http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4617
By Shaun Waterman
ISN Security Watch
The last time the US embarked on a major war in the Middle East, in 1990, the legacy included a http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4540 acknowledged.
Now some fear the latest US war there is also leaving a generation of veterans http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=5357 in ways they will have to fight to get recognized and treated for.
Gulf War Syndrome – a complex collection of symptoms typically including some combination of chronic headaches, difficulties understanding and communicating, widespread pain, unexplained fatigue, chronic diarrhea, skin rashes and respiratory problems – began to strike US servicemen and women before Gulf War One was even over.
And yet it took years before the US government would even acknowledge the existence of the disease – and it still is not doing enough to study the condition, according to a recent report by the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses, a congressionally mandated blue-ribbon panel appointed by the Bush administration in 2002.
The committee concluded that between one-quarter and one-third of the 700,000 US troops deployed – as many as 210,000 veterans – are affected by the disease to some extent.“No effective treatments have been identified for Gulf War illness and studies indicate that few veterans have recovered over time,” adds the report.
The scientific experts on the advisory committee surveyed the research literature, about 1,800 studies, and concluded “evidence strongly and consistently indicates” Gulf war Syndrome was caused by exposure to neurotoxins – poisons that attack the brain and nervous system – in pesticides troops used and special experimental pills they were made to take, designed to protect against the effects of nerve gas.