Desert Storm's medical quandary: do Iraqi chemical and biological agents explain Gulf War syndrome? - Cover Story

Science News, June 18, 1994 by Tina Adler

On a January morning during the Persian Gulf War, Fred Willoughby, a U.S. serviceman stationed near the Saudi Arabian port of Jubail, heard an explosion. Before he could reach the safety of a bunker, his lips and face began to feel numb. When Roy Morrow first left his bunker after the bang that morning in 1991, his skin felt as if it were on fire. He returned to the bunker, where he heard a radio call for a decontamination team.

Willoughby, Morrow, and other members of Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 24 were told by their officers that the explosion was just a "sonic boom" and that they should not discuss it. However, the men were issued new protective gear that same day. Furthermore, when Harold Jerome Edwards, the leader of a chemical detection team, tested the air after the explosion, he got a positive reading for a chemical blister agent.

A new report released by the Senate at a hearing on May 24 describes these and other stories of military personnel who believe they were exposed to Iraqi biological or chemical warfare agents. Thousands of these men and women, and some of their family members who never went near the Persian Gulf, suffer f rom many of the debilitating symptoms of what has become known as Gulf War syndrome: chronic headaches, diarrhea, aching joints, fatigue, sensitivity to chemicals, and other ailments. The Senate report makes the case that Iraqi poisons caused these as-yet-undiagnosed ills.

Many military and medical experts disagree with that contention, however, and a number of important issues remain unresolved in this acrimonious debate. For example, what compensation, if any, should these veterans receive? The Clinton administration last week endorsed a controversial bill that would guarantee them some benefits. Also unresolved is the question of what treatment or treatments will work best against Gulf War syndrome. Moreover, was and is the US. military adequately prepared to protect its troops from chemical and biological weapons?

The Department of Defense (DOD) says it has no proof that US. veterans were exposed to the special brews Iraq had become notorious for using during earlier wars. The department discounts the stories recounted in the Senate report as unsubstantiated. Like other government agencies investigating the source of the syndrome, it points to a host of other possibilities as more likely causes.

"We have heard from people who are convinced that we will find the answer if we focus solely on parasitic diseases, or focus solely on Kuwaiti oil fire smoke, or industrial pollutants, or the effects of inoculations, or solely on stress, or multiple chemical sensitivity," the Pentagon's Edwin Dorn told the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, which issued the report.

But, Dorn adds, "we are exploring every plausible cause for these illnesses, including the possibility of exposure to some kind of chemical agents." For example, the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Birmingham, Ala., has a pilot study under way to see whether such poisons caused the veterans' ailments.

An advisory panel formed by the National Institutes of Health concluded in late April that Gulf War syndrome is multiple illnesses with overlapping symptoms and causes (SN: 5/7/94, p.294). But the group found many of the possible causes suggested by veterans and others, including chemical or biological warfare agents, unlikely

The NIH panel noted, however, that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and DOD have failed to conduct studies that might link the veterans' ailments to the war. The panel members reached their conclusions after listening to 2 1/2 days of testimony from military and health experts and from Gulf War veterans.

One federal researcher, Stephen E. Straus, has discovered evidence that the mysterious illness is not new. As long ago as the Civil War, similar undiagnosed symptoms felled military personnel.

Desert Shield and Desert Storm made for nasty living in the Persian Gulf area. Military personnel breathed soot- and sand-filled air, washed in water contaminated with diesel fuel, burned gasoline and diesel fuel in unvented heaters, saturated their clothes in insecticides, and fought off rodents and hordes of insects, veterans say. The constant stress the men and women experienced may have weakened their immune systems and made them more vulnerable to contaminants, several researchers told the NIH panel.

With all of these health hazards to accuse, why do Senate committee chairman Donald W. Riegle Jr. (D-Mich.) and member Alfonse M. D'Amato (R-N.Y. finger chemical or biological agents?

For one thing, Iraq harbored a vast chemical arsenal. The Central Intelligence Agency's Gordon C. Oehler testified at the Senate hearing that United Nations inspectors found 5,000 tons of stockpiled chemical agents and more than 46,000 filled munitions, including 30 missile warheads, bombs filled with mustard gas, and nerve gas containers.

Furthermore, U.N. inspectors uncovered evidence of an Iraqi advanced biological warfare research program. European, and to a lesser extent U.S., firms provided some of the ingredients and technology used by Iraq to create its poisonous weapons, he added. But did the troops come into contact with those agents?