Feckless IOM Does Agency's Bidding: Sound Familiar?

November 25, 2008

November 17, 2008

By Dan Olmsted

A harsh new report is blasting the relationship

between a federal agency and the Institute of

Medicine -- saying costly reports the IOM

produced were worthless and failed to connect a

widespread but baffling epidemic with its true causes.

No, it's not about autism. This criticism relates

to the Veterans Administration and studies it

commissioned from the Institute of Medicine to

look into Gulf War Illness. The Congressionally

mandated independent review of Gulf War Studies,

in a report to be officially released Tuesday,

calls the VA-IOM effort a diversion from the search for the truth.

It says that Saddam Hussein didn't cause Gulf War

Syndrome -- we did. The most likely suspects, it

concludes, are a nerve gas antidote used

protectively (there was never an attack) and

widespread exposure to pesticides. And it says

multiple vaccinations given to the troops cannot be ruled out.

Too many vaccines … a potent and inadequately

tested medicine used to ward off an attack that

never came, one that may have mimicked the

effects of actual exposure … environmental toxins

causing new and catastrophic mental and physical

damage … a conflicted government agency using the IOM for its own purposes.

In other words, it sounds a lot like the

autism-vaccines report the IOM produced in 2004

for its client, the CDC -- which found no

relationship between the two -- and the belief by

many in the autism community that the science was

skewed to produce a predetermined result. It also

goes to the issue of whether scientific research

has become so politicized and corporatized,

especially in the past eight years, that a top to

bottom review is needed -- something

President-Elect Obama has said he will order.

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