Gulf War Panel - It's About Time but will it help?

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Wednesday January 23 5:21 PM ET US Forms Gulf War Illness Panel, After Long Delay By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than a decade after the Gulf War (news - web sites), the US government launched a fresh initiative on Wednesday aimed at getting to the bottom of the mysterious illnesses suffered by an estimated one in seven veterans of that conflict. The Bush administration announced the formation within the Department of Veterans Affairs (news - web sites) of a 12-member advisory committee charged with sifting through medical research on so-called Gulf War syndrome, some of which has been all but ignored by the government until now. The committee includes critics of past government efforts, including Dr. Haley, chief epidemiologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. The panel will not conduct or fund research. It will review existing work and make recommendations to Veterans Affairs Secretary Principi about areas where more needs to be done and promote research that may lead to improved diagnosis and treatment of sick Gulf War veterans. ``There's been a lot of good work done in the past on this issue,'' said Binns Jr., a Vietnam War veteran and former chairman of Parallel Design Inc., which makes medical devices and was acquired by General Electric in 2000. ``What's been missing has been a concentrated effort to pull it together and to understand it and to follow up on it,'' he said. Binns said the government in the past has treated Desert Storm veterans afflicted with unexplained ailments, perhaps linked to their service in the 1991 war to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi forces, as if their illnesses were all in their minds. ``These, by and large, are not a group of men and women who were prone to illness or prone to being hypochondriacs before they went into military service,'' Binns said. ``There's substantial evidence that this problem is real. There are probable causes, and even are promising avenues for treatment. And I wonder why the attitude hasn't been, 'Let's jump on this. Let's pursue these encouraging bits of research.' I say that's where I think we can make a difference.'' Many of the nearly 700,000 US Desert Storm troops say they suffer from conditions including pain in the muscles and joints, fatigue, nausea and balance problems. Their children also appear to have a higher risk of birth defects. Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs Leo Mackay said his department ``is committed to investigating all possible causes and treatments for Gulf War illnesses.'' He noted that the panel was made up of people with ``diverse viewpoints,'' including members of the medical and scientific communities and activists on the Gulf War syndrome issue. BRAIN ABNORMALITIES IN VETS Haley's research, finding subtle brain abnormalities among some ailing Gulf War veterans, was among the first to indicate a causal relationship between Gulf War service and the syndrome. His work got off the ground because of funding by Texas billionaire and maverick politician H. Ross Perot. Congress mandated the creation of the panel in 1998, but nothing was done in the final two years of the Clinton administration before President Bush (news - web sites) took office a year ago. Perot said: ``The Clinton administration had one mission, and that was to ignore it because it would cost money.'' The Department of Veterans Affairs last month said Gulf War military personnel apparently are nearly twice as likely as other veterans to develop the fatal neurological ailment amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease (news - web sites). The department said it would give additional benefits and compensation to veterans who served in the Gulf region during the war and later came down with ALS. This was the first official acknowledgment of a scientific link between Gulf War service and a specific disease.