ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, October 10, 1996 TAG: 9610100090
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
The ailments of Persian Gulf War veterans are very similar to those arising from other wars, and there is scant scientific evidence as yet of a unique Gulf War Syndrome, a top medical panel reported Wednesday.
The reports of illnesses growing out of the Gulf conflict are so varied that the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine said it preferred the term ``unexplained illness'' to Gulf War Syndrome.
``Since the Civil War, every major conflict [has seen] a substantial number of veterans complaining of things that sound a lot like Gulf War Syndrome,'' John C. Bailar III, chairman of the committee that produced the report, said Wednesday.
``I have come to think of this not necessarily as a Gulf War Syndrome, but as a war syndrome or stress syndrome,'' Bailar said from the University of Chicago, where he is chairman of the Department of Health Studies.
It was the latest in a string of high-level medical pronouncements that, while noting research is still under way, cast doubt on the existence of a Gulf War Syndrome.
And it came amid a growing furor over reports that soldiers may have been exposed to chemical weapons after the war, and that those incidents are linked to illness.
Bailar acknowledged that recent accounts of possible exposure to such weapons from the demolition of Iraq's Khamisiyah ammunition depot surfaced only at the end of the committee's two years of research.
The accounts ``raise questions about the completeness of exposure information provided'' by the Defense Department, Bailar wrote in the report. But he said Wednesday that the accounts do not necessarily change the committee's findings.
``I don't think it would have any impact on what we had to say about the relation between exposure and outcomes,'' he said. ``What we found was an absence of evidence that people complaining of Gulf War Syndrome were exposed to any source of chemical agents. We looked very hard and that evidence is simply not there.''
In its report, the institute also noted that medical investigations into the issue are hampered by outdated military record keeping. Outpatient records, for example, are ``fragmented, disorganized, incomplete, and therefore poorly suited to support'' health studies.
It also found that government registries set up for veterans to report Gulf-related illness are not useful by themselves for scientific research. ``Participants are self-selected, symptoms are self-reported, exposures are self-reported,'' the report said. ``And there is no suitable control group.''
``No matter how well documented an illness may be, or how moving a personal story,'' the report said, ``unexplained illnesses also occur in the civilian population, and in troops not deployed to the Gulf.''
The report was ordered by Congress. It is one of several studies the institute has been conducting of Gulf War Syndrome and the government's handling of the issue.
Earlier this month, amid the Khamisiyah revelations, the Defense Department asked the institute to step in again and evaluate the Pentagon's ``overall approach'' to the issue of Gulf War illness.
The institute and the academy are private, nonprofit organizations that often study issues for Congress and government agencies.
LENGTH: Medium: 66 linesby CNB