Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2005 14:16:18 EST
Subject: NGWRC President's Response to 11-15 Hearing
To: JulieMock@aol.com
CC: board@ngwrc.org


Thursday, December 01, 2005

The Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations held a hearing on November 15, 2005 to examine the funding for Persian Gulf War veterans illnesses. Work by this subcommittee provided momentum for the passage of the Persian Gulf War Veterans Act of 1998. That law directed the Department of Veterans Affairs to seek independent assessments of possible associations between toxic exposures and the unusual syndromes afflicting many ill veterans. This process was intended to allow the VA to give sick veterans the benefit of the doubt until hard evidence of casualty between wartime exposures and chronic illnesses could be established. The same law initiated the formation of the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War illnesses. According to it's charter and the act of Congress that created it, The Research Advisory Committee is to make recommendations regarding medical research on Gulf War illnesses by the U.S. government. The Committee is charged with reviewing previous medical research and other relevant medical knowledge and with making recommendations for future research. The charter directs that the fundamental standard against which the Committee should measure research opportunities is whether the research will make a difference to the health of ill veterans.

Last year, a VA sponsored review by the Institute of Medicine on the effects of low-dose sarin exposure raised questioned whether the statutory mandate to use animal data was being followed. Disappointingly, the IOM committee reported animal studies played only a small role in their assessment. The expert committee found no connection between sub-clinical sarin exposures and human illnesses. Their conclusion epitomized what many veterans believe to be a deeply seeded reluctance in the VA and allied medical institutions to avoid animal data on fundamental questions of disease causation. The refusal to give greater consideration to animal data in Persian Gulf War Veterans Act determinations undercut the basic intent of the law to expand the scope of evidence upon which the VA may have connected today's mysterious illnesses to wartime service fifteen years ago.

Initial studies by the Institute of Medicine focused their research on the study of war-related stress and not the multiple exposures to endemic diseases, vaccines, depleted uranium and chemical warfare agent exposure. It is an established fact that mental health and stress related issues are much less common in Gulf War veterans than veterans of other wars. And they do not explain Gulf War illnesses.

Six hundred and ninety seven thousand American soldiers served in the Persian Gulf War. According to the most recent Department of Veterans affairs study, twenty-five percent of them are ill with chronic multisymptom illnesses; many have service-connected auto-immune base illnesses. More Gulf War veterans are ill today than all the American troops serving in Iraq today.

In June, 2003 the Government's own General Accounting Office gave testimony to the Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations titled Gulf War Illnesses: Preliminary Assessment of DOD Plume Modeling for U.S. Troops Exposure to Chemical Agents. Gulf war veterans are continuing to file VA disability claims as a result of their long-term, chronic illnesses. Recently, brain cancer was reported to be twice as likely to occur in Gulf War veterans than the general population and diagnosis of auto-immune illnesses such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease are on the rise.

On 16 November, 2005, the Veterans Administration announced 12 new research projects to better understand illnesses affecting Gulf War veterans. The estimated cost of these projects is estimated to be $5.2 million dollars over three years, with $1.7 million approved for Fiscal Year 2006. The Secretary of Veterans Affairs, the Honorable R. James Nicholson, said "VA will continue to address the unique health care needs of our Gulf War veterans. This research should lead to better health care funding for veterans suffering from a variety of conditions." However, the initial funding of $84,000 will pay for the first year of a pilot program to test the effects of prolonged stress on the body's ability to respond to future stress, infection and injury. Yet science has already determined that stress cannot explain the illnesses many Gulf War veterans have experienced since their deployments to the Persian Gulf.

This year the VA initiated three new IOM Gulf War Reports. They were not reviewed by the Research Advisory committee, as required by the 1998 statute. Again, these reports exclude animal studies in the documents the committee could review.

The Board of the National Gulf War Resource Center, Inc. joins Research Advisory Committee Chairman Jim Binns in his call for this matter to be investigated. Indeed, the Board of the NGWRC calls for a Special Prosecutor be assigned to review the actions and inaction of the VA to manipulate science and thereby prevent veterans from receiving treatment compensation and recovery options.


Julie Mock
President, National Gulf War Resource Center, Inc. 8605 Cameron Street, Suite 400 Silver Spring, MD 20910 800.882.1316 x 162 206.948.2908