US scientist challenges UK on Gulf war illness

[Guest guest]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,11381,1275466,00.html

 

US scientist challenges UK on Gulf war illness

 

James Meikle, health correspondent

Wednesday August 4, 2004

The Guardian

 

A US scientist who led investigations suggesting that

nerve agents injured troops in the first Gulf war

yesterday called on British researchers to join the

hunt for reliable brain scans and other tests.

 

Robert Haley told Lord Lloyd's independent inquiry

into war-related injuries that the US government had

radically changed its attitude towards his work after

other scientists replicated studies indicating brain

damage in veterans.

 

There was a Gulf war syndrome, or at least a group of

illnesses attributable to service in the gulf in 1991,

he said. His group was now seeing whether experimental

results on small groups of veterans could be extended

by comparing brain images of veterans with those of

others who were not deployed. Britain should join in.

 

" We don't know how that would play in the United

Kingdom " , he said. " It would be worth doing to get

some brain imagery in this country. "

 

Dr Haley, professor of medicine at the University of

Texas's Southwestern medical centre in Dallas, made an

overnight trip to London to make the plea before

flying home.

 

" The question is how you determine who has the damage

and who doesn't, and who needs to be cared for and

maybe compensated. If we had an objective test that

everyone agreed to then this would not be a difficult

matter. We are developing biological understanding of

that problem so that we can develop a reasonably

inexpensive test you could apply to veterans. "

 

Dr Haley's work was at first looked on with grave

scepticism by the US government and other scientists,

especially since effort was being concentrated on

problems such as stress. But the billionaire

businessman and former presidential candidate Ross

Perot championed and funded his ground-breaking

studies.

 

Dr Haley said some disease in veterans resembled early

stages of well-known conditions such as Parkinson's.

 

Research by his team and others, he said, indicated

that low-level sarin nerve gas, released by bombing

attacks or post-war destruction of Iraqi factories and

weapons stores, caused brain cell damage. In some

cases, the agents may have acted in combination with

pesticides or tablets taken as protection against

nerve agents.

 

Troops particularly susceptible were those with low

levels of a particular enzyme. " All it does is destroy

nerve gas... Why did God put it there? I guess he knew

the end of the story. "

 

Among these troops, those under unseen clouds of

sarin, particularly after raids early in the bombing

war, were defenceless, he said. Similar damage had

been seen in rats dosed with sarin by researchers in

Albuquerque, New Mexico. As in veterans, signs of

disease were delayed.

 

Dr Haley said many symptoms reported by many veterans

were attributable to such damage. He believed there

were three sets of Gulf-related cell damage - the

worst linked to confusion, vertigo and dizzy spells, a

second related to thinking problems, depression and

sleep disorders, and a third to pain, although

symptoms overlapped.

 

Dr Haley hoped Lord Lloyd's inquiry would push for

work exploring brain cells in Britain. Scientists

could find a way of reversing the damage.

 

Mr Perot made a similar plea. " As the US government

seems to be getting its act together and taking steps

to right the wrongs of the last decade, I am here to

urge the British government to join with us to solve

this problem.

 

" I urge you to retire the clique of stress researchers

here in the UK who have only refused the issues, and

start a new research funding initiative, this time

supporting a new group of neuroscience researchers who

can contribute constructively to our understanding of

the problem. "