Don't throw your particular Gulf War baby out with the media bath water just yet. Keep on trying to cut through the crap and get to the truth.
Sherman Bell
Watsonville, CA
"GULF LORE SYNDROME" is one of the best articles I have read in REASON. But I'd like to know: Do Gulf War vets show a higher incidence of psychosomatic symptoms than other vets of the same era, or than the public at large? It would seem that they should, since only this group would be affected by the psychological forces imposed by "Gulf Lore." But the information in your article seems a little confusing on this issue. For instance, at one point you discuss an Institute of Medicine investigation of three reports of GWS illness clusters. You state that "while the symptoms tended to be the same among the three groups, these were classic psychosomatic manifestations." At the same time you mention that the IOM studies "were not successful in demonstrating that these symptoms occurred at a higher rate among PGW [Persian Gulf War] veterans than among [other] PGW-era veterans."
Do you see my problem? This would suggest that psychosomatic symptoms are occurring at the same rate in both groups. If your suggestion is correct that the hype is causing Gulf War vets to get sick by suggesting that they should be sick, how could this be? This hype would not affect vets who had not been to the Gulf. Perhaps you can address this point in your response to the many angry letters you will get about your article. Again, congratulations on your excellent work.
I SERVED PROUDLY in the United States Army for over 10 years in elite military units, from the 101st & 82nd Airborne Division to the 2nd Infantry Division. If you think veterans are making up their illnesses, then you and your reporter are full of it, because we are trained to accept pain and drive on. However, illness which overcomes you within three days of arriving in a country following Scud missile explosions overhead only goes to show me and others that are sick that it's not in our heads, but caused by some foreign agent or agents.
IF FUMENTO is a medical writer, as he claims in both REASON and The Wall Street Journal, he should be doing adequate medical research and not relying upon the prepared statements and utterances of the government agencies he seems to favor, and whose opinions and inconsistent assertions are in question at the moment. He missed the recent University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas study published in the mid-January issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. He missed research done in Glasgow and Kuwait. He missed the 308 DOD Missing GulfLink Files. He missed reams of documents. Instead Fumento concentrated on presenting kooky aspects of a troubling and grim reality that no one yet has an answer to, and in the end could only substantiate his less-than- medical final assumption with the theory of a foreign medical historian, not even someone working on the problem in the field scientifically.
You are asking me as a reader to assume that this is reasoned thought? This is thinking? This is allowing oneself to live with the contradictions until more information is available? The tone of his piece had all the backroom bravado of the ugly fat kid figuring out how to get some attention. I am surprised at your editorial board for not doing--at least--basic fact checking. I did some of it for you and was even more surprised at what you missed. But maybe you thought the controversial nature of his stand would sell more copies of the magazine. Is that why you slapped it on the cover? All it did for me was cause me to never want to pick up your magazine again, and to tell as many people as would listen to do the same.
MICHAEL FUMENTO REPLIES: My head swelleth over with the praise. As to the criticisms, I was able to identify all of one (which not coincidentally was couched in the politest of terms) that actually helps clarify matters. Jack Tallent raises the basic question: Are Gulf War vets suffering illness at the same rate as both vets who didn't deploy and civilians, and, if so, how can this be reconciled with saying they have a higher rate of psychosomatic illness?
Let me provide the whole sentence from the Institute of Medicine report Tallent quotes. "Thus, although these outbreak studies were successful in demonstrating a common pattern of perceived health problems across a range of military units deployed to the Gulf, they were not successful in demonstrating that these symptoms occurred at a higher rate among PGW veterans than among [other] PGW-era veterans." What they're saying is that the soldiers in the "outbreak" studies perceived themselves as being sicker, but there's no evidence that they actually were. The studies just took the soldiers' word for it, and many of the complaints are things that can't be measured with medical instruments anyway, such as fatigue or muscle pain.
To some doctors, that means there's nothing there. To others, and to me, it means there is something there. That something is psychosomatic.
Let's restate the basic proposition. Yes, some Gulf War vets are sick. Since there are so many Gulf War vets, it's fair to say that many Gulf War vets are sick. No, the Gulf War vets are no sicker than comparable non-deployed vets or civilians in areas that are thought to be nonpsychosomatic, including overall deaths, cancers, birth defects, and miscarriages. But several studies do indicate that Gulf War vets have more of what have traditionally been accepted as possibly psychosomatic illnesses--including muscle pain, fatigue, insomnia, joint pain, and the like--than other groups.
Whether they just think they have more illnesses isn't really a proper distinction. If a vet honestly says his joints ache, he's hurting. That's why what I call Gulf Lore Syndrome is so vicious. Dannie Wolf, in the next letter, shows he doesn't understand this distinction. My article did not accuse any vets of "making up their illnesses." It said that all the vets who are sick either would have been sick regardless of their military service or are suffering from psychosomatic illness, which is real but stems from a person's own mind rather than being organic--from some outside physical cause.
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