Can Somebody Explain this to me . . . .

[james.g.barnes@att.net]

[Sorry if this is a double posting; I seem to be having trouble with my email program.]



Dear Louis;

 

I'm not a medical doctor, but I've followed these situations with some interest.

 

To my knowledge of uranium physiology, I know of no effect that these soldiers are describing that is traceable to low levels of DU contamination.  That's based on a pretty extensive series of studies as well as an extensive population of nuclear workers exposed to uranium during refining and utilization processes. The level of exposures to these nuclear workers certainly would bracket the exposure levels to soldiers who may have been exposed to DU during combat operations in in combat areas. It seems logical to me that these worker populations would have been displaying the same symptoms as the soldiers, but to my knowledge they have not.

 

Nevertheless, there are soldiers and veterans who insist that DU is the cause of their illnesses.  I think it's a problem with the medical diagnostic model that gets used.  I don't doubt that some of these folks don't feel well.  The living conditions they are describing certainly don't sound too healthful.  When they go to see the doctor, however, the doctor is trained to find the cause of the illness.  DU has never been listed as a cause of these types of illnesses (and there's no compelling reason to believe that it is), so the doctor says it's not the DU based upon his medical skill and understanding of medical science.  But while rejecting the DU diagnosis, the doctor can't find any other physical cause, so overtly or covertly the illness then gets relegated to being "mental" in origin.  To the patient, this means that the doctor is essentially labeling him as crazy (you're sick, there's no cause, it's in your head).

 

The patient, of course, believes that something is making him ill, and that the doctor is simply incompetent or intentionally covering up misfeasance or malfeasance.  From the patient's perspective, DU is the only "odd" factor that was in his environment, so from his perception it must have been the DU that made him sick.  Over time, he becomes more and more convinced of this fact, helped along by various direct and subtle reinforcements.  There was DU there, you're sick, it was the DU.  Correlation is cause.

 

As the situation deteriorates, and the patient's health inevitably deteriorates, the patient becomes more and more desperate to find a cure for his condition.  This search for a cure is stymied by the fact that without an acceptable cause for his condition, he cannot get insurance or other support for medical treatment (particularly if it has been labeled as mental in origin).  To remedy this "injustice," medical condition advocacy groups are formed to get the condition recognized by the medical profession and to try to get financial support for these specific illnesses.  Thus, the medical condition becomes a political issue, and is the basis for concerned politicians to demonstrate their caring.  Politicians don't need a scientific argument of causation, they just need something that plausible.  DU causing illness is pretty plausible on the surface.

 

To my mind, however, this all springs out of a requirement that an illness have a demonstrated "cause" before it can be acknowledged as being legitimate.  I believe that the medical profession is starting to recognize that there may be illnesses that don't fit their diagnostic models very well, and there has been some movement in recent times to be willing to address symptoms a bit more broadly.  I think the general point to recognize is that the individual presenting symptoms is sick (not crazy, ill).  It's the cause of the illness that's in dispute; we shouldn't be demanding to prove the cause before we acknowledge an illness.  I think this leads to a more non-confrontational situation where the object is *getting well*, not trying to find a cause to *prove* that you're sick.

 

 

Jim Barnes

james.g.barnes@att.net

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