Gulf War Illness Remains a Mystery Source: The Associated Press © 2001
January 14, 2001
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon says it still can't figure out
why many Persian Gulf War veterans are sick. Some who went to war as
strapping young soldiers are inexplicably confined to wheelchairs.
Others have had chronic vomiting and diarrhea. Still others can recall
what happened yesterday, but nothing from their childhood.
"Something really serious happened there ... to make
vets sick like this," said Patrick G. Eddington of the National Gulf
War Resource Center advocacy group. -
Scientists have not been able to agree there is any such
thing as "Gulf War Syndrome," the name given a collection of brain
disorders, nervous system breakdowns, joint pain, fatigue and other
maladies reported by thousands of veterans.
After spending $300 million on scores of studies, the
U.S. Department of Defense says it has found no scientific evidence
that conclusively points to any cause.
Some veterans have suggested@ they are sick from
breathing in smoke and contaminants when Iraqis set oil well fires.
Some say it might have been tablets they took to protect themselves
from nerve gas, or depleted uranium used in new armor-piercing U.S.
weaponry, or nerve gas released when they exploded and destroyed Iraqi
chemical weapons stockpiles.
Of more than 540,000 Americans deployed at the peak of
the fighting, some 21,000 have symptoms that have not been explained.
Amid charges of a cover up, President Clinton appointed
an advisory panel to oversee Pentagon research into the illnesses. The
group, in its final report last month, said it found the Defense
Department had "worked diligently to fulfill the presidents directive
to 'leave no stone unturned' in investigating possible causes."
But early on, the Defense Department denied troops were
exposed to chemical weapons. Then in 1996, it acknowledged some
100,000 troops may have been exposed to low levels of the nerve agent
sarin when U.S. forces destroyed a weapons depot at Khatnisiyah, Iraq.
It still insists the levels were too low to cause illness. 'There wag
a certain amount of denial" at the Defense Department, Austin Camacho,
a spokesman in the Pentagon's Gulf War illness office, said late last
year.
He assumed that the Iraqis were aiming their missiles at
his then-30-year-old son, Tom Jr., a Marine captain who piloted a
Super Cobra attack helicopter equipped with rockets and machine guns.
Tom Jr. was a part of the allied contingent conducting the first-day
air strikes over Iraq. "It was too realistic," said Mr. Stone, a
66-year-old General Electric retiree. "(Me broadcasters) tried to make
it into a big game - like watching the Super Bowl. I got to the point
where I couldn't watch anymore. People would tape the broadcasts for
me, and I still have those tapes. But I've never watched them."
Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm involved more than 700,000
U.S. troops, including 2,694 soldiers from the Ohio National Guard and
reserves. Meanwhile, nine units and about 1,400 soldiers from the
Kentucky National Guard were deployed to the Gulf for Desert Storm,
though no units were from Northern Kentucky or sou eastern Indiana.
Master SgL Tim Taylor, 40, of New Carlisle, volunteered. "It wasn't a
hard decision."
by Pauline Jelinek