Veterans of the Gulf War also appear to be benefiting from the Bush Administration's 'war on terrorism' stance, given that new investigations into Gulf War syndrome shave been announced. Ten years after the fact, the government has launched an initiative to sift through findings of nearly 200 studies pertaining to the proposed condition—a disorder thought to afflict 1 in 7 of the veterans.

The 12-member advisory panel is the first to comprise only research scientists and veterans. Various groups, such as the Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses, have been formed previously to assess Gulf War syndrome, “but they have included mainly retired generals and admirals, not scientists,” according to panel member Robert Haley, chief epidemiologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. “This is the biggest thing that has happened to the recognition of Gulf War syndrome in the last 10 years,” he says.

The existence of a real syndrome has always been a matter of debate. John Feussner, Chief R&D Officer for the Veterans Health Administration says, “The absence of a definable syndrome does not negate the very real symptoms of ill health suffered by many veterans of the Gulf War, nor does it reduce VA's [Veteran's Administration] commitment to find the cause or causes of their illnesses.”

Although government money has been spent investigating the condition, Hayley says it's notable that there have been no 'requests for proposals' issued by the National Institutes of Health as there have been to investigate other diseases. The (VA) is an office of the US government that changes with each new administration. Although previous VA studies have failed to confirm health problems of veterans, new work supports physiological changes that may underlie the condition.

Speaking at a December 2001 press conference, VA Secretary Anthony Principi noted that preliminary evidence suggests that Gulf War veterans are nearly twice as likely to develop amyotrophic lateral sclerosis as veterans who were not deployed. Another new study conducted by VA researchers of 30,000 veterans reports a 2.8-fold increase in birth defects in the offspring of Gulf War veterans (Ann. Epidemiol. 11, 504; 2001).

According to Haley, symptoms are traceable to damage of the basal ganglia and brain stem and possibly the thalamus. Two agents may have contributed to these changes, nerve gas arising from destruction of Iraqi weapons storage facilities and organophosphate insecticides used to reduce the risk of insect-borne diseases, he says.