[Peace-discuss] Ailing Gulf vets fear troops still face health risk

Fri Mar 14 14:18:04 CST 2003

National Gulf War Resource Center, Inc.

Ailing Gulf vets fear troops still face health risk

Ray Rivera  THE SEATTLE TIMES

http://www.ngwrc.org/article.asp?id=184 

BOTHELL; Her hand trembles as she leafs through old war photos, a sporadic quiver as inexplicable as her other symptoms: night sweats, rashes, fatigue, fleshy lumps called rheumatoid nodules that swell up around her joints.

"Old people get these," said 36-year-old Julie Mock. Then there are her boys, ages 5 and 7, both of whom suffer from neurological disorders that make it hard for them to process sounds, making words like "juice" come out "boosh." Doctors don't know what caused her sons' disorders, but Mock believes they are linked to her own. And those she traces to a dreary expanse of desert along the Iraqi border, where she and her husband were among tens of thousands of U.S. service members exposed to low levels of sarin and cyclosarin nerve agents during the Persian Gulf War. 

Americans like to think of the 1991 war against Saddam Hussein as a blitzkrieg victory, obliterating Iraqi forces while costing a minimal loss of U.S. lives. But ask many veterans of that war, and they say casualties can't be measured by the 148 who died or the 500 wounded in battle. 

In the 12 years since, nearly 164,000 Gulf veterans, about 28 percent of those who served, have been certified by government doctors for service-related medical claims — more than twice the rate of World War II, Korea and Vietnam. The Veterans Administration doesn't track how many of those are suffering from Gulf War Syndrome. But the government's own studies consistently show that up to 30 percent of Gulf vets are sufferers. 

Now, as some 300,000 troops await orders to strike Iraq again, a cadre of Gulf veterans worry that the same epidemic of unexplained illnesses threatens a new generation of soldiers. And, perhaps, their children. 

The Pentagon says today's troops are better protected, their equipment improved. Vaccinations and toxic exposures will be tracked, and soldiers will undergo health screening before they deploy and after they come home. And after years of assigning the health problems to stress, military doctors now acknowledge evidence that exposure to sarin nerve gas and other toxins may have damaged precisely those areas of the brain that control the functions going haywire in sick veterans. 

But, still stinging from what they view as years of the government dismissing their complaints, many veterans are leery. "There's just not tremendous confidence out there ... that the Defense Department is doing everything necessary to ensure that soldiers will be adequately protected," said Erik Gustafson, a former Fort Lewis soldier and a veterans health advocate. 

Far from the front 

Like so many veterans of the 1991 war, Mock left the Gulf seemingly healthy. The rashes that soon appeared she attributed to the sand and harsh environment. Then her hair fell out in clumps. She was energetic one second, exhausted the next. Her hip joints would become so inflamed she couldn't walk without medication. Doctors, unable to pinpoint a cause, said they resembled a mix of the autoimmune diseases lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. 

The former Army dental hygienist heard reports of other veterans falling sick with similar symptoms. Many were told they suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Mock felt stressed, but by her symptoms, not by memories of the war. Stationed at a hospital 30 miles from Iraq's southern border, she had been far from the action. The duty was often boring. Most of the injuries they treated were heat related or from accidents. 

She never saw the burning oil wells, was far from depleted uranium shells, and only heard chemical detection alarms go off when she first arrived, and those were false alarms. The soldiers never even donned their masks. "We just stood there in short sleeves," she recalled. 

Then in 1997 and again in 2000, she received letters from the Department of Defense that she believes gave clues to her and her kids' problems. Her husband, an Army dentist who was just an acquaintance at the time, received the same letters. He had been stationed at another hospital nearby and had assisted at a MASH unit inside southern Iraq. 

The letters revealed that in early March 1991 they had been exposed to low levels of sarin and cyclosarin nerve agents — gases so deadly a drop can kill — when Army engineers blew up an Iraqi ammunition depot called Khamisiyah. Carried by wind, an invisible plume exposed 145,000 U.S. service members, by the latest Pentagon figures. But her husband wasn't suffering. And the letters stated, as does the Pentagon's Web site today, that long-term health problems from the exposure were unlikely. 

Unraveling a medical mystery 

The government has spent $212 million studying Gulf War Syndrome, trying to unlock the riddle of what caused all those symptoms: crippling fatigue, rashes, memory loss, dizzy spells, cancers and Lou Gehrig's disease, which strikes Gulf veterans at twice the rate of the general population. Everything was suspect: vaccinations they were given, experimental anti-nerve-agent pills they gobbled up, flea collars and pesticides they used to fend off sand fleas, nerve gases from chemical-weapons bunkers damaged in the air campaign, even stress. 

Dr. Stephen Hunt, director of the VA's Deployment Health Clinics in Seattle and at American Lake in Pierce County, discounts nothing. In nine years, he's treated more than 2,000 Gulf-syndrome patients and seen every manner of unexplained illness. "One of the things that's happened both in the media and the scientific community has been this somewhat polarized debate about whether there are real physical problems that people are experiencing as a result of toxic exposures, or whether it's just related to stress," said Hunt. "The truth is people who went to the Gulf had a variety of experiences and exposures that could have affected their health, and that includes toxic exposures, sleep deprivation, changes in water and diet, psychological trauma related to combat." 

Two recent Army studies, however, found that exposure to low levels of sarin gas caused neurological damage in lab animals that showed up weeks after exposure — a finding that led some researchers to suggest that exposure to low levels of the gas could have caused delayed symptoms in U.S. soldiers. The studies bolstered research led in the mid-1990s by Dr. Robert W. Haley, a leading researcher on Gulf illnesses at the University of Texas' Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. 

For years, the Pentagon largely dismissed his work, which included almost two dozen published studies suggesting that some Gulf War illnesses were linked to brain damage from exposure to toxins such as sarin. His research included findings that people with a gene that causes them to produce high amounts of a protective enzyme, paraoxonase, were better able to fend off low levels of nerve gas, suggesting why some veterans became ill and others in the same location did not. Magnetic brain imaging suggested a loss of neurons in selected brain areas in sick veterans. Those with cognitive problems showed damage in the basal ganglia; those with muscle and joint problems showed brainstem damage. 

In October, prompted by government-funded research supporting Haley's findings, top VA officials acknowledged for the first time that there was "increasing objective evidence that a major category of Gulf War illnesses is neurological in character." "The good news is that, at a minimum, we've got the best theory going now about what Gulf War Syndrome is and what caused it," said Haley. 

Though studies have yet to find a link between the Khamisiyah exposures and a rise in birth defects, Haley and government doctors haven't ruled it out, and research continues. It took more than two decades before Agent Orange was conclusively linked to increased spina bifida among children born to Vietnam vets. 

"It never occurred to us that, both of us being exposed, it would double the chances of our children having problems," said Julie Mock. 

Better preparation, monitoring 

The Pentagon says it has learned from history. Despite recent criticisms from Congress and Army auditors, military officials say troops would be better protected if there is a second war with Iraq. Chemical suits and masks are improved. Chemical detection systems are less prone to false alarms. Commanders will send teams, perhaps consisting of Special Operations forces, in advance to test the air, soil and water for toxins. Military planners also are exploring various scenarios for eliminating stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons without releasing them into the atmosphere. 

Perhaps the biggest improvement, say officials, is in health monitoring. Vaccinations and medication records that were a mess 12 years ago are now computerized. And government doctors are screening soldiers' health before and after deployment, and tracking toxic exposures while they're there. 

But veterans advocates and some in Congress — including presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. — say the Pentagon's pre-deployment health screening is still flimsy and doesn't meet the requirements of a 1997 law requiring the military to collect base-line health data, including blood samples, on deploying soldiers. 

Instead, the Pentagon is relying on questionnaires asking soldiers to rate their health, and on biennial blood draws taken for HIV tests. Steve Robinson, a former Army Ranger and executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center, worries that using blood samples that could be 1 to 3 years old won't provide the snapshot of soldiers' pre-deployment health condition. Austin Camacho of the Deployment Support Health Directorate, formed by the military last year, insists its screening complies with the law. 

"One important lesson we learned from investigating the Gulf War is that we didn't have the information we needed to determine what harmful exposures individual service members may have encountered, and in what dose." 

Pentagon officials have learned something else, says Camacho. In future wars, soldiers coming home with unexplained health problems will be treated with concern — "not skepticism." 

Ray Rivera: 206-464-2926 or rayrivera at seattletimes.com

Posted to the NGWRC Web 3/11/2003 2:22:45 PM

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