IN FOCUS

The tale of the Gulf War syndrome, affecting thousands of war veterans, is getting curiouser and curiouser. New studies indicate that the disease and hospitalisation rates of those who served in the war and those who did not, were not dissimilar. Published in the recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, the two large US government studies cover nearly every veteran who served in the Gulf War, more than half a million people, and an equal number of those who did not serve there.

The medical fraternity has perceived the findings as 'reassuring' but scores of the Gulf War soldiers remain unconvinced. They have been complaining of illnesses and
reasoned that exposure to chemical weapons during the war was the main reason for their persisting health problems. It took some time for Pentagon officials to publicly admit that close to 15,000 and
more could have been exposed to chemical agents (Down To Earth, Vol 5, No 12).

Taking up the investigations, two epidemiologists Han Kang and Tim Bullman from the department of veteran affairs in Washington, studied all 695,516 soldiers who served in the Gulf as well as 746,291 other veterans of the same era. Another study was conducted by Gregory Gray and his team at the Naval Health Research Centre in San Diego. Hospital records of 547,076 Gulf War veterans were compared with records of 618,335 other veterans. Both studies bring only 'good news' for the Gulf War soldiers.

Said James Tuite, a consultant and a leading critic of the Pentagon's position on the illnesses, "No one
is going to accept these studies. Veterans have been lied to about chemical agents exposure; at every step of the way, they've been lied to. And so they will not believe anything." A White House panel is likely to prepare a report based on the studies stating that it is unlikely that Gulf veterans became ill through exposure to chemicals weapons.