Gulf War Mortality Figures Alarm Veterans

Vietnam Veterans of America calls for appointment of Special Counsel

****************************************************************************

WASHINGTON, DC, February 22, 2002 (ENS) - More than 34,000 Gulf War veterans are dying at a rate almost ten times higher than a comparable group, despite
being told by Pentagon officials they were not exposed to chemical agents after Operation Desert Storm.

In 2000, the Department of Defense (DoD) revised its estimate of the dispersion pattern of chemical agent fallout from the demolition of the Iraqi chemical weapons depot at Khamisiyah in southern Iraq, which was destroyed by U.S. troops in 1991. The DoD first estimated that 99,825 veterans had been exposed to low levels of the nerve agent sarin after the demolition.

In 2000, DoD remodeled the Khamisiyah plume exposure data. The new model excluded 34,418 veterans who had been told they had been in the Khamisiyah downwind hazard zone. The agency then added 34,638 other Khamisiyah area veterans to the new exposure model, bringing the total number of exposed
veterans to 100,045.

In late 2001, the Veterans Benefits Administration's Data Management Office (DMO) decided to compare mortality figures between the veterans excluded
from the new DoD model and the veterans who were added in their place.

The mortality numbers released by the Veteran's Administration show that of the 34,418 who were excluded from DoD's remodeling of the Khamisiyah
chemical weapons fallout plume, 1,011 have died, compared to just 105 of the 34,638 veterans who were added to the revised Khamisiyah plume model in
2000.

"This pattern in entirely consistent with past practices concerning information relating to toxic exposures in Gulf War veterans," said Thomas Corey, national president of the Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA). "We will request from Attorney General [John] Ashcroft the appointment of a special counsel to investigate this and other matters related to the Pentagon's conduct in dealing with Gulf War illnesses."

Since 1995, the Pentagon's Directorate for Deployment Health Support has spent more than $150 million on Gulf War related research projects, Corey noted. None of these studies have been peer reviewed or otherwise subjected to independent scrutiny or the standards of legitimate medical science, he charged.

Corey reiterated VVA's call for the creation of an independent National Institute of Veterans Health within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study veteran's medical problems.

"We cannot have the agency that created the problem studying the problem," Corey said. "An independent institute within NIH that is dedicated to studying the full range of health problems affecting veterans is the only way to guarantee that we get good science and therefore good medical treatment for veterans."

POSTED TO NGWRC WEB Mon Feb 25 13:06:53 2002