There is no question that many U.S. military personnel have fallen sick since returning from the Persian Gulf in 1991. An estimated 10,000 Desert Storm veterans have reported unusual health problems–the complaints include joint pain, tremors, fatigue, memory loss and intermittent diarrhea–and 80,000 have been concerned enough to seek special government health screenings. Studies comparing gulf warriors with veterans who were stationed elsewhere at the time have found no significant health differences. But researchers continue to search for wartime hazards the afflicted vets might have encountered.
Chemical weapons such as sarin (a nerve agent) and mustard gas (a blistering agent) have always been suspects. Even if they weren’t carried on Saddam’s Scud missiles, they could have been dispersed into the atmosphere when allied forces bombed Iraqi storage sites. But no one has shown that the ailing vets were exposed to any particular weapon. And chemical weapons normally cause severe immediate reactions, not chronic maladies.
A likelier suspect is the drug that Pentagon officials gave to 400,000 U.S. troops in the hope of protecting them from chemical weapons. The drug, pyridostigmine, isn’t particularly toxic by itself. But researchers at Duke University and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center reported last spring that it can cause extensive nerve damage when combined with the insect repellents Deet and Permethrin, both of which were widely used during the war. The finding came from experiments in which chickens suffered tremors and muscle weakness after receiving these so-called cholinesterase inhibitors in various combinations. The researchers have since examined 249 members of a mobile naval battalion to see if their health problems fit the hypothesis, but they have yet to release their results. So the guessing continues. The evidence is still too sketchy to do much else.
