Official Report Vacine to Gulf War Syndrome

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Misty L. Trepke

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Official report links vaccine to Gulf War syndrome

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8122-960884,00.html

 

January 12, 2004

 

A CONFIDENTIAL report by a senior army medical specialist has

provided the first official backing for claims that the cocktail of

vaccines given to soldiers before the 1991 war with Iraq caused

illnesses which became known as Gulf War syndrome. For 13 years, the

Ministry of Defence has denied that the vaccines , some of which

were classified as " secret " , could be blamed for the wide range of

debilitating diseases. NI_MPU('middle');Independent research

projects have also failed to find conclusive evidence of a Gulf War-

related syndrome.

 

However, Lieutenant-Colonel Graham Howe, clinical director of

psychiatry with the British Forces Health Service in Germany, was

asked by the War Pensions Agency to examine the case of former Lance-

Corporal Alex Izett, who, since the war, has been suffering from

osteoporosis and acute depression. Colonel Howe wrote in his report

on the former Royal Engineer that the " secret " injections he

received prior to his expected deployment to the Gulf " most

probably led to the development of autoimmune-induced osteoporosis " .

 

No other possible causes were highlighted because Mr Izett never

went to war. Like other troops earmarked for frontline service in

the Gulf, he was inoculated against anthrax, botulism, plague and

other biological warfare agents thought to be in Saddam Hussein's

arsenal of non-conventional weapons. " But at the last moment, my

unit (25 Engineer Regiment, was told it wasn't needed and I never

went, " Mr Izett, 33, said from his home in Bersenbruck, near

Bremen in Germany.

 

A copy of the report, dated September 22, 2001, but never made

public, has been handed to The Times by Mr Izett, who won a landmark

ruling at a war pensions appeals tribunal in July last year which

awarded him a 50 per cent disability pension. The MoD did not appeal

against the ruling but maintained that the vaccines could not be the

cause of any Gulf War syndrome of illnesses. The medical report

noted that there was a " high incidence " of osteoporosis in Gulf War

veterans. The common denominator linking Mr Izett to those who

actually fought in the war was the cocktail of vaccines he received.