THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 10, 1996 TAG: 9610100363
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: 77 lines
The ailments of Persian Gulf War veterans are similar to those arising from other wars, and there is scant scientific evidence as yet of a unique Gulf War Syndrome, a top medical panel reported Wednesday.
So varied are the reports of illnesses growing out of the gulf conflict that the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine said it preferred the term ``unexplained illness'' to Gulf War Syndrome.
``Since the Civil War every major conflict . . . (has seen) a substantial number of veterans complaining of things that sound a lot like Gulf War Syndrome,'' John C. Bailar III, chairman of the committee that produced the report, said Wednesday.
``I have come to think of this not necessarily as a Gulf War Syndrome, but as a war syndrome or stress syndrome,'' Bailar said from the University of Chicago, where he is chairman of the Department of Health Studies.
It was the latest in a string of high-level medical pronouncements that, while noting research is still under way, cast doubt on the existence of a Gulf War Syndrome.
And it came amid a growing furor over reports that soldiers may have been exposed to chemical weapons after the war, and that those incidents are linked to illness.
Bailar acknowledged that recent accounts of possible exposure to such weapons from the demolition of Iraq's Khamisiyah ammunition depot surfaced only at the end of the committee's two years of research.
The accounts ``raise questions about the completeness of exposure information provided'' by the Defense Department, Bailar wrote in the report. But he said Wednesday that the accounts do not necessarily change the committee's findings.
``I don't think it would have any impact on what we had to say about the relation between exposure and outcomes,'' he said. ``What we found was an absence of evidence that people complaining of Gulf War Syndrome were exposed to any source of chemical agents. We looked very hard, and that evidence is simply not there.''
David P. Rall, a committee member and the foreign secretary of the institute, agreed that later knowledge about Khamisiyah probably would not have altered the report's findings.
``In the long run, it wouldn't have made any difference,'' he said in an interview. ``We would certainly have thought a little harder . . . about the possibility of effects from low doses (of chemical weapons). But I think we would have come out in the same place.
``There is very little evidence that low exposure to the nerve gas type of chemical, where there is essentially no acute effect . . . can produce a chronic effect. It's not entirely wiped out. But it's just unlikely.''
The report, titled ``Health Consequences of Service During the Persian Gulf War: Recommendations for Research and Information Systems,'' was ordered by Congress. It is one of several studies of Gulf War Syndrome and the government's handling of the issue that the institute has been conducting.
Earlier this month, amid the Khamisiyah revelations, the Defense Department asked the institute to step in again and evaluate the Pentagon's ``overall approach'' to the issue of gulf war illness.
The institute and the academy are private, nonprofit organizations that often study issues for Congress and government agencies.
In 1990-91, the U.S. deployed 697,000 service members to the gulf for Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm against Iraq. Since then, about 77,000 current or former members of the military, or their dependents, have come forward with medical problems they believe might be related to the war.
But medical investigators have consistently said they can find no single cause.
In June, however, the Pentagon revealed that there were chemical weapons stored in and around the Khamisiyah ammunition depot that was blown up by U.S. Army engineers in March 1991.
The Pentagon has since said that more than 15,000 U.S. soldiers were in the area at the time and may have been exposed to the deadly nerve agents sarin and cyclosarin.
And while the government has maintained that there is no evidence that anyone was killed or immediately sickened by the agent, it says it has launched a new, more intense inquiry into the event.
KEYWORDS: GULF WAR SYNDROME PERSIAN GULF WAR by CNB