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Gulf War Syndrome

By Ray Parrish

Ray Parrish,
Chicago Chapter
Steering Committee

In a recent Readers Digest "Humor in Uniform" story, a commander told his troops in the Persian Gulf War that they shouldn't worry about the smoke from the oil-well fires because the U.S. Health Services said that they merely had to "avoid prolonged breathing."

This story reveals the government's attitude towards the health hazards the GIs encountered and sets the stage for this most recent victimization of American troops. I think that the thousands of veterans and their families who are suffering from the medical problems and resultant financial hardships of the "Gulf War Syndrome" find little humor in that story.

Congressional subcommittees held hearings and issued reports on the "mysterious" medical problems that are afflicting at least 5000 veterans of the Persian Gulf War. The information which came out during these hearings shows that US and allied troops twice reported exposure to chemical weapons during the war, and that the Department of Veterans Affairs ( DVA) and the Department of Defense (DOD) have purposefully ignored medical evidence and misdirected their research, evaluation and treatment efforts, possibly in order to cover up the size of nature of the problem.

Persian Gulf vets have reported a variety of symptoms since their return: fatigue, headaches, weight loss, hair loss and discoloration, memory loss, skin rashes and growths, sensations of "pins and needles" in various area, loss of sensation in various areas, confusion, nervousness, dizziness, muscular weakness and spasms, respiratory problems, deterioration of various organs, impotence, infertility, miscarriages and birth defects.

So far, the military and the Department of Veterans Affairs have asserted that the cause of these illnesses was "stress". The military's response was to simply discharge those military personnel whose medical problems affected their performance but few got medical retirement or disability compensation. Some were punished for not being able to fulfill their duties.

The DVA began investigating these problems and set up a "Gulf War Veterans Registry." But only after the veterans' complaints got the media's attention, and Congressional and public opinion became a factor. So now another generation will join the millions of Atomic Bomb test, Agent Orange, PTSD and other disabled vets in their never-ending struggle to get medical care and compensation when challenged by "lost"records, DOD and DVA and "national security" policies.

MULTIPLE CHEMICAL SENSITIVITY

One of the people testifying on June 9 before the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Veterans Affairs Committee was Dr. Richard Haines, a Major in the Indiana National Guard. After spending thousands of dollars of his own money and evaluating the problems of hundreds of vets, he's come to the conclusion that the military simply doesn't want to see the truth; Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, MCS, also known as ecological or environmental illness or hypersensitivity.

According to Dr. Haines, possible causes of the veterans' problems include: pollution from the Kuwaiti oilfield fires, vaccines and medications designed as antidotes to biological and nerve gas weapons, aerial spraying of pesticides, spraying of diesel oil to control dust, radiation exposure from depleted uranium used in armor and armor-piercing shells, portable heaters using gas and diesel fuel in unventilated tents, contamination of drinking, cooking and washing water with diesel fuels, exposure to chemical/biological weapons when Iraqi arsenals were destroyed and Leishnamiasis, a parasitic infection.

It is this great variety of problems and possible causes, combined with the government's reluctance to take responsibility, which has resulted in so much confusion. Part of this has to do with the controversy surrounding Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. It is relatively recent phenomenon that is misunderstood by many in the medical community and rejected by some. It is and acquired disease caused by or exacerbated by exposure to toxic chemicals or agents.

In a pamphlet for mental health professionals, Kay McCarty , a Chicago social worker, explains: " There is a growing concern that the thousands of toxic chemicals that have become part of daily living are adversely affecting certain segments of the population, causing the development of MCS in some. While most synthetic chemicals do not bother most people, the number of the "chemically sensitive" is growing at an alarming rate."

This is exactly what has happened to these veterans and a growing number of civilians, especially those living near waste dumps and incinerators. While their bodies may have been able to tolerate and recover from a slight exposure to several chemical agents or a higher exposure to a single agent, getting a heavy dose of several toxic agents may be enough to cause MCS, if it doesn't kill you immediately.

In my capacity as Executive Director of the Midwest committee for Military Counseling, Dr. Haines and I had long conversations about the problems faced by Atomic Bomb and Agent Orange veterans and how the Persian Gulf vets could try to avoid these same pitfalls. Part of Major Haines testimony is titled " How to design a medical coverup." Since it "says it all," it's reprinted here.

"If a powerful, self-appointed group were to implement a medical cover-up, how would they proceed? What tactics would they employ? What public relations "spin" would they use? What conclusions would the draw?"

"In any matter of major public policy, "lead" agencies come to the fore and are expected to address issues of major importance. The lead agencies involved in the Gulf War illnesses controversy have so far been the VA, DOD, and CDC in that order. And when a major controversy emerges, lead agencies routinely project themselves as omniscient, paternalistic, "everything's under control" type organization.

" But the fact is, what we have is a leadership group that is quite out of control, that is without public accountability, that has abdicated its medical ethics and succumbed to private corporate interests.

" The cove-up problem of the managers, however is that their game plan would leave this wide ranging collection of symptoms without a diagnosis, a tenuous proposition for a prestigious public institution that supposedly has "everything under control," And true to the tactics that powerful private interests of the past 30-40 years have exercised generally, they conjecture that stress is an underlying etiology, even though their own data supports no such hypothesis. Despite the fact that the psychiatric portion of the 123rd ARCOM study of these 79 Indiana reservists is clear that the symptomatology is not of psychiatric origin nor structure, you skim over this part and send headlines throughout the country that stress is the primary etiology.

" But in any event, you maintain to the Congress that there is no "unifying pattern" of specific illness, at least of all the illnesses that you believe in and have been compelled to consider. You would work hard to obscure from the masses that your basic blood test would not show toxics, or metabolic imbalances, even if your patient group was demonstrating them. Despite the fact that widespread liver deficiency, anemia, and immunodeficiency are hinted in your own government test results, you retain theses pathologies from public view.

"To tighten the lid on this coverup, you ignore major documentation flooding your office that the symptomatology all points to environmental illness and you decline dozens of offers of free environmental testing, as well as cash offers from other sources to even pay for all of this.

"Next, for those soldiers whose conditions are medically dire, you concentrate only on the MANIFESTATIONS of their illness. You surgically remove the soldiers' strange, warlike growths, their colon polyps, and for the episodal rashes, you prescribe ointments, which don't work, so you simply accuse them of poor hygiene.

"In any comprehensive coverup, mind control is a "multiplier," so before you even review their health history, or ask them if they've been around environmental hazards, you remind the veteran patient that his condition could not possible be from the Gulf War. And you brush off most of their ailments as incidental and attributable to other causes.

"The soldier/patient may have 15-20 symptoms, but instead of looking at the medical problem comprehensively, you churn them from specialist to specialist, each examining the tail of the medical elephant. It's called "end organ" orientation, and it's the way the US trains its MD's because, after all, it's easy to teach. So scrap the holistic approach and ignore the total neurotoxic effect on the human system, stay secure in your tidy area of specialization, and hand the guy a few more pills. After all, it's the pharmaceutical industry, and not the DAV, that will fund next year's research for your university hospital.

"When the public and the veterans start to press for environmental testing, you tell them their blood tests are for toxicities, even when they aren't. When they ask for tests appropriate to the environmental toxicity, you answer that "we don't' do those here" or they cost too much" or "we don't think they are necessary," even though these clinics use locally drawn samples/specimens in conjunction with outside labs and do so quite efficiently. And when your own medical staff becomes perplexed, or starts to question the diagnosis (or we might say) the lack of it, we transfer those recalcitrant to the research department.

"Still, the natives are restless. So with public fanfare, you appoint task forces, and blue ribbon committees and environmental coordinators. But, in so doing, you make sure they represent old-fashioned toxicology, traditional allergy and other figures who can be trusted with only those illnesses that we BELIEVE in. We appoint part-liners who have been very effective since the Agent Orange days at shaking arguments for a medical link.

"And you make sure no outside group is asked to provide peer review of your work. When the Navy does its Dayton, Ohio symposium, you make sure environmental illness goes unmentioned despite the fact that corporate oil interests in attendance know more about environmental illness then any university or research group, having fought it tooth and nail with tens of thousands of previous victims and victim groups through our system of legal "justice." Exxon, Mobil, BP and Texaco and the American Petroleum Institute and all the good ole boys are there. After all, we have to keep control and make sure this situation doesn't get out of hand.

"The legal system is kept intact, because chemical victims have to prove causality and the fees, who won't fund any such research, are persuaded to say "no." The feds also make sure the health effect of neurotoxicity are full of technical voids, and that the related "endpoints" of central nervous system problems and immunodeficiency are not examined. Stick with the "kill 'em and count 'em" research strategy, like we do..with cockroaches.

"But, the media is unrelenting, and because those in power must project societal fairness, Congress demands a Gulf War Registry. The grateful nation bows its thanks. However, in designing this registry, you survey only oil well fire smoke as a source of hazardous exposures. While your counterpart over at DoD manipulates statistics that show the smoke could not possibly make anybody sick. And you engender headlines that these petroleum products are blameless and could not have caused the widespread cardiopulmonary damage discovered by your own VA medical staff.

"Most importantly, you make sure the blood test you do will never disclose heavy metals from ballistics nor DU, deplete uranium oxidized particulates, never do controlled test for the antibodies for benzene. When a lot of DU-exposed soldiers emerge, you maintain that they look OK on the outside and your make sure none are tested for chromosomal damage. My God, what would we do if their chromosomes showed abnormal. Biotechnology companies may be the darling of Wall Street, but if they show up here, they're shown to the door.

"You organize regional VA meetings and coach coordinators how to respond when pressed for environment testing, and you pacify your own medical staff that the reasons testing should be limited are primarily budgetary. You organize policy meetings at individual VA hospital units to keep the environmental lid clamped tightly. We must be careful, and medical mutiny is kept outside the hospital fencerow.

"But, the national media are after you like wolves after meat, and so you create three "center of excellence," that is, centers to concentrate environmental and specialty reviews for all those with symptoms without a diagnosis. But, privately, instead of referring any of the thousands starting to show up you tell the individual veteran that there "is not basis for referring, because we don't know it would be of any benefit."

"And those who somehow squeak through, are ordered to do work exposing them to powerful cleaners and distillate-based waxes, because, as the chiefs announce, "we don't believe in environmental illness, but if we did, we'd agree that environmental illness is what you appear to have. And if you need physical therapy, we have a strongly chlorinated whirlpool of bubbly chemical-ness to finish off your day. How can we blame the medical chiefs for such transgressions, they are only familiar on how to block a diagnosis of environmental illness, they never use it.

CHEMICAL WARFARE IN THE GULF WAR

Although the US military is going to great pains to deny it, it appears that many US and allied troops were exposed to chemical warfare agents during the Persian Gulf War. A Czech anti-chemical warfare unit, attached to Saudi forces, reports that their instruments detected Sarin, a nerve agent and veterans of a US Navy Reserve Seabee unit say that they were exposed to some kind of blistering agent. Such exposure could explain many of the medical problems reported by an estimated 5,000 gulf War vets.

On June 27, 1993 the Birmingham News detailed accusations by members of the 24th Naval Reserve construction Battalion out of Huntsville, Alabama that a "fine mist" descended on their base south of the Saudi port of al Jubayl on Jan 20, 1991. They say that they were awakened by a couple of loud explosions, which sent them into their gas masks and bunkers. When they emerged after the all clear was sounded, they ran into the mist.

PO First Class Roy Butler said, "All of my exposed skin was like it was on fire. I couldn't breathe," PO Second Class Mike Haynes said, " I got hit in the face with it. My lips were numb, like I had been to the dentist with Novocain, for about seven days. In fact, I still have a touch of it in the center of both lips."

Chief Petty Officer Larry Perry, of Gold Hill N.C. was the first vet to contact the newspaper about this. He said he had to do something since so many of his comrades were getting discharged for medical reasons but no disability pay or medical care. He gave them the names of ten fellow vets, who confirmed his report. The paper then went on to interview DOD officials before publishing the story.

The sailors are unsure about the origins of the mist but they say that earlier that night they were on alert for an attack by Iraqi Scud missiles and also that same night a British Tornado and Iraqi Mig engaged in aerial combat over the base. Two different radiomen listened while the command confirmed a gas attack and later "unconfirmed" it.

The detachment commanding officer says that he was told that the chemical warfare alert was the result of a false alarm caused by diesel fumes. He says he was also told that the explosions were caused by jets breaking the sound barrier, not bombs. A Navy spokesman said "I've never seen anything that indicates that anything was ever used." That may mean that although chemical weapons weren't "used," their contents might have been "released." It may also mean that the spokesperson wasn't told anything so he could plead ignorance.

The CO went on to say, with typical military logic, that he was skeptical about the Seabees' story because they all agreed on the main points. He also thinks that this could be the product of "medical desperation," saying "People with AIDS have the same kind of desperation. That doesn't mean that there's a cure an answer or even a reason."

The information from the Czech soldiers first appeared in a July 2 interview in the largest Czech daily, Mlada Fronta Dnes. On July 29 the Reuter wire service carried the story. They quoted Czech government official who confirmed the reports, without specifying the date or location of the exposure. They also confirmed that at least ten Czech veterans were suffering from "Gulf War Syndrome."The commander of the affected unit said that the Sarin was probably released when the allies bombed a nearby Iraqi chemical weapons arsenal.

These reports prompted a July 29, 1993 letter from Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama to Sec. of Defense Les Aspin which opens with "Recent testimony before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Force Requirements and Personnel by veterans of the war in the Persian Gulf has left me deeply concerned that US troops may have been exposed to chemical warfare agents."

From all of this, it appears that the US government has known about these exposures since the Gulf War. Their failure to admit this at that time may be because the nerve gas was released by their own bombing. Or perhaps they thought that public outrage at the mere idea of chemical warfare would force them to escalate the war. Admitting it now would damage a reputation already tarnished by Tailhook and myriad procurement scandals.

The neurological and respiratory symptoms reported by the Gulf War vets for the past two years are obviously related to these various exposures. That means that US officials have been knowingly withholding information which could have saved the lives and health of thousands of vets. The future of these vets will depend upon how good a job the past veteran-victims do of educating the public and gaining their vocal support.