to low levels of Iraqi nerve
gas.

The report called for more research into the long-term health effects of exposure such as that experienced by American soldiers at Khamisiyah,  where weapons caches were destroyed March 4 and 10, 1991. It was discovered later that the depot and a nearby pit contained hundreds of weapons filled with lethal sarin, cyclosarin and mustard gases. 
The Pentagon sent letters in 1997 to the troops it believed might have been exposed to a chemical vapor cloud from the explosion. The letter said the level of exposure was not high enough to cause health problems.

Three years later, the Pentagon said a revised computer model using new weather and troop location information showed a different track for the vapor cloud that took it over other soldiers.

A new round of letters went out. Some 34,418 soldiers were told military officials no longer believed they were exposed. An additional 65,407 were told the Pentagon still believed they might have been exposed. And 34,638 others were told officials now believed they might have been exposed.

The VA's analysis found 221 deaths among the group the Pentagon consistently said might have been exposed, a rate of 3.38 per 1,000.  There were 105 deaths, or 3.03 per 1,000, among the group military officials added after the revised computer model.

But there were 1,011 deaths, or 29.37 per 1,000, among the group that first was told it might have been exposed, then that it was not.

Dave Autry, spokesman for Disabled American Veterans, said it is important to find out why groups of mainly young males would have such differing death rates.

Erik Gustafson, a Gulf War veteran from Washington in the group with the highest death rate, called the numbers "extremely alarming."

Gustafson was with the 864th Engineer Battalion in northeast Kuwait when Khamisiyah was destroyed. He said he has not had any serious health problems, but has seen friends from his battalion experience problems.

"What's happened is any trust I might have had is gone. It's really eroded over time," Gustafson said. "When I got the second letter, it was like, 'Can't they get any of this right?' Now, this just reinforces the skepticism."

___

On the Net:

Veterans Affairs: http://www.va.gov
Vietnam Veterans of America: http://www.vva.org/
Disabled American Veterans: http://www.dav.org
or:


The Damage of War



Like thousands of Gulf War vets, James Stutts went to Iraq healthy and came back to illness. With new troops headed to the region, the government still can't explain the cause of their sickness


By Richard Leiby
THE WASHINGTON POST

January 15: 2003

BEREA, KY. -- The doctor sits at home, filling the hours with television, writing himself reminders that look like prescriptions. "From the desk of Dr. James Stutts," says his notepad, itself a reminder that he practiced medicine until, one day, he knew it was no longer safe. He could not remember faces and names.

Before he retired, Lt. Col. Stutts commanded medical staffs on military bases. He used to helicopter into combat zones to treat the wounded. He still keeps his Army uniform pressed and ready, as if someday he might return to duty.

He is 54 and disabled by dementia. He is a casualty of the Persian Gulf War - one of the tens of thousands of men and women who left feeling healthy but fell sick after coming home. They filed disability claims at a rate far higher than veterans of other wars.

As the United States deploys troops in anticipation of another battle with Iraq, the Pentagon says it still has no answer for an enigma that has confounded experts for more than a decade: What caused all those Gulf veterans' symptoms? The memory lapses, fatigue, joint pains, rashes, headaches, dizzy spells ... not to mention the cancer, Lou Gehrig's disease and birth defects.

Many vets speculated that they were poisoned by a combination of vaccines, pesticides, oil fire pollution and other battlefield toxins, including chemical and biological weapons stockpiled by Saddam Hussein. For years their maladies weren't taken seriously: It's stress, it happens after every war and it's all in your head, the military doctors said.

Stutts and his wife, Carol, believed as much. They doubted reports of this so-called Gulf War Syndrome. But by 1996, the doctor himself could no longer work. He suffered limb spasms and seizures that made him fall down stairs.

Bracing himself on a cane, Stutts deposits a pile of medical records on the kitchen counter. One file contains images of his brain. "It's like Swiss cheese," he says.

Here are notices from the Pentagon, saying he may have been exposed to the nerve gas sarin in the Persian Gulf. Here, too, is a recent determination from the Department of Veterans Affairs, ruling Stutts fully disabled and citing "neurotoxin exposure" during his deployment. Now he is a patient at a VA clinic in nearby Lexington, where 100 Gulf War vets - most in their 30s and 40s - are being treated for symptoms of early Alzheimer's.

After 11 years, the VA and Pentagon no longer dispute that troops got sick. They've spent hundreds of millions of dollars studying why.

With his medical training, Stutts understands that good science takes time and hypotheses must be rigorously tested. But as a patient, he has reached certain conclusions.

"I'm not the same person as I was when I left." And: "I would have preferred to have stepped on a land mine than to be exposed to what I was exposed to over there."

In January 1991, then-Capt. Stutts deployed to Saudi Arabia with the 138th Medical Support Company. He recalls being bored. He had served as a medical corpsman during two tours in Vietnam, swooping into jungles amid bloodbaths. Operation Desert Storm, with its 100-hour ground war, produced relatively few casualties.

Stutts volunteered for air ambulance duty with the 316th Medical Detachment that choppered into southeastern Iraq.

Was he ever close enough to see or hear the explosions at Khamisiyah? Sitting on his living room couch nearly 12 years later, he squeezes his eyes shut and strains to fill his mental screen.

He must have been because he received Pentagon letters confirming it, in 1997 and 2000. Otherwise, it's all a blank.

"That's the thing that I really hate from day to day," he says. "I can't remember things that are important."

To prod her husband's recollections, Carol Stutts leafs through old military records and photo albums. Who's this handsome guy? She laughs, knowing the answer: It's Jim as a teenage sailor on a hospital ship.

One of six kids in a working-class Milwaukee household, Stutts joined the Navy in 1965, straight out of high school. He viewed the service as his only route to medical school. It took him 17 years to get there.

In between, came active duty and the reserves. Recalling the onslaught of gunshot victims, he says, "I went from one combat zone to another." He enrolled at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1982 on a full scholarship from the Army.

By 1988, Stutts was raising a daughter and working as director of health services at an Army base in Bayonne, N.J. He'd lost his first wife to cancer.

One day, he noticed a personal ad in a local paper. It was placed by Carol, looking to get married and start a family. She quickly decided on Jim. He was stable, determined.

"I had energy I could bottle and sell," Stutts recalls. "I could work circles around the most avid worker."

When America launched Operation Desert Shield, he volunteered. He was 42. In November 1990, before deploying, the doctor had his ruptured appendix removed. Surgeons also discovered Crohn's disease, a colon disorder, which he controlled with medication and diet. But he felt strong, an officer with taut muscles and no gray in his hair.

After four months at war, Stutts returned to take a medical command in Yuma, Ariz. He never before had had trouble completing the two-mile run and calisthenics for his semiannual fitness qualifications. But that summer his muscles and joints ached. He felt fatigued. "I guess I'm just getting old," he told himself.

In 1992, Stutts left active duty, moving the family to take an emergency room job in Kentucky, near Berea, a charming college town in the Appalachian foothills. He also joined the National Guard.

Later he went into private practice, and did well financially. But his mind - and overall health - kept failing. Walking in the backyard or standing in the bathroom, he'd suddenly collapse. He had headaches, dizziness, temperature fluctuations.

Just watching TV, sharp pains shot through his legs. He recalls retreating into his den, hoping not to alarm Carol and the children as he rolled on the floor, trying to deaden the pain.

In November 1996, he shut down his practice. But repeated visits to experts showed nothing medically wrong, except some progression of his Crohn's disease. The VA enrolled him in a stress management group.

By late 1997, he was found "unfit for retention" by the National Guard.

One of his doctors, Wesson Ashford, wrote in late 1998: "The concern is that these symptoms are caused by sarin neurotoxicity and that sarin is still present in his system."

Talk to Gulf War veterans around the country and you'll hear this refrain:

"I tell my wife, 'I feel like a 60-year-old man, like I'm falling apart,'" says Todd Kelly, 36, a former Army paratrooper now working as an engineer in Portland, Ore.

After the war, Kelly experienced joint pains and concentration problems; he still has irritable bowel syndrome. The VA gave him a 60 percent VA disability rating. He was near the Khamisiyah demolition, but, like other vets, Kelly doesn't blame his symptoms on one possible toxic exposure.

"We cleaned our vehicles with scrub brushes and diesel fuel for a month," he says. "I'm sure it's not very good for you. It's not Palmolive."

The troops endured sandstorms. They inhaled ash and a mist of oil from destroyed wells. They breathed the dust of spent shells that contained depleted uranium. Bedeviled by bugs, they doused themselves with pesticides and wore flea collars.

During the air war, Kelly watched through night-vision goggles as coalition pilots pounded hundreds of targets in Iraq. Everybody knew Hussein was stockpiling nasty germs and chemicals. What became of that fallout?

Throughout the 1990s, Senate and House panels gathered documents and testimony suggesting that Gulf troops were harmed by chemical warfare agents. Today, after their own exhaustive studies, defense officials say it's all anecdotal, or wrong, and there's no proof.

But, citing "lessons learned," deployment health experts express confidence that, this time, alarms and protective equipment and training will all be better. The General Accounting Office isn't so sure; it recently cited "many problems in the Defense Department's capabilities to defend against chemical and biological weapons."

The lesson learned by vets like former Pfc. Kelly is not to trust the official story. "They knew all along there were chemicals released in the theater of operations, but they didn't want to tarnish the victory. They should be honest about it."

A standard-issue gas mask and chemical protection suit decorate one corner of Steve Robinson's small office in Silver Spring, Md. A former Army Ranger sergeant, he's head of the National Gulf War Resource Center, a veterans' advocacy group. Crunching recent VA statistics, he has come up with what he calls the "postwar casualty rate" of America's last war with Iraq.

In his view, the numbers demolish the notion of a clean or easy victory. Estimated veterans: 573,000. Number who have proved, to the satisfaction of government doctors, that they had a service-related medical problem: 160,000.

Which comes to nearly 28 percent - a rate of approved disability claims exceeding World War II (6.6 percent), Korea (5 percent) and Vietnam (9.6 percent).

Some VA and Pentagon officials say the rate is inflated by the government's recent, more liberal policies of evaluating service-related illnesses. Others say the rigors of military life - all that running and parachuting - result in higher claims in categories like musculoskeletal woes. Others postulate that previous generations of vets were just tougher.

But, at both the VA and the Pentagon, the top doctors concur on one point: The Gulf vets are not fakers or malingerers.

"This is not a psychosomatic issue," says Michael Kilpatrick, deputy director for deployment health support in the Department of Defense.

Still, after years of study, military doctors say no research has established an etiology, an underlying physical cause.

As for exposure to sarin or other toxins, "I have not seen any scientific evidence to tie those exposures to the illnesses we've seen among Gulf War veterans," says VA toxicologist Mark Brown. "We know people came back with difficult-to-diagnose illnesses. We don't know the cause, but we can provide treatment."

Activists and congressional investigators say the Pentagon wasted years by focusing on a stress explanation. In the case of sarin - developed as a pesticide in the 1930s - the Army has long been aware of its effects.

The Pentagon's official position, as stated twice on its Web site: "Current medical evidence indicates that long-term health problems from these levels of nerve agent are unlikely."

But in military-funded animal studies, evidence is slowly accumulating that exposure to nonlethal levels of sarin can later suppress the immune system, and cause brain changes and behavioral problems. Other researchers have examined survivors of the Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995, finding neurological problems and memory loss as seen in Gulf War patients.

Francis O'Donnell, a Defense Department consultant who has reviewed Japanese studies of the incident, calls the data "fuzzy." Some of those hospitalized were later shown to have subtle nervous system changes, he says, but he also notes that among them were alcohol users. "Is that important or not? I don't know."

***

A sharp sound, like a bad wheel on a shopping cart, echoes through the holiday-decorated hallways of the Lexington VA hospital.

It's the noisy metal brace attached to Stutts' left leg. As the gaunt doctor-patient limps by, staffers greet him warmly by name. He's checking in with his physicians, Wes Ashford and Joel Stephenson. As usual, they can't offer much optimism. Stutts' brain scans keep showing degeneration.

The doctors do have a new memory drug that may help the symptoms, even if there's no cure. Extensive neuropsychological tests have demonstrated that the brain damage in Gulf War patients is similar to that of elderly patients with Alzheimer's.

Ashford, a psychiatrist, is an Alzheimer's specialist who runs the hospital's memory disorders clinic. On a hallway wall, he displays computer images of 10 vets' brains, pinpointing areas of reduced blood flow. Compared to the smooth gray hemispheres of a normal brain, these resemble landscapes pocked by gaping craters. Bombs come to mind.

"The striking thing is," Ashford says, "you don't see these problems in the Vietnam vets, the Korean War vets, the World War II vets."

The service was Stutts' life: 32 years, counting the reserves and the National Guard.

He doesn't want it to be over. He blames, bitterly, Saddam Hussein; the Western weapons suppliers who sold Iraq its poisons; his own government, for its "deplorable" treatment of vets.

"All I want is my health back," he says, wearing an Army sweatshirt, which he will take off and put on repeatedly as he feels chills, then fevers. "I want my military command back. I want to wear the green uniform. I want my medical practice. I want to be able to get my social and family life back."

It's a long list, but one thing isn't on it. He doesn't ask for an answer. He believes he already has one.

Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.



Low doses of sarin may have long-term effects
Monday, December 23, 2002

 
Some veterans believe that soldiers on "clean-up" missions after the Gulf War may have been exposed to sarin nerve gas.  
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Low levels of sarin nerve gas affected behavior and organ functions in laboratory animals at least a month after exposure, suggests new  research that may provide clues to the mysterious illnesses of Persian Gulf War veterans.

In separate Army-sponsored studies, scientists observed behavioral problems, brain changes and immune system suppression in the animals many days after exposure to doses that caused no immediate effects, such as convulsions or pupil constriction.

Both studies involved rodents, and "that's a big leap to human beings," said Melinda Roberson, a behavioral neuroscientist involved in a study still under way.

Even so, the studies provide new information in an area where a lack of research has made it impossible to conclude whether Gulf veterans' illnesses are linked to low-level sarin gas exposure.

"They are pushing back the frontiers of biological effects of low levels of  sarin. The evidence is building," said Dr. Francis O'Donnell, a medical  consultant for the Defense Department who helps track Gulf War illness research.

Veterans of the 1991 war have suffered from various illnesses they believe inked to their service in the Gulf. Symptoms include chronic fatigue, diarrhea, migraines, dizziness, memory problems, loss of muscle control and loss of balance.

Most scientists have blamed stress. Some veterans attribute the health problems to toxic substances they encountered in the Gulf, including sarin, a  toxic chemical weapon that is lethal at high levels. Others suggest it may be a combination of the factors.

The Pentagon has identified about 130,000 troops it believes were exposed to low levels of sarin in 1991 when U.S. forces destroyed a weapons depot at Khamisiyah in southern Iraq. Some veterans believe other sarin exposures occurred.

On its Web site, the Pentagon tells veterans that "current medical evidence indicates that long term health problems are not likely."

Dr. Robert Haley, an epidemiologist at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, has published almost two dozen studies suggesting that some Gulf War veterans' illnesses are linked to brain damage resulting from exposure to toxins such as sarin.

The Pentagon criticized those studies, in part because veterans Haley studied were not downwind of Khamisiyah when the depot was destroyed. Haley said the new research gives "biological plausibility" to his suggestion of a link to sarin gas exposure.

The study on guinea pigs is under way at the Army Medical Research Institute for Chemical Defense at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. Its preliminary findings were presented in November at the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting in Washington.

In that study, guinea pigs were injected with nerve gas five days a week for two weeks. Some were injected with 20 percent of the dose required to kill half the animals and others with 40 percent of that dose.

Researcher Jim McDonough, a physiological psychologist, said that would be  much higher than the level that the Pentagon says veterans were exposed to from the Khamisiyah depot destruction. Some veterans' groups question the accuracy of the Pentagon's exposure estimates, insisting they were much higher. Other researchers say there is no way to calculate the exposure levels for sure.

Although veterans were not injected with sarin, McDonough said the biochemical effects on the brain are the same for either exposure method. He likened the exposures to nicotine's effects on the brain whether the nicotine is smoked, chewed or delivered through a skin patch.

The exposed animals were examined after two hours, then at three days, 10 days, a month and 100 days. There were no changes in some physical signs the scientists monitored, such as weight gain and temperature.

But researchers said they found significant increases in certain behaviors.

For example, 100 days after exposure, animals in the 40 percent dose group spent significantly more time in the center of their activity chambers and traveled greater distances in the chambers, McDonough said. Guinea pigs in both dosage level groups also reared up on their hind legs significantly more often at 100 days.

Roberson said researchers saw a reduction in activity by the enzyme acetylcholinesterase, a key to controlling electrical impulses in the brain. She said that could affect behavior. Researchers are exposing another group of animals to verify the results.

Separately, researchers at Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, known for its tobacco studies, exposed mice to low-level doses of sarin in a three-part Army-funded study. The study, begun in 1998, was finished last year.

The mice inhaled sarin doses an hour a day for five days and an hour a day for 10 days. The levels were one-tenth and one-twentieth the concentrations required to kill a human. The mice were examined a day and a month after exposure.

Researchers found that the exposures, particularly when combined with heat   stress, caused both decreases and increases in the numbers of receptor sites in areas of the brain critical for cognition and memory, "things that might be associated with Gulf War syndrome," said Rogene Henderson, Lovelace senior scientist.

Receptor sites are essentially docking stations for brain signals. In some cases the changes did not appear until a month after exposure, Henderson said.

Researchers found that the exposure also suppressed the immune system, the body's defense mechanism against infection and disease. Researcher Mohan Sopori, an immunologist, said that indicates something happened to the  autonomic nervous system, which is responsible for the body's automatic  functions such as sleeping and bowel movements.

WASHINGTON (Nov. 15) - The Beltway sniper, the University of Arizona gunman,
the Fort Bragg murders, the Oklahoma City bomber.

The terrible and unfathomable crimes behind the headlines vary widely but all share a common thread that researchers say may merit a closer look: With the exception of one of the four Fort Bragg killings, all are alleged to be have been committed by veterans of the 1991 Gulf War.

There are too many unanswered questions to draw broad conclusions about whether the men connected with these crimes were suffering from the illnesses that research has shown afflict some 25 to 30 percent of the 697,000 U.S. Gulf veterans.

However, studies have turned up evidence of injury to the brain in some ill  veterans of the conflict, including damage to the deep brain structures where personality is determined.

What caused this damage, and other symptoms veterans describe, isn't clear, but researchers have said possibilities could include environmental toxins,  low-level nerve agents, depleted uranium, oil fires, mustard gas, stress as well as vaccines given to soldiers to guard against biological warfare and nerve gas.

Dr. William Baumzweiger, a California neurologist and psychiatrist who specializes in Gulf War ailments, said he was not surprised that so many of the high-profile crimes were tied to Gulf veterans. ''Gulf War veterans have a very high frequency of turning to violence to deal with frustration,'' he said.

A TERRIBLE TOLL

Baumzweiger testified for the defense at the trial of Gulf veteran Jeffrey Hutchinson, convicted last year of the 1998 murders of his girlfriend and her three children in Florida.

But Hutchinson does not win the prize for infamy in this group. That goes to Timothy McVeigh, executed in 2001 for the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people and injured hundreds of others.

September and October of this year brought two more high-profile cases involving veterans.

John Allen Muhammad, along with a young accomplice, has been accused of killing 10 people in and around Washington D.C. He is also charged with shootings in Louisiana and Alabama and could be linked to others.

Then in late October, failing Arizona nursing student Robert Flores, who served in the Army during the Gulf War, mowed down three of his professors before shooting himself.

Earlier in 2002, four servicemen allegedly killed their wives at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. Three of the four were Gulf War veterans.

Last week, a military team probing the Fort Bragg deaths blamed marital woes, deployment stress and reluctance to seek counseling.

''REASONABLE HYPOTHESIS''

Privacy Act rules make it impossible to find out if any of the Gulf veterans in these high-profile crimes ever officially complained of symptoms, and researchers are unaware of any statistics that indicate that rates of violence among Gulf veterans are higher than the general populace or than other combat veterans.

One researcher, who declined to be identified, said of speculation about a link between Gulf War illnesses and the crimes: ''It's a very reasonable hypothesis and it's reasonable because these people came back with personality change, difficulty controlling anger and so forth.''

''The question is over 10 years, what is the expected incidence of violent shooters, violent criminals, in the population of 695,000 former military people? I don't know the answer to that. Nobody knows...although these are such high-profile crimes, you'd expect that the incidence of that would be extremely rare,'' he added.

Steve Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center, a veterans' advocacy group, said more study of Gulf War ailments is clearly needed.

''Do Gulf War veterans as a whole demonstrate psychotic, homicidal, suicidal behavior? I don't think so. Are there individuals that have demonstrated those? Yes, absolutely,'' he said, adding that while the vast majority of those who suffer from Gulf War ailments will never turn violent, he receives despairing letters and telephone calls daily from sufferers.  
In an emotion-choked voice, Robinson read from one such letter, written by a veteran in jail for a vehicular homicide that killed a close friend. It said in part: ''I'm nervous all the time. I feel like my body is doing 200 miles an hour. I am always fatigued, my body shakes and sweats. I believe that because of the physical symptoms, I am a basket case. Anxiety and depression rule my life.''

NOT JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 1999 -- the latest year for which the data are available -- just 16 people aged from 25 to 49 committed murder per 100,000 population.

There is no breakdown according to military service.

''There is no evidence to support the notion that Gulf War veterans are more violent than any other group,'' said Barbara Goodno, a spokeswoman at the  Defense Department.

''We should be careful not to jump to conclusions. Approximately 697,000 veterans served their country in operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. It would be an injustice to them to automatically link the aberrant acts of a few to their military service,'' she added.

But enough questions linger that with the country teetering on the brink of  another conflict with Iraq, researchers think these violent crimes may merit further study.

''These high-profile shooters, that looks like it could be something new.  And certainly the Gulf War personality change thing could account for it,'' the researcher said.

The U.S. government does not acknowledge a Gulf War ''syndrome'' -- a group of signs and symptoms adding up to a unique condition. It admits there are a  number of illnesses that have emerged in veterans of the conflict but until recently it has put these down to psychology.

Symptoms can include difficulty with concentration, thinking and memory,  severe body pain, chronic diarrhea, sleep disturbances, night sweats, hot flashes and personality change, said Dr. Robert Haley of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, a member of the research advisory council on Gulf War illnesses to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

''It's common for these guys to have become (different),'' Haley said.  ''Their wives will tell you, 'This isn't the guy who went over. He's had a personality change.' And they typically come back (with) difficulty controlling temper, often depressed, withdrawn, not wanting to be around other people, difficulty dealing with complex environments.''

Haley said it is ''too big a leap'' to go from this to a conclusion that Gulf War brain injuries could be prompting this small group of men to commit terrible crimes.

POTENTIAL BREAKTHROUGH

According to a report the advisory committee issued to the Department of Veterans Affairs in June, the ailments of veterans of the relatively short conflict ''cannot be adequately explained by deployment stress, wartime trauma or psychiatric diagnoses such as post-traumatic stress disorder.''

The report said neurological problems are a key category of Gulf War illnesses and that there is enough evidence ''to conclude that this line of inquiry represents a potential breakthrough that could be pursued.''

Last month, the department issued a statement citing the research on a possible neurological link and committing $20 million in fiscal 2004 to further study. The department will set up a brain-imaging center to probe the issue.

''It's not inconceivable that certain individuals may have severe neurological impairment,'' said veterans' advocate Robinson. ''I can't sit here and tell you that that's the reason they commit crimes. But...what we do need to do is continue the research that the VA has said it is going to authorize.'' 

Reut21:21 11-14-02

Copyright 2002 Reuters Limited.  >>


French Finally Prove Gulf War Syndrome Caused by "Cocktail" Inoculations

Joe Vialls, 6 January 1996, Updated 25 January 2003

British Servicemen Throw Deadly Anthrax Vaccine Overboard! - Scroll Down to Read Update 
 

"Rather than help the media in its never-ending quest to lay misleading smoke screens around the true origins of Gulf War Syndrome, General Roquejoffre appears to have used his statement to finally isolate and expose the real villain behind the debilitating and sometimes lethal disease..." 

Many years ago before gaining access to the Internet, I wrote a report about the most likely causes of Gulf War Syndrome. The report slowly moved around the world by snail mail, and was eventually published in four small magazines. Then I forgot all about the report for a few years, because the nightmare symptoms being suffered by Gulf War veterans in America and
Britain, seemed light years away from my sleepy little backwater in Western Australia.
          
That was before George W. Bush decided to do the whole thing all over again, in his increasingly frantic and very public attempts to pillage Middle East oil for Wall Street. Though I am obviously powerless to prevent Bush from ruthlessly sacrificing American lives in the Iraqi desert, I can at least sound a warning designed to minimize the physical and psychological impact on servicemen before they leave for the Gulf, and after they hopefully
return.

There is no doubt that the panic generated by the false "War on Terror" is already being used to coerce people into accepting "preventative medical treatment", that in a more sane world they would instantly refuse.  Most profitable by far for the pharmaceutical multinationals backing the Bush Dynasty, are inoculations forced onto service men and women by legislation.   Taking the dreaded "Anthrax Shots" as an example, the manufacturer makes a
net profit of $18.00 out of every single individual, a figure that has to be multiplied by 2.4 million to get a true feel for multinational profit margins.
 
It is a harsh fact that the Anthrax vaccine being forcibly administered to service men and women today, is the same as that included in the deadly Gulf War "cocktail" inoculations of 1990-1991. This has no meaning whatever for politicians who habitually bend forward over a desk when their masters approach from behind, but it might have some meaning for you.
In the event that the multinationals manage to spark a "civil emergency"  somewhere near your own home, be advised that you too will be forced to accept exactly the same untested but hugely profitable vaccine as military personnel bound for the Persian Gulf.

The direct relationship between the Anthrax shots of today and the "cocktail" of yesterday is deeply troubling, and is the prime reason for reviving, editing, and adding to this 1995 report. You might find part of  the text disturbing, which is probably a very good thing. It is difficult to
protect your family from government-induced harm if you are not completely alert.

"During late 1995, devastating new evidence on Gulf War Syndrome was released, providing undeniable hard scientific proof for those who have long suspected that Gulf veterans are suffering short and long-term effects of unproven anti-bacteriological warfare inoculations and anti-nerve gas tablets, forcibly administered by U.S. Army doctors in Saudi Arabia.

With thousands of U.S. veterans suffering from Gulf War Syndrome,  it came as no surprise to learn in October 1995 that several hundred British veterans were suffering in the same way, with three to five new cases being reported every week. Like their U.S. counterparts, most were puzzled by the origins of the disease, which they initially attributed to oil-laden smoke
in Kuwait, toxic dust from depleted uranium rounds fired by U.S. weapons, and possible contamination from expended Iraqi chemical shells in the area, fired before the Gulf War commenced.

In a startling break with tradition, one British military doctor stated that in her view, 99% of the problems could be sourced back to the anti-bacteriological warfare "cocktail" inoculations, and anti-nerve gas tablets forcibly administered to military personnel in the Gulf region at that time. In an October 1995 broadcast of the ITN TV World News from London,
she further explained that all British military personnel had been provided with the same untested and unproven drugs as the Americans, from U.S. medical sources. To reinforce the point, the doctor explained that the number of  British personnel suffering symptoms correlated exactly on a per capita basis with U.S. personnel. It was a controversial claim, but apparently lacking in substance.
          
Shattering confirmation came eleven hours later, when Australian Channel 10 television carried exactly the same story at 5 p.m., but with an extra piece tagged onto the end. The extra piece claimed that French military personnel in the Gulf region, numbering the same as the British contingent, had been prevented from taking the "cocktails" and tablets on the direct orders of the French Commander-in-Chief. The story claimed that since the end
of the Gulf War, not a single member of the French military has suffered from Gulf War Syndrome, or reported any of its symptoms. One hour later at 6 p.m. when the other Australian television networks ran their news broadcasts, the awesome story with its stunning proof had vanished from sight. Nor was it reported in the Australian newspapers.
          
For any scientist or veteran, the fact that the French should be completely clear of Gulf War Syndrome while the Americans and British suffered huge numbers of cases verified on a direct per capita basis, has huge and horrifying implications. After all, the French ate the same food, drank the same water, breathed the same air and trudged through hundreds of
miles of the same desert. They also fired similar weapons at similar targets.
          
So what were the additional factors that made the French unique in their ability to completely withstand the deadly Gulf War Syndrome? The truth is there were none at all, save for the experimental American "cocktail" inoculations and nerve gas tablets. What the French had done, almost by accident, was provide hard scientific proof of the direct cause of Gulf War Syndrome. This proof took the form of its large 25,000-strong contingent of French servicemen participating n the Gulf War, who in all respects constituted a valid medical "control group".
          
For the uninitiated, here is an example of how a "control group" might be used in medical trials: Let us say that the manufacturer of a new  "chest hair" drug wants to run a clinical trial to check its efficiency, using 500,000 men. Out of this total, 475,000 [Americans and Brits] are given the real "chest hair" pill, while the remaining 25,000 [French] are used as a control group and given only a placebo, i.e. an identical looking sugar-coated pill with no active ingredients. If at the end of the trial all men with enhanced chest hair were found in the main group, with not a single case in the control group, the new "chest hair" drug would immediately be approved by medical authorities. It really is that simple. Applying the same
process in reverse, proves in definitive medical terms that untested Anthrax and botulism potions kill far more servicemen than enemy gunfire.
          
In an attempt to confirm this vital though very short-lived Gulf War Syndrome data, the author contacted the French Military Attaché in Australia and inquired if it was correct that the French Commander-in-Chief  forbade his own personnel the untested substances. The Military Attaché was happy to confirm this, and also confirmed that not one French soldier or
airman has suffered since the end of the Gulf War. It seemed to be a subject of which he was very proud, and rightly so. Perhaps it is time for U.S. and British veterans to confirm the same points with their local French consulates, before taking a very hefty legal swing at their own governments."
           
On 3 October 1996, nine months after this report was first published in two small American magazines, and then brought to the attentionof the White House, the prestigious New York Times suddenly added a new  dimension [and thus a possible new cause for Gulf War Syndrome]. According to the newspaper, an Iraqi chemical weapons dump at Kamisiyah was bombed extensively by U.S. jets before the ground campaign, meaning soldiers could
have been exposed before their assault. The New York Times did not attempt to explain why this news was being reported five years after the event, nor why it was suddenly so important to bring the matter to the attention of the American public.
          
Once again, affected veterans and the public settled down into a confused silence, their suspicions blunted by media-induced patriotic guilt. How dare they even imagine that caring American pharmaceutical multinationals would hurt them or their families, when all along the real culprit was obviously Saddam Hussein and his evil "weapons of mass destruction"? The
Kamisiyah "link" to Gulf War Syndrome was ruthlessly exploited, with official Pentagon confirmation that the dump itself was finally destroyed on 4 March 1991 by the 37th Engineering Battalion, who "did not know" that nerve gas was stored there when they triggered the demolition charges. So,  victims and public alike were coaxed into believing that American and other troops located downwind of the demolition, had been affected solely by
"Iraqi" toxins.
          
It was truly brilliant media propaganda, but failed to take into account those incredibly annoying Frenchmen, who seemed to be everywhere in southern Iraq at the same time as the Americans and British. Proportionately speaking, the same number of "French Control Group" troops were present when Kamisiyah was bombed and finally demolished, but not one of them suffered or even reported any of the effects of "Gulf War Syndrome". And before you ask, yes, the French did indeed trudge wearily through the same areas of southern Iraq littered with depleted uranium 238 as the Americans and British. But  still there is absolutely no trace of Gulf War Syndrome in any French soldier.
          
It does not take a rocket scientist to work out where this report is heading. Just look at the hard facts and ignore the pathetic lobby, media, and academic hype. As already discussed, all coalition troops regardless of nationality shared the same air and water, they all walked or drove over the same terrain, and they all used similar weapons against similar targets. But
what about external body protection? Did the French have vastly superior biowarfare suits that somehow magically gave them "the edge" over American and British personnel? No, they did not. The biowarfare suits worn by the French, came from exactly the same stock as those worn by the Americans and British. The only variables left at this point in the report, are the untrialled "cocktail" inoculations and the nerve gas tablets.
          
Under heavy media pressure in late October 2000, the retired commander of French forces in the Gulf, General Michel Roquejoffre, admitted that his men were in fact ordered to take nerve gas tablets [pyridostigmine bromide] during the Gulf War, but only for four days when mistakenly believed  to be under direct chemical attack. The General pointed out that this four days of intermittent French exposure to nerve gas tablets, contrasts sharply with their continuous use for months on end by American and British servicemen. However, General Roquejoffre emphasized that at no time did he allow any French serviceman to receive the highly controversial untrialled American "cocktail" inoculation.
          
Rather than help the media in its never-ending quest to lay misleading smoke screens around the true origins of Gulf War Syndrome,  General Roquejoffre appears to have used his statement to finally isolate and expose the real villain behind the debilitating and sometimes lethal disease.  Having "admitted" that some of his troops took the nerve gas tablets during
the Gulf War, General Roquejoffre has wittingly or unwittingly removed the nerve gas tablet variable, leaving only the lethal American "cocktail"  inoculation, which included the untested Anthrax vaccine being irresponsibly peddled today by assorted western politicians, as the sole and scientifically proven cause of Gulf War Syndrome. 

Update
25 January 2003 

British Servicemen Throw Deadly Anthrax Vaccine Overboard! 

On 4 January 2003 a confidential copy of my updated report on the single cause of Gulf War Syndrome was sent directly to a number of military computer servers in America, Britain and Australia. With servicemen already being ordered to submit to a debilitating or lethal dose of untrialled and unproven Anthrax "vaccine" directly linked to GWS, it seemed wise to ensure
that they saw the work before it was officially posted on the Internet. Web sites can be attacked all too easily, and a number of mine have been totally destroyed in the last six months.
          
Not long after Prime Minister Tony Blair arrogantly waved goodbye to 30,000 British servicemen departing England for the Persian Gulf aboard a fleet of Navy vessels, locals in Dorset and Devon started reporting a very strange phenomenon.
          
Thousands of [unused] vials of Anthrax Vaccine started washing up on their beaches. Some locals started panickng, thinking that perhaps they were being attacked by a country or countries known to have vast stockpiles of this ruthless killer - most notably America and Israel. But their heart rates came down again when Health Departmernt officials visited the areas and explained the thousands of vials on the beaches were in fact "cures in
bottles".
            
Jim Moore, a spokesman for the National Gulf Veterans and Families Association (NGVFA), said  his organization has no conclusive proof  that the vaccine vials that washed up in Dorset, southern England, were thrown overboard. But Moore noted that the circumstances surrounding the vaccine find are suspicious.
          
"For anything to be accidentally washed overboard on an aircraft carrier is highly unusual," he said. "This gives us cause for concern and there are a lot of questions that need to be asked."
          
The organization said it has heard anecdotal evidence of mistiming of vaccines from current service personnel. The NGVFA believes that improperly administered vaccines might be one of the causes behind "Gulf War Syndrome," a mysterious collection of symptoms that is thought to afflict  tens of thousands of veterans in Britain and the United States.
           
"People say you accept the risks when you sign up to join the forces," Moore said. "That's true, but the risk you accept is one of an enemy bullet or a landmine. You don't accept the risk of being a guinea pig for a vaccine, All the mistakes made in the Gulf War are being made again."
          
A Ministry of Defense spokeswoman, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that an internal investigation into the vaccine find was underway."We wouldn't like to speculate on where the vaccine might have come from at this stage," she said. "There has been a large amount of speculation in the press and this isn't helpful. The investigation will uncover the
source of the vaccine."
           
Peering judiciously behind the official veil, of course reveals that the only sources for the thousands of "shipwrecked" Anthrax vaccine vials were the various naval vessels that had earlier sailed reluctantly for the Persian Gulf on direct political orders.
          
So the British servicemen have found a way to neutralize the second most deadly danger to their lives. Now all they have to do, is to figure out a way to neutralize the most clear and present danger ever to threaten their families and themselves: Prime MinisterTony Blair