Sir

Your News report (Nature 410, 135; 2001) mentioned the negative comments made by a former US Department of Defense (DoD) employee, Bernard Rostker, and by Philip Landrigan, a Clinton committee appointee, about our published research on Gulf War syndrome. Because your story stated that our work was supported by a private foundation and non-peer-reviewed grant funds, and involved small patient samples, readers might be left with the impression that our findings are invalid.

This is not true. Over the past four years we have published 12 papers in prominent scientific journals establishing that there is a new syndrome with three variants in Gulf War veterans of a naval reserve battalion (see, for example, ref. 1). Our study of 63 cases and 186 controls identified strong associations with risk factors for exposure to sarin nerve gas and related chemicals. We have also identified affected brain regions and a genetic predisposition using a variety of techniques. Our design and sample sizes are equivalent to those used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in such classic epidemic investigations as toxic shock syndrome, Four-Corners hantavirus pneumonia and AIDS.

The funding proposals for all our studies were rejected by the DoD's peer-review system but were funded by a private foundation or after appeal to higher government levels. Our results later passed rigorous peer review before publication in respected scientific journals. A consistent publishing record is a better indicator of scientific merit than the sources of funding, particularly in the politically charged environment of Gulf War research.