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Possible clue to Gulf War illnesses
From Brian Cabell and Ted Rubenstein
DALLAS, Texas (CNN) – As U.N. inspectors search Iraq for weapons of mass destruction – including chemical weapons – a U.S. researcher may be on the way to unraveling the mystery of Gulf War illnesses, and he says the ailment may be linked to low levels of chemical agents. Gulf War illnesses include a collection of symptoms such as chronic fatigue, skin rashes, muscle and joint pain, memory loss and confusion. The Department of Defense says about 20,000 veterans suffer from those illnesses. Veterans' advocates say the number is tens of thousands higher. The Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses declared in 1996 that "Stress is likely to be an important contributing factor to the broad range of illnesses currently being reported by gulf war veterans." Other possible, physiological causes were discounted. Dr. Robert Haley of the Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas, says the stress theory is wrong, dead wrong. Haley suspects the veterans are suffering from a brain disorder, a theory that the Pentagon has resisted for several years. Some critics, in fact, called his work voodoo science. Haley was able to come to this conclusion because of one man: Ross Perot, a longtime veterans' advocate. "He said he had been seeing something that he had never seen before," Haley recounts, "special forces troops who were tough as nails before the war and now looked pitiful in their inability to function." Perot funded Haley's studies to the tune of $2.5 million to see whether the causes of Gulf War syndrome were physical instead of mental. Now, 12 years after the war, Haley's findings are turning the stress theory upside down. Conventional MRI scans showed nothing unusual, but through a technique known as magnetic resonance spectroscopy, he found damage deep in the brains of the sick veterans. "The symptoms that we see are characteristic of well known diseases of the brain, for example in the basal ganglia, Huntington's disease and Parkinson's disease," Haley says. Defense officials concede Haley may have discovered something important, but still insist stress may have played a role in Gulf War Illness. Haley believes the deep brain damage probably was caused by low-level exposure to the nerve agent sarin. The level of the nerve agent was so low, he says, that the veteran's problems may not have shown up for months. He admits he hasn't scientifically proved the sarin connection, but the Department of Defense and the Veteran's Administration agree Haley's work deserves further study. In fact, the government now funds his research. Dr. Michael Kilpatrick of the Department of Defense insists that stress is still a possible factor in some of the veterans' illnesses, but concedes Haley may be on to something important. However, he says, there is no test that says: "Yes, this exposure causes this brain damage." The Pentagon acknowledges that more than 100,000 troops were exposed to low levels of sarin when the Iraqi chemical depot at Khamisiyah was destroyed shortly after the war. It took the government six years to make that concession because officials apparently asked the wrong troops about the contents of Khamisiyah. "The unit that came in first and captured the site was there for 30 minutes and left for a second site. The second unit that came in was the unit that did the demolition of the weapons that were stored there," Kilpatrick said. "When the Department of Defense asked, 'Did you see any chemical weapons?' unfortunately they asked the first unit in. They didn't ask the second unit. And so when they were told 'no,' the belief at DOD was there were no chemical weapons there." Gulf War veteran Steve Robinson worked with Kilpatrick at the Defense Department. He now heads a veterans' advocacy group. "There were 100 facilities like Khamisiyah that were ammunition storage facilities that were blown up during the Gulf War. A couple of them were the largest conventional demolition operations ever in the history of modern warfare, the amount of explosive that they used," Robinson said. "Whatever was in those facilities certainly went into the atmosphere." The Pentagon says troops in three areas were exposed to sarin, but the Defense Department is still grappling with the question of how much of the chemical was released. And what about the U.S. troops training now for another possible showdown with Iraq? Will they face Gulf War illnesses? "The Army says we're not prepared. Congress says we're not prepared. The reports that are out there say we're not prepared," Robinson said.
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