Re: more on DU

["ruth_weiner" <ruth_weiner@email.msn.com>]

THANK YOU!!!

Ruth F. Weiner, Ph. D.
7336 Lew Wallace NE
Albuquerque, NM
505-856-5011
fax 505-856-5564
ruth_weiner@msn.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Philip Hypes <phypes@lanl.gov>
To: Multiple recipients of list <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
Date: Thursday, March 09, 2000 7:18 AM
Subject: Re: more on DU


>Ernesto Faillace wrote:
>>As for the GWS connection, I'd suggest checking out "The Gulf War Within,"
>>by Peter Radetsky, in the August, 1997 issue of Discover Magazine.  It's
>>adapted from his book, "Allergic to the Twentieth Century."  Written for
>>the somewhat-educated lay reader, and certainly not a venerable journal,
>>but good info nonetheless.  Seems there's a lot of data indicating that no
>>single agent is responsible for the range of symptoms, but that GWS is
most
>>likely the result of a mixture of physical stress and exposures to a
number
>>of chemicals, including various insecticides, pesticides, solvents, and
>>anti-nerve-gas drugs (DU is hardly mentioned).
>
>There's a reason the activists have had trouble linking DU to GWS;  see
below.
>
>*****************************
>
>Denver Post
>January 30, 2000
>
>Massive Study Proves Gulf War Syndrome Only A Myth
>
>By Michael 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 James 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, Robert 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?
>
>Michael Fumento is a senior fellow in Washington for the Indianapolis-
>based Hudson Institute, specializing in health and
>science issues.
>___________________________________________________________
>Philip Hypes
>Los Alamos National Laboratory
>Safeguards Science and Technology Group (NIS 5)
>(505) 667-1556  phypes@lanl.gov
>
>Opinions expressed are purely my own unless otherwise noted
>
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