THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, March 13, 1995 TAG: 9503110002
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines
Whatever President Clinton's political motives might be for creating an advisory panel on the mysterious Gulf War Syndrome, the move is welcome.
A panel of scientists, physicians, veterans and others will examine the cases of thousands of Persian Gulf war veterans suffering from unexplained illnesses.
``We know their problems are real and cannot be ignored while we wait for science to provide all the answers,'' Clinton said at a recent convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
To say the least, the federal government has not always been forthcoming or even honest in dealing with ailing veterans.
In letters, documents and court testimony, government agents lied to Nathan J. Schnurman for almost half a century. His study, in a neat house on the James River in Charles City County, is crowded with boxes filled with government lies.
His health was ruined for life when he was a military guinea pig for poisonous gas tests in 1944, when he was 17 and new in the Navy. For decades the government denied he had been involved in the tests. Then an agent denied under oath in U.S. District Court in Richmond that Schnurman had been subjected to lewisite, which contains arsenic.
Finally the government admitted he was, and in 1991, Schnurman, once so sick he begged to die, was awarded compensation. Now he and his wife, Joy, work to help other human guinea pigs receive reimbursement.
Through it all, Schnurman remained a patriot, and an American flag flies outside his home.
The government moved faster - though still slowly - after Vietnam War veterans complained of ailments they believed were caused by Agent Orange, a toxic defoliant sprayed on forests to deprive the enemy of cover. Fifty thousand tons of it were sprayed in Vietnam from 1961 to 1971.
Thirteen years later, the first full-scale collaborative investigation of its effects on veterans was begun. After more than a decade of government denial that the defoliant had caused a wide range of health problems, including fatal cancer, a court settlement was finally reached with the chemical's manufacturers, and veterans started receiving compensation checks in 1989 - almost two decades after the defoliant was last used. The settlement was for $184 million, and more than 39,000 veterans were compensated.
Whatever is done for the gulf war vets, it seems a safe bet it will be done slowly.
The Pentagon's top doctor said, ``There is no one unique, simple, overriding cause'' of the illnesses. Officials maintain that unless more research shows otherwise, U.S. soldiers were not exposed to life-threatening chemicals or other toxic agents from either the U.S. military or the regime of Iraq's Saddam Hussein.
But some scientific evidence already has been accumulated regarding Gulf War Syndrome. Dr. Francis J. Waickman, an Akron, Ohio, environmental pediatrician, compared birth-defect statistics between gulf war babies and other children and found a 30 percent rate of abnormalities among the children of gulf veterans - ``probably tenfold of what is in the normal population,'' he said.
We hope Clinton's panel is convened soon and works hard. The government should never turn a cold shoulder to military personnel who risked everything for their country. by CNB