THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 8, 1997 TAG: 9701080401
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: 80 lines
President Clinton on Tuesday rejected demands by veterans for an outside agency to take over the Defense Department's investigation of Persian Gulf War illnesses and instead extended the life of a presidential advisory panel so it can keep watch over the Pentagon's efforts.
Clinton also endorsed a proposal by Veterans Affairs Secretary Jesse Brown to allow Gulf War veterans more than two years to document their ailments and still qualify for easier access to VA disability benefits. Some say their symptoms did not show up until too late.
The compromise gestures came after the presidential advisory commission, which comprises a dozen physicians and scientists, issued a report concluding that nerve gas exposure during the 1991 war was unlikely to have caused any of the ailments they are suffering.
Although the panel criticized the Pentagon for failing to take the issue seriously until recently, the report said the Defense Department and VA have provided good medical care to the veterans and now appear to be investigating the problem in earnest.
Neither the panel's findings nor Clinton's decision to ask the group to exercise ``oversight'' of the Pentagon's efforts was a surprise. The committee, which studied the issue for 19 months, had signaled its conclusions in a draft report two months ago.
Clinton promised a veterans group Tuesday that despite some shaky starts, ``we will not stop until we have done all we can to care for our Gulf War veterans, to find out why they are sick and to help to make them healthy'' again. ``We are on the right track,'' he asserted.
Nevertheless, Persian Gulf veterans organizations were critical of the report, dismissing it as incomplete and calling for another independent study of the issue, possibly by a special prosecutor equipped with subpoena powers.
``We are very disappointed,'' said Chris Kornkven, spokesman for the National Gulf War Resource Center, a coalition of 24 veterans groups. He said the panel had ``done a great disservice to . . . veterans of the Gulf War . .
Separately, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, disclosed the results of a survey of some 2,000 Persian Gulf veterans in Iowa suggesting that they were up to three times more likely to suffer one or more symptoms than service members who were not in the 1991 war.
However, outside analysts said the study, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was based on a telephone survey of veterans, without any opportunity for medical officials to confirm their illnesses.
The survey is to be included in a series of studies made public today by the Journal of the American Medical Association. Officials said the others, based on a mail survey of 240 naval reservists, would seek to link Gulf War illness to exposure to organophosphates.
The advisory committee report did little to resolve the mystery surrounding Gulf War illness. In all, some 60,000 of the 697,000 U.S. troops who served in the Persian Gulf War have complained of symptoms ranging from chronic fatigue to aches and memory loss.
The panel's findings were in line with those of four previous studies of the Gulf War illnesses, by the Pentagon, the VA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the prestigious U.S. Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences.
However, the report urged the government to step up efforts to find out how many U.S. soldiers may have been exposed to nerve agents near Khamisiyah, where troops destroyed an Iraqi weapons bunker just after the war ended. The Pentagon is now investigating.
It also endorsed the administration's decision to intensify research on the possible effects of low-level exposure to organophosphorus nerve agents such as sarin, soman or pesticides, all of which were present during the Gulf War.
And the report reiterated a finding from previous studies that at least some of the symptoms may result partly from wartime stress, which often affects the brain and the body's immune and cardiovascular systems. MEMO: PILOT ONLINE: More on the Gulf War illness report is available on
the Military page at http://www.pilotonline.com ILLUSTRATION: Photo
ASSOCIATED PRESS
President Clinton received a report on Gulf War illnesses Monday.
With him, from left, are Hillary Clinton, advisory committee
chairwoman Dr. Joyce Lashof and Veterans Affairs Secretary Jesse
Brown.
KEYWORDS: PERSIAN GULF WAR CHEMICAL WEAPONS