Hunting for Gulf War Syndrome

What did the Army and the Central Intelligence Agency know, and when did they know it? Next month, after an 18-month investigation, the Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses will issue its final report. According to a draft, the committee believes the Pentagon has not acted credibly. Former CIA officials also charge that the agency and the Pentagon are concealing information. If history is a guide, whatever the report says, the issue will fester for years.

Some 80,000 veterans think they became ill because of their Gulf service, many from exposure to Iraqi chemical or biological weapons. As with other postwar claims about sickness from chemical or biological agents, official responses have been less than satisfying. The Gulf veterans’ symptoms, termed Gulf War syndrome, include nervous disorders and chronic fatigue. The Army maintains that no evidence links the illnesses with events in the gulf.

Last year, another presidential committee issued a report criticizing experiments in which thousands of unwitting Americans were exposed to radiation. The tests were conducted from the 1940s to the 1970s, several by the Defense Department. Chastened by such disclosures, the military presumably is now more careful about exposing humans to risky materials. But while the situation may have improved, the army’s oversight and record-keeping are still wanting.

After years of denying that troops were even exposed to chemical weapons in the Gulf War, the Pentagon recently acknowledged that at least 20,000 may have been. Classified documents, according to the ex-CIA officials, show the numbers to be much higher.

As coalition forces destroyed chemical weapons stockpiles, traces of nerve and blistering agents wafted into the air. When Czech chemical-detection devices sounded alarms, Czech troops donned masks and protective gear. Incredibly, U.S. troops nearby were not told to wear theirs. On top of this, the Army says it cannot find all the logs that recorded the destruction of the ammunition stockpiles.

Another suspected cause of Gulf War syndrome has been equally mishandled--possible side effects from a preventive antidote to nerve gas, called pyridostigmine bromide. Though considered an investigational drug by the Food and Drug Administration, pyridostigmine pills were given to as many as 400,000 troops.

A 1994 hearing by the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee revealed that some troops took the drug for a day, others for months. But the Army kept no records of who took the pills or for how long. Moreover, the Senate committee found that while pyridostigmine bromide might lessen the effects of some nerve agents, it could weaken the standard treatment for others. Which others? Sarin, for one, tons of which were stockpiled in Iraqi arsenals.

The Army has a long history of questionable approaches to chemical risk. Twenty-five years after the Vietnam War, veterans are still bitter about their exposure to the defoliant Agent Orange. Similarly, the Army’s chemical and germ warfare tests in the 1950s and ‘60s continue to upset people who believe they were victimized. In those tests, the Army sprayed bacteria and chemicals over hundreds of populated areas, including a Washington bus terminal, along the Pennsylvania Turnpike and in the New York subways. The object was to see how more lethal agents might spread.

One targeted area was the Clinton Elementary School in Minneapolis, Minn. In the early 1950s, testers sprayed zinc cadmium sulfide at the school from rooftops nearby, evidently assuming they were causing no harm. They should have known better. Even in the 1930s, cadmium compounds were understood to be toxic to the kidney, heart and other organs.

After learning, in 1994, that they had been unwitting guinea pigs, hundreds of former students worried that the test was responsible for their subsequent illnesses. Congress appropriated $1 million for an assessment of possible harm. A committee of the National Academy of Sciences has been looking into the matter for two years. Its findings are due in January.

Meanwhile, recently declassified reports show that, in a 1958 test, a plane sprayed 5,000 pounds of zinc cadmium sulfide on a flight from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico. Because of unexpected winds, “the test was incomplete, but it was partly successful, since some stations 1,200 miles away in New York State detected the particles.”

Thus, in the matter of radiation and chemical and biological warfare, millions of Americans have been placed at risk by their own government. In every instance, information pointing to health risks was available.

Whether the Army has been responsible for massive illnesses seems likely to remain in dispute. But even this possibility has hurt its credibility. Just as Vietnam veterans remain angry decades after their exposures, Gulf veterans may well carry their rage into the 21st century.

Implementing measures to avoid risky large-scale exposures would be in everyone’s interests. Assessing the possible effect of such exposures should be done in advance--not only by medical and scientific experts, but ethicists as well. Careful record keeping of who might be exposed, and how extensively, is a minimally decent requirement.

Like other institutions, the Defense Department already has review boards that pass on the safety of proposals involving human research. Typically, these experiments involve relatively few subjects. But when considering the potential effects of a project on thousands--or millions--of people, a far higher order of concern is required. Distinctively calling such oversight groups “population protection panels” might better describe the breadth of their responsibility.

Whatever the label, the military’s spotty record on chemical and biological safety needs not just review, but dedicated correction.