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Wednesday, October 20, 1999
Pentagon won't rule out link between
malady and nerve gas antidote
By ROBERT BURNS
AP Military Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon raised the possibility
Tuesday that a nerve gas antidote taken by as many as 250,000
U.S. troops in the 1991 Persian Gulf War may be a cause of the
mysterious Gulf War syndrome that has left thousands of veterans
with unexplained maladies.
In presenting the results of an extensive review of existing
scientific studies of the antidote, known as pyridostigmine bromide,
or PB, Pentagon officials said they cannot rule out the possibility
of a link. On the other hand, they said much more study is needed
before they can reach a firm conclusion.
“We just don't know,” said Bernard Rostker, head
of the Defense Department's Gulf War illnesses investigations.
Among the veterans who took PB while serving in the Gulf is
James Silvester, 28, of Odessa, Texas, who said in an interview
Tuesday he sometimes suffers from headaches and peeling skin that
he believes is related to his wartime service.
“I'm glad they haven't ruled that out as a cause,”
Silvester said of the PB investigation. “Of course we do
have some sick veterans who never got the PB or anything like
that.”
One of the leading critics of the Pentagon's investigation
of possible causes of Gulf War syndrome, Sen. Jay Rockefeller,
R-W.Va., said the Pentagon never should have given troops PB in
the first place.
“In my view, the conclusion was inescapable that military
men and women were being needlessly subjected to a possibly unsafe
and ineffective treatment,” Rockefeller said. “We were
using an experimental drug, without informed consent.”
The review, conducted by the Rand Corp., a Pentagon-financed
research group in Santa Monica, Calif., examined about 1,000 published
studies on PB, which has been used for decades to treat the neurological
disease myasthenia gravis. In the Gulf War, it was given to troops
as protection against potential attack by the nerve agent soman,
even though there was no evidence to suggest Iraq had soman or
had weaponized it.
Beatrice Alexandra Golomb of Rand Corp., who headed the review,
told a Pentagon news conference she concluded that PB cannot be
ruled out as a cause of the ill-defined Gulf War symptoms.
“This does not imply that it is necessarily a causal factor,
only that the possibility cannot be dismissed,” she wrote.
She is a physician at San Diego Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
Dr. Robert Haley, chief of epidemiology at the University of
Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, said the Rand report
bolsters his theory that PB, combined with other chemicals like
pesticides, caused damage to the deep brain structures of some
veterans.
“It will stimulate more scientists to get involved with
studying it and it will get more doctors in exploring treatments
that might improve it,” Haley said.
The Pentagon said more research will be conducted. In the meantime,
the results show the Pentagon must learn more not only about what
happened in the Gulf but also about the effectiveness of PB.
“This work breaks new ground, presenting a great deal
of information that wasn't available to decision-makers during
the Gulf War,” Rostker said.
Rostker said that in the future the Pentagon would consider
more carefully before giving PB to soldiers. Yet, if there were
credible evidence that soman was a threat to U.S. troops, he would
recommend they take the drug, he said, since it is the only known
defense against the deadly nerve gas.
To date, the Pentagon has spent $133 million searching for
causes of Gulf War syndrome. Among the potential causes examined
but determined to be unlikely are psychological stress and exposure
to chemical weapons. Rostker said Tuesday he doubts the Pentagon
will ever find a single cause for the mysterious maladies.
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