That's it. Readers could conclude that GWS resulted from multiple chemical attacks, or a combination of such attacks and drugs. In fact, a Times reader could conclude anything or nothing about what the IOM had really said.
Medicine and 'Miracles'
Journalists aren't the only ones feeding the vets good stories that don't quite add up. Dr. Howard Urnovitz is one doctor beloved by vets who believe they have GWS. Last year he said his discovery of a mystery virus in Persian Gulf vets explains how, "Like rubella, it is being passed on as a virus and can, we believe, explain the birth defects in children of the veterans."
Urnovitz is not, however, a disinterested scientist. Although he may believe what he's saying, he also appears to be appealing to the vets' fears to raise money for his biotech company, Calypte Biomedical of Berkeley, California. After all, as Calypte's Web page (ChronicIllnet) informs readers, "ChronicIllnet feels that much of the current breakthroughs in understanding IMMUNE SYSTEM IMBALANCE SYNDROMES, such as cancer, will come from the MIRACLES occurring with the new treatments being explored in Persian Gulf War related illnesses." (Emphasis theirs.)
No responsible physician would use the term miracle to describe his treatments; that's huckster terminology. As it happens, miracle is a hypertext link. If you click on it, the link takes you to a story about a Gulf vet who claims that his GWS symptoms were cured by doxycycline. Somehow a general-purpose antibiotic developed in 1966 doesn't seem like the sort of thing that will lead to a cure for cancer.
But it's not just cancer that these "miracle" cures will finish off. "If we can find a cure for Gulf War Syndrome," Urnovitz said at a 1996 symposium in Denver, "we'll be able to cure cancer and AIDS and chronic fatigue syndrome and other immune system disorders. They're all linked together." Maybe that cure will start your car on a cold winter morning, too.
Another doctor who is revered by sick Persian Gulf vets and has testified before the Presidential Advisory Committee is Garth Nicolson. Nicolson is a highly regarded cancer researcher who says he and his wife Nancy, a molecular biophysicist, left the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston to pursue a cure for GWS after his stepdaughter, a Gulf War vet, fell ill.
Like Urnovitz, the Nicolsons claim great success with doxycycline. Unlike Urnovitz, the Nicolsons blame not a virus but a bacterium, specifically mycoplasma fermentans (MF). They claim that using a special form of the polymerase chain-reaction (PCR) test, they have detected MF in about half of the vets with GWS symptoms. With PCR you take some blood from a person and use a chemical procedure to enlarge parts of the DNA of an organism (such as MF) that you think might be in the blood. If you use the chemical that would enlarge the DNA of MF and it works, then you know the MF is there. If the chemical doesn't enlarge it, you don't have MF. So far, so good.
But the same sensitivity that makes PCR a useful tool in finding what's in blood also makes it liable to find what's not there. Improperly cleaned and sterilized equipment will have all sorts of DNA strands on it that didn't come from the blood of the specified patient. In the most famous case of PCR contamination, Dr. David Ho--recently named Time's "Man of the Year" for his promising work on AIDS--published a study in the mid-'80s which, using PCR, detected the AIDS virus in numerous people who had tested negative in the standard blood test. It was a frightening result, but no one could duplicate his findings and Ho was forced to admit that his testing must have suffered contamination.
As with Ho's results, other doctors are finding they cannot duplicate Nicolson's PCR work on MF. This includes the man universally acknowledged as the leading expert on MF, Dr. Shyh-Ching Lo of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. "We've never found one" Persian Gulf vet with the bacterium, says Lo. "The Nicolsons claim their technique is different," allegedly using "a special form of PCR that's more sensitive," says Lo. Specifically, they claim their test can better find MF when it's hiding in the nucleus of the cell only. Lo says that's possible, "but we never truly get the detail of how [the Nicolsons] process PCR. They just give us the statements of their results." In late December, Garth Nicolson announced that he will divulge his testing technique, but he had not done so at this writing.
I asked Nicolson if there were any scientists who had duplicated his work. He named only one, Aristo Vojdani, himself a GWS advocate and doctor who specializes in multiple chemical sensitivity. MCS is an alleged ailment that mainstream organizations, such as the American Medical Association, find questionable, if not outright nonsense. (See "Sick of It All," June 1996.) Vojdani is also now among the shrinking number of researchers claiming that silicone breast implants are harmful.
The other way of judging the merit of the Nicolsons' PCR work would be to see where it has been published. One National Institutes of Health MF expert, who asked not to be identified, conceded that Nicolson had indeed published in this area, but only in "garbage journals." Indeed, of the seven pieces Nicolson sent me, six were in journals that specialize in MCS or related fields. The seventh was in The Journal of the American Medical Association--but it was only an unrefereed letter to the editor.
None of which conclusively proves that the Nicolsons' research is invalid. But even if their unique test does detect MF, it may have no connection to Gulf War Syndrome. For one, nobody knows how many perfectly healthy people carry around MF in their bodies, just as we carry around myriad types of benign and even helpful bacteria. More important, medical science so far has identified MF as a probable cause of just one health problem, rheumatoid arthritis. There is also some evidence it may be involved in acute respiratory problems. Sure, some Gulf vets have complained of aching joints and others of breathing troubles. But what of the 100-plus other problems they claim?
Further, the very idea of MF as a biological weapon, as the Nicolsons claim it was, is ludicrous. The purpose of biological weapons is to cripple, kill, and terrorize on the battlefield--not to cause aching joints in vets years later.
Nor does it help the Nicolsons' credibility that they suggest they are targets of a conspiracy because their work threatens the GWS coverup. Garth told the Houston Press, an alternative weekly, that while he and his wife were at M.D. Anderson, their faxes and letters were repeatedly intercepted, and their phone had been tapped so many times that "it was a record." Nancy also claims there have been six attempts on her life, but "assassins told her they saw her face and just couldn't pull the trigger."
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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|#
fcctet
|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!!!