[Vision2020] 17 Years Of Denial: Gulf War Illness Is Legitimate Medical Condition

[Ted Moffett]

http://www.ajc.com/homepage/content/health/stories/2008/11/19/Gulf_War_syndrome_real.html

 Gulf War illness a real medical condition, panel finds

By David Goldstein

McClatchy Newspapers

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Gulf War illness is a real medical condition that has affected at least
175,000 combat veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, according to a report
released Monday.

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"Government has been very slow to accept what the research shows," said
James Binns, the committee's chairman and a former top Defense Department
official.

"These problems have for too long been denied or trivialized," said Binns,
speaking at the committee meeting where the report was made public.

Committee members said troops were exposed to a "toxic soup" of chemicals.
However, they laid the blame for Gulf War illness primarily on two causes:
pesticides sprayed on the troops during deployment and pyridostigmine
bromide, an anti-nerve agent.

The small white pills hadn't been approved for nerve agent protection at the
time, but the Food and Drug Administration had given the military a
temporary waiver for their use to protect troops in case they were exposed
to nerve gas.

The committee met Monday at Department of Veterans Affairs headquarters, two
blocks from the White House.

Thanking the members for their work, VA Secretary James Peake, a former Army
surgeon general, said, "I personally neither denied nor trivialized the
issues of our veterans, having been among them myself. It's not something we
are going to wash away."

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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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