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The most toxic conflict: Niamh Delaney reports on the mystery of Gulf war illnesses and the measures the US and UK governments are taking to understand them. (News Feature).

Article Excerpt
Alex Izett was 21 years old and a member of the UK's Royal Engineers when the first Gulf war broke out. He was never deployed to the Gulf, but became ill two years after being vaccinated in pre-deployment preparation. In May 2003, he won a landmark case against the Ministry of Defence (MoD), where his osteoporosis -- extremely unusual in a young man -- was deemed auto-immune induced, or related to the vaccinations he received.

In June 2003, the MoD lost a High Court appeal against the award of a pension to Shaun Rusling, a former parachute regiment medical officer, who was deployed to the Gulf and suffered from multiple medical symptoms on his return.

Rusling was one of thousands of troops who came back from war complaining of a wide range of ailments -- aching joints, headaches, difficulty concentrating, memory loss, respiratory and digestive problems, skin and musculo-skeletal complaints, convulsions, mood swings and depression.

Yet initially, their symptoms were dismissed by some as posttraumatic stress disorder. The press dubbed the phenomenon 'Gulf war syndrome'. Twelve years on, no single cause has been found for the ill-health of veterans, Numerous causes for the Illnesses have been suggested -- vaccinations against biological weapons, such as anthrax and the plague, the ingestion of NAPS tablets (pyridostigmine bromide), exposure to depleted uranium and burning oil wells, contact with pesticides and low-level nerve gas.

Recently, US research has identified exposure to pesticides and sarin (nerve gas) as a cause of neurological damage and possibly Gulf war syndrome, and revealed that some people are genetically predisposed to the disorder. No effective treatment for the disease has been developed but scientists In the US say that an exercise programme has produced tremendous overall improvement in some troops suffering from the syndrome.

A single syndrome?

The misnomer...