[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 119 (Wednesday, September 10, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1711]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      ADDRESSING GULF WAR ILLINESS

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. BERNARD SANDERS

                               of vermont

                    in the house of representatives

                     Wednesday, September 10, 1997

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank Chairman Porter, 
Congressman Bill Young, ranking member Dave Obey, and their staffs at 
the Appropriations Committee for all of the help that they have 
provided me in attempting to address one of the most important issues 
facing American veterans, and one of the great medical dilemmas facing 
our entire country. And that is that over 70,000 Persian Gulf veterans, 
including hundreds in my own State of Vermont, continue to suffer from 
gulf war illness, and that 6 years after that war's completion, there 
is still no understanding of the cause of that illness or an effective 
treatment.
  As you know Chris Shays, the chairman of the Human Resources 
Subcommittee has held 10 hearings on gulf war illness since March 1996. 
As a member of that committee, I cannot begin to express to you the 
frustration that many of us feel regarding the ineptitude of the 
Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration in responding 
adequately and effectively to the needs of those veterans who continue 
to hurt.
  Pure and simple, the bottom line is that 6 years after the end of the 
Persian Gulf war, the Department of Defense and the Veterans 
Administration still have not developed an understanding of the cause 
of gulf war illnesses or an effective treatment protocol. In fact, 
their record has been so inadequate that last week the Presidential 
Advisory Committee on Persian Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses indicated 
that it will be recommending to the President that an independent 
agency, outside of the Pentagon, take on responsibility for 
investigating the health effects of low level chemical and biological 
weapons exposures. According to Arthur L. Caplan, a bioethics professor 
at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the panel, ``the 
Pentagon is not credible to continue inquiries that veterans and the 
public do not find persuasive.'' And the New York Times writes, ``a 
special White House panel said today, that the Pentagon had lost so 
much credibility in its investigation of the release of Iraqi chemical 
weapons in the 1991 Persian Gulf War that oversight of the 
investigation must be taken away from the Defense Department 
permanently.''
  Mr. Speaker, I am happy to inform my colleagues that there is 
language in the Labor-HHS Appropriations Committee report which funds 
an independent scientific research program into how chemical exposures 
in the Persian Gulf relate to the illnesses suffered by as many as 
70,000 of our veterans. This research program is to be implemented 
through the Secretary of Health, with the National Institute of 
Environmental Health Sciences as the lead agency. The committee has 
agreed to appropriate $1.1 million for fiscal year 1998 for this 
important research, and has committed to fund this research program at 
a level of $7 million over a 5-year period. What is important here is 
that for the first time, a governmental entity outside the Pentagon or 
the Veterans Administration will be looking at the role that chemicals 
may have played in gulf war illness--and that is a major breakthrough.

  This report language is strongly supported by the American Legion, 
the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the National Gulf War Resource Center. 
Veterans and Americans all over this country are less than impressed, 
to say the least, about the role of the DOD and the VA in this entire 
process.
  Mr. Speaker, the military theater in the Persian Gulf was a chemical 
cesspool. Our troops were exposed to chemical warfare agents, leaded 
petroleum, widespread use of pesticides, depleted uranium, and burning 
oil wells. In addition, they were given a myriad of pharmaceuticals as 
vaccines. Further, and perhaps most importantly, as a result of waiver 
from the FDA, hundreds of thousands of troops were given pyridostigmine 
bromide. Pyridostigmine bromide, which was being used as an antinerve 
gas agent, had never been used in this capacity before. Under an 
agreement between the DOD and the FDA in regards to this waiver, the 
DOD was required to collect data on any use of pyridostigmine bromide. 
However, the DOD failed to keep this data and in many cases, there are 
no records to indicate who even took this investigational drug, how 
much they took, and under what conditions they took it.
  For 5 years, the Pentagon denied that our soldiers had been exposed 
to any chemical warfare agents. Finally, after being forced to admit 
that there were exposures, they suggested that the exposures were 
limited. The DOD's first estimates were 400 troops exposed, then 20,000 
troops. In July of this year, the DOD and CIA gave us their best 
estimate--that as many as 98,910 American troops could have been 
exposed to chemical warfare agents due to destruction of ``the Pit'' in 
Khamisyah, an Iraqi munitions facility. Mr. Chairman, I would not be 
surprised if this estimate is revised upward in the not too distant 
future, as more information is gathered regarding other incidents of 
chemical warfare exposure.
  Mr. Speaker, an increasing number of scientists now believe that the 
synergistic effect of chemical exposures, plus the investigational 
vaccine pyridostigmine bromide, may well be a major cause of the health 
problems affecting our soldiers.
  Dr. Robert W. Haley of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical 
Center concludes that the gulf war syndromes are caused by low-level 
chemical nerve agents combined with other chemicals, including 
pyridostigmine bromide. Doctors Mohammed Abou-Donia and Tom Kurt, of 
Duke University Medical Center, in studies using hens, found that a 
combination of two pesticides used in the gulf war, in combination with 
pyridostigmine bromide causes neurological deficits in test animals, 
similar to those reported by some gulf war veterans. Dr. Satu Somani 
and Doctors Garth and Nancy Nicolson have all completed research which 
concludes that gulf war veterans' illnesses may be due to combinations 
of chemical exposures in the Persian Gulf. Dr. Claudia Miller reports 
that there are similarities between the gulf war veterans' symptoms and 
those of some civilians exposed to organophosphate pesticides, 
carbamate pesticides, or low levels of volatile organic chemical 
mixtures. Dr. William Rea concludes that neurotoxic environmental 
exposures and other personal exposures prior to and during deployment 
in the gulf may have resulted in chronically deregulated immune and 
nonimmune detoxification systems, resulting in multisymptom illness. In 
addition a number of these scientists and physicians have devised 
treatment protocols for gulf war illnesses and some are reporting 
success in their treatments. These are the types of research programs 
and treatment protocols which our Government should be aggressively 
pursuing for the sake of our veterans, and what I hope will be 
accelerated as a result of this language.

  The National Institute of Environmental Health is eager and ready to 
begin research and to provide its results to Congress in an expedient 
manner. This research program will address three areas of which are 
necessary to better understand the nature of the program. These are: 
First, capitalizing on the existing body of knowledge of a similar 
disorder called multiple chemical sensitivity, second, defining 
individual genetic differences in the ability to metabolize 
environmental agents commonly encountered during Desert Storm, and 
third, developing a better understanding of how multiple exposures 
interact to exert their toxicity on an organism. Moreover, the research 
program is to include an investigation of treatment protocols which are 
being developed in the public and private sectors for illnesses 
resulting from chemical and other environmental exposures.
  Once again, I'd like to thank Chairman Porter and the Appropriations 
Committee and staff for their cooperation in this effort. I look 
forward to learning about the progress of this research program as it 
is implemented, upon enactment of this bill.

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