WHO: Need $2M for DU !? :-( ESS: Environmental Somatization Syndrome

["Bjorn Cedervall" <bcradsafers@hotmail.com>]

>UN health agency seeks $2 million to fund work on depleted uranium
1 February ­ The World Health Organization (WHO) today appealed for close to 
$2 million to examine the possible health effects of depleted uranium, which 
was used during conflicts in the Persian Gulf and the Balkans.
----
There is a built-in dilemma here:

One one hand it is probably "politically correct" (and almost necessary 
politically) to investigate possible health effects in this case. Otherwise 
there will be accusations - "look they don't care - they are all bad guys - 
the military, UN, various authorities - and even the politicians don't want 
to know about all the health effects").

The other side - which is the main point here - is the fear and stress that 
any such a program may induce. I recently listened to an interesting talk 
related to this aspect - the attention was brought to "ESS" - The 
Environmental Somatization Syndrome (original article is probably C-J. Gothe 
et al. in Psychosomatics, Vol. 36, Number 1, Jan-Febr. 1995:1-11).

This article (and a few others) describe the mechanisms of ESS epidemics 
that occur when various large health (or measurement/monitoring) programs 
are initiated. The symptoms of the resulting diseases (often called by a new 
name that does not occur in medical textbooks) are often diffuse: Headache, 
dizziness, concentration & memory problems, fatigue, sleep disorders and so 
on. These symptoms are usually the same regardless of what the suspected 
causing agent is. These epidemics typically exhibit non-consistent patterns 
(clusters) in time and geography and are often transient in character. The 
cause is psychogenic in character (mental contagiousness) and the 
transmitting vector is often the massmedia. The victims are often well read 
about the believed causing factor.

(I may mention that Sweden seems to have an unusually high incidence of 
people claiming that they are allergic to electricity - some even live far 
out in the forests with the worst conditions - to stay away from any 
technical gadget that may have magnets or electric features (like cars...)).

There are many examples of ESS in the litterature - Goethe et al. begin by 
describing the fear of steel nibs on ink pens that were introduced around 
1830, lamp shades, carbonless copy papers, keyboards, VDUs and so on.

Now as I write this - it should be pointed out that ESS has nothing to do 
with any other diseases which may or may not occur. The point is just that 
ESS seems to be a phenomenon and could result as a biproduct of any large 
scale health or monitoring investigations.

For the seriously minded scientist/investigator - it is of course important 
- from a more principle point - to sort out and try to understand what the 
underlying mechanisms are so that any non-psychologically caused diseases 
won't escape attention.

My reflections (and the ideas of Goethe et al.) only,

Bjorn Cedervall    bcradsafers@hotmail.com

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