Fumento writes: Massive study proves Gulf War syndrome only a myth

[Guest guest]

(I hadn't read anything by Fumento for so long, I had begun to think he had

died. Just wistful thinking on my part, cause he's back and there is always

a newspaper willing to give him a spot.)

The Denver Post

January 30, 2000

Massive study proves Gulf War syndrome only a myth

By Fumento

WASHINGTON - Call it 'A Tale of Two Studies,' one celebrated by the media,

the other one ignored. Both concerned Persian Gulf War syndrome, the

illness with a variety of symptoms reported by some veterans of the 1991

conflict in the Persian Gulf.

The first received tremendous media coverage, although it only involved a

handful of veterans, was privately funded by somebody with an agenda, was

conducted by people on a research gravy train and was merely announced at a

meeting.

The second was utterly ignored, though it involved a huge number of vets,

was publicly funded, involved myriad researchers from all over the country

and appeared in the prestigious, peer-reviewed American Journal of

Epidemiology.

Why the difference? Study One purported to show the existence of Gulf War

syndrome, while Study Two showed conclusively the term is worthless,

meaning nothing more than any illness, ache or pain that any Gulf vet or

veteran's spouse or child has contracted in the eight years since the war.

The first study appeared under such headlines as 'Gulf War, Brain Damage

Linked,' 'Gulf War Vets Show Brain Problems,' 'Study of Ill Gulf War

Veterans Points to Chemical Damage' and 'Gulf War Syndrome Tied to Brain

Damage.'

Released in December at a Radiological Society of North America meeting

without the benefit of any critical evaluation, it purported to show that

brain scans of sick Gulf vets had 10 percent to 25 percent lower levels of

a certain brain chemical than healthy Gulf War veterans. 'This is the

first time ever we have proof of brain damage in sick Gulf War veterans,'

said lead researcher Fleckenstein, a radiology professor at the

Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

Actually, you practically have to be brain-damaged to believe the study

proves anything other than the gullibility of the media.

Why? It wasn't published anywhere. Instead it was disseminated as an

abstract of a few hundred words. Certainly urgency didn't play a part,

considering the alleged exposures were eight years ago.

So why not let it be viewable in print? Why not let editors have a go at

it, or peer reviewers? What were the authors afraid of?

The study was partly underwritten by Mr. Conspiracy Theory himself, H. Ross

Perot. The erstwhile presidential candidate has been funding efforts to

'prove' a syndrome for years, mostly at Southwestern Medical Center.

Curiously, wherever Perot money goes, a positive finding for the syndrome

results.

It involved merely 22 sick vets and we don't know how they were chosen.

Meanwhile, there were only 16 control subjects to measure them against, and

all of them were Gulf vets themselves.

The study didn't compare Gulf War to non-Gulf War vets. It merely compared

those who felt sick to those who didn't. Thus, it couldn't possibly prove

the existence of any syndrome unique to service in the Gulf. There was no

exposure evidence for those 22 vets. All we know is they were in the Gulf

around the time the war was fought.

As one expert, Roswell, chairman of the Persian Gulf coordinating

board, later observed: 'No one's ever demonstrated any specific exposure

among Gulf War veterans that could cause this kind of change in the brain.'

In short, on a scale of one to 10 in value, this study was about a minus

three.

Now what of the American Journal of Epidemiology study? It found that among

hospitalized veterans, Gulf War vets are suffering no more illness than

veterans who didn't deploy to the Gulf theater.

The study included 650,000 American veterans of the Gulf War and compared

them with 650,000 nondeployed vets. For the mathematically impaired, that's

slightly more than 22 plus 16.

Furthermore, it looked at vets treated in three different hospital systems,

the Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs and hospitals in California.

Navy and VA officials evaluated these veterans for everything from cancer

to heart disease to mental disorders to skin diseases for a total of 14

problems in all.

Yet of the 14 categories among the three sets, they found statistically

significant increases in problems in only four of the 42 'slices' of the

data.

Conversely, they found significant decreases in problems in 11 of the

slices. If anything, the Gulf vets were healthier than those who didn't

deploy to the Gulf.

One possible explanation for this seemingly strange outcome is that better

health now might reflect better health from eight years ago, when more

sickly vets were more likely to be kept out of Operation Desert Storm.

But in any case, the massive study blows apart the myth of the Gulf War vet

as a victim of some mysterious ailment. They are 'victims' of slightly

superior health, nothing more.

Earlier, smaller studies comparing Gulf vets to nondeployed ones have made

similar findings concerning the number of miscarriages and birth defects

among the veterans' children.

The real mystery might be why you're reading this here first. Why was I

unable to find a single reference to this published, peer-reviewed study in

the vast Lexis-Nexis database of newspapers, magazines and radio and TV

broadcasts? Yet the ridiculous Texas study received over 50 references.

Then again, why should the media help blow the lid off Gulf War syndrome

when, with the help of a few activists and demagogic congressmen, the media

created it in the first place?

Fumento is a senior fellow in Washington for the Indianapolis-based

Hudson Institute, specializing in health and science issues.