Official reportvaccine to Gulf War syndrome

January 13, 2004

January 12, 2004

Official report links vaccine to Gulf War syndrome

By Michael Evans, Defence Editor

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.

Hotjobs: Enter the " Signing Bonus " Sweepstakes

Recommended Posts