The basic story, as Nightline's reporter told it, was, "In Waynesville, Mississippi, 13 of 15 babies born to returning members of a National Guard Unit were reported to have severe and often rare health problems." It didn't say the report was "prepared," as it were, by the parents themselves. The Mississippi Department of Health investigated the alleged cluster and found that of 54 births to returning Guardsmen in that state, both major and minor defects were well within the expected range. There were also no more premature or low-birth-weight children than would be expected.
Since then, several birth-defect and miscarriage studies have looked for exceptional rates among the offspring of Persian Gulf vets. They have found none. In addition, all live births to Persian Gulf vets are being tracked, with birth defects compared to those in the offspring of non-deployed soldiers. When last analyzed, the children of the Gulf War vets had the same percentage of birth defects as the children of the comparison soldiers.
But of all the media outlets that originally reported on the alleged Mississippi cluster, only CNN later told its audience of the state's report. So the "Town in Torment" remains a staple of Gulf Lore. Dr. Russell Tarver, who headed up the study, told me, "It's unconscionable to frighten people out of reproducing unless you have some good data to support that contention." He called it "a crime against those veterans."
A Little Knowledge
Look, the vets did their job in the Gulf. These men and women are not supposed to be medical experts, and it's not their fault the media and Congress insist on treating them as such. Yet the medical knowledge on the part of the non-vet GWS advocates is just as appalling. Consider a 1996 article by Maggie O'Kane in the British newspaper The Guardian. She wrote that American Dr. Howard Urnovitz "says the syndrome can be successfully treated with an antibiotic called doxycycline, which attacks the cocktail of viruses that many experts say has led to the illness."
Later in the article O'Kane quotes GWS activist James Tuite II, former GWS investigator for Sen. Don Riegle (D-Mich.). "There's no doubt this treatment is working, but the problem is that viruses can develop an immunity to some antibiotics like doxycycline," said Tuite, "and if they stop taking them then the disease can come back."
No, actually antibiotics can't cure viruses at all; antibiotics treat only bacteria. I guessed that what Dr. Urnovitz had said is that doxycycline could treat secondary bacterial infections that sometimes arise when a person is suffering from a virus. He confirmed this to me. "This was not a very well-vetted story," he told me, though--as we'll see--he was glad for the publicity.
Who are these people who don't know what an antibiotic does? Well, Maggie O'Kane is one of her country's most influential GWS reporters. She has repeatedly written on the subject and even produced a TV documentary. Twice named Journalist of the Year, O'Kane won the 1996 James Cameron Award for reporting "of the highest quality"; the judges specifically cited her GWS coverage, calling her a "truth-seeking missile."
Tuite is America's most influential GWS activist, although the media outlets that cite his claims ("our government is ultimately responsible for more casualties than Saddam Hussein," he told the Presidential Advisory Committee, because of "what they've been concealing for the past five years") have usually treated him as a neutral observer.
Denise Nichols's September 19 testimony before Congress was on the same level of medical expertise. Nichols, a former Air Force nurse, is a Persian Gulf vet and Colorado coordinator of the Desert Storm Veterans Coalition. She told Shays's committee that she had transmitted GWS to one of her children. "My own daughter, along with the child of another Colorado veteran, has been diagnosed with congenital cataracts, which she did not have before my return from the Gulf," she testified. Somehow, a nurse didn't know that congenital means "from or at birth"; her doctor was telling her that her daughter did not "catch" her cataracts as a result of her mother's Gulf duty.
Or consider Rocky Mountain News reporter Dick Foster's claim that Persian Gulf vets have a cancer rate of three to six times that of the civilian population. Asked his source, he cited William L. Marcus's congressional testimony in June 1996. The figure Marcus gave was not for cancers as a whole but for one specific cancer of the bone marrow called multiple myeloma. Marcus gave no overall cancer figure.
Is even the multiple myeloma figure accurate? Five days before the hearings, CDC Director David Satcher sent a letter to Shays with information explaining in detail why the data from which Marcus was drawing "are not adequate to assess whether service in the Gulf War resulted in increased risk for" tumors or death from cancer. A VA representative who testified before the committee concurred. The data were too limited not only to say just how many Gulf vets had cancer, but also to determine what a normal rate of cancer would be. Both sides of Marcus's equation, then, were useless. What we can say is that as of the end of 1996, of 52,000 vets from the Persian Gulf Registry who had been medically evaluated, only two had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma.
As for Marcus, he's not an epidemiologist or statistician but an EPA toxicologist who took it upon himself as a private citizen to do his own calculations. He has not authored a study that has appeared in a peer-reviewed journal; he's authored no study at all. No one has checked his numbers. But once Marcus was given the stamp of "expert" by Congress, Foster felt free to use his data. Foster then extrapolated from one type of cancer to all cancers. Now Foster's own article is on the Nexis and Dialog computer databases for any enterprising reporter to pull up and reuse.
Similarly, the 37th's Toulious told me he was frightened by the sudden upsurge in Persian Gulf vet deaths he'd heard about. "Who told you that?" I asked. It was Maj. Denise Nichols, he told me, the woman whose daughter got her congenital cataracts by contagion. "She's great," Toulious told me. "She's awesome." Sure enough, Nichols has been going to GWS meetings and saying that from the end of the war to November 1995, 2,900 Persian Gulf vets had died, yet by May 1996, the number had skyrocketed to 4,291. Local newspapers dutifully wrote it up.
I called Nichols to ask her source for the figures, and she specified an office at the VA. I called that office and talked to spokesman Terry Jemison, who explained Nichols's data are a splicing of "two different numbers." The first number was deaths from all causes among veterans of Operation Desert Storm itself, about 700,000 people. The second number was deaths among anyone who had served in the Gulf region since 1990, over a million people. Obviously a bigger base number of people is going to yield more deaths.
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|8.12.10 @ 4:30PM|#
Twenty years have come and gone now since the 2nd August 1990 invasion of Kuwait by neighboring Iraqi Forces.
Despite the colossal scale of the mystery illness sustained by coalition forces we are no nearer to any definitive answers on the cause, this situation is disgraceful in this day and age and automatic denials by American and British Governments on this subject matter can only point to the existence of a international cover up.
nfl jerseys|11.16.10 @ 3:42AM|#
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|6.14.11 @ 11:16PM|#
HI just so you know.. My Daughter was born in Germany,, Her Father did not go over there.. Thank God. Would have been worse I am sure.But he did receive the Shots.. He wanted to go so bad..God Love him. My Husband Never Puked Green stuff. NOpe and He can't even defend or deny this because he is DEAD!!! Died just four years after the Gulf War.. How he died matters not.Mr Reporter.,Cause you,, Some Or All would just say Yeah Right natural Causes.. BUT know this. I did puke up Bright Green stuff once while over there.. Only it was because my Appendix was about to rupture.. I was 3 1/2 months pregnant at the time for our fourth child. NOw you can sit there and Say your BULL Mr.reporter.. I have already forgot your name.. But my daughter was born with not just one but two birth defects..She was a very sick baby and has had several Surgeries... NOW I say. Did she imagine this.. Is she faking.. Well why don't you talk to her Doctors and find out.. Her ailments continue.. Recently she just had to have a Mass removed from her left breast. Not cancer the Doctors say. Thank God...But she is to continue her breast exams and contact as soon as another appears.. Why should a 18 year old Teen have to do this.. Tell me sir. And was it my imagination that my little angel as sick as she is.. Was what do you care.. Was the healthiest baby out of 8 other women I met while being with my husband in Germany. Very Sick..One and Half pound babies or sometimes the baby did not make it. Tell me did we imagine that. My daughter was lucky she was born with all her limbs.. She has one that is missing but that was internal. Yeah she is working towards being a Healthier adult now then when she was a child. And yet I must worry every time the phone rings and It says Children's Hosp on the caller ID.. You can all live in denial.. And I will live in my imaginary world.. Where Just six months after my husbands death I had to take my precious baby girl to her first operation.. Where I walked the floor worrying I was going to loose my Baby girl after just loosing my husband... Where I saw the Fear in my daughters eyes when she came out of the recovery room.. and she asked am I dead now like my Daddy.. Yeah I am imagining all these things.. YOu know the funny part. My husband never believed in the Gulf War illness either. Well Now he is no longer here to care.. Sometimes I wish I was not either.. Cause I sure miss him.. He was an innocent just like his daughter only her Gave his Life to his Country Only not in battle.. And you and others Well who cares right. Tell me can you give me one bit of scientific evidence that proves my daughters birth defects are genetics.. Seeings how NO one else in my family has them.. . Sorry.. I know this won't get posted. But I feel better now. UGH!!
|1.21.12 @ 3:41AM|#
They came out in 08 and admitted GwIllness is real. Arent you an ass.Why did the chemical alarms pop all the time? Oh they blew up a chemical COMPLEX. Look up sequiline. I hope this writter was fired, cause he is full o shit!!!