Posts Tagged ‘Gulf War Syndrome’
Michael Fumento on Gulf War Birth Defects Study
Michael Fumento wrote an an essay nicely puncturing the hype surrounding a study of birth defect rates in Gulf War veteran. As Fumento notes, press coverage of the study has trumpeted the study as finding that “Birth Defects High in Children of 1991 War Veterans” as the Baltimore Sun put it.
In fact, the study found that the rate of birth defects among children of Gulf War veterans was lower than for the general population. What it did find were a few specific birth defects where the children in its study had a higher incidence. But should this be cause for alarm?
The study looked at 5,000 children born to Gulf war vets. It examined the incidence rates for 48 birth defects born to male and female veterans of the Persian Gulf war.
As Fumento points out, even with a 95 percent confidence interval for the study, purely by chance we would expect there to be at least two specific birth defects categories that have higher incidence than the general population. And what do you know, for children of male veterans, the study found precisely two birth defects — an increased incidence in two types of heart valve defect.
Additionally, Fumento writes,
The researchers did only assign risk ratings to 26 different categories, which is still enough to make two excesses unexceptional. But why only 26 categories? Because in the others there was not a single defect in the Gulf vets’ children.
Similarly, for children of female veterans of the Gulf War, the study found a higher incidence of one birth defect — a genital urinary tract defect — out of the 48 categories examined. As Fumento writes, “And again, for most categories there were no risk ratings because there were no birth defects.”
Fumento is quick to point out that the researchers conducting the study accurately reported their results, but the news media chose to cherry pick the data and only report on the handful of birth defects where the incidence was higher. Fumento also points to a larger study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that looked at 34,000 infants born to Gulf War veterans and found no evidence for an increase risk in birth defects.
Source:
Media Blow Gulf Vet Birth Defect Study. Michael Fumento, Scripps Howard, June 12, 2003.
Tags: Gulf War Syndrome
British Study Concludes There Is No Gulf War Syndrome
Great Britain’s government-funded Media Research Council released a study in May looking at all available scientific research on the health of British veterans of the first Persian Gulf War. It concluded that there is simply no single Gulf War Syndrome.
The MRC report concludes,
There is no unique Gulf War Syndrome. . . . In short there is no evidence from UK orientational research for a single syndrome related specifically to service in the Gulf.
. . .
The only common Gulf conflict-related experiences seem to involve ill veterans’ perception of their health. Gulf veterans do have an increased risk of post-traumatic stress disorder but it only affects around 3% of them, which is not enough to explain all Gulf veterans’ illnesses. Depression and alcohol are much more important health risk factors.
The report did find that Gulf War veterans were at an increased risk of post-traumatic stress disorder
Sources:
Gulf War Syndrome ‘does not exist’. The BBC, May 25, 2003.
No Such Thing As Gulf Syndrome, Say Scientists. Western Mail and Echo, May 26, 2003.
Gulf Syndrome ‘Does Not Exist’. Sunday Mercury, May 25, 2003.
Official: Gulf Syndrome ‘is a myth’. Colin Brown, Sunday Telegraph (London), May 25, 2003.
Veterans’ Anger At Doctors’ Attack On Gulf War Sickness Crusade. Western Daily Press, May 26, 2003.
Tags: Gulf War Syndrome
Gulf War Syndrome and Lou Gehrig’s Disease
Back in December, the Defense and Veterans Affairs Departments announced that it had finally(!) found a disease that seemed to be positively correlated with serving during the Persian Gulf War. As the headlines in newspapers across the country announced, soldiers who served in the Persian Gulf War were twice as likely to contract Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS) than soldiers who did not serve in the Persian Gulf War. So there really is a Gulf War Syndrome after all right? Not so fast.
First, although it trumpeted this study, the Defense and Veteran Affairs Department still have not subjected the study to peer review. The announcement that the government would provide special compensation for Persian Gulf war veterans with ALS was absurdly premature given the lack of a formal peer review.
Second, the claims of increased incidence of ALS rely on an extremely small number of cases. Of 700,000 soldiers who fought in the Persian Gulf War, there were only 40 identified cases of ALS, compared to 67 cases among 1.8 million soldiers who served at the same time but not in the Persian Gulf War. This yields a rate of 3.5 cases per million for non-Gulf soldiers compared to a rate of 6.7 cases per million for those who served in the Persian Gulf. Such low numbers of cases, however, means that normal statistical variations can have enormous affects.
Third, this appears to likely be the explanation considering that not all soldiers have the increased incidence. There is no additional incidence of ALS, for example, among British soldiers who served in the Persian Gulf compared to British soldiers who served elsewhere. Moreover, the additional incidence among U.S. soldiers varies oddly across branches.
There is no difference in incidence, for example, among Navy and Marine Corps veterans, but Air Force Gulf veterans were 2.7 times more likely to develop ALS and Army veterans twice as likely to develop ALS.
As Richard Green of the United Kingdom’s Motor Neurone Disease Association told New Scientist,
You would expect to find 33 cases of ALS in a group the size of the veterans group — and about 85 in a group the size of the non-Gulf War group. So you could also ask the question: why is the number of cases so low in the non-Gulf War group? That is the problem with these kinds of studies and these kinds of statistics. You are dealing with such small numbers of cases that a handful of extra cases can distort the final figures.
Add to that the fact that two previous studies of ALS and Gulf War veterans found no increased risk, and this study means far less than the Pentagon would have you believe.
Source:
US links fatal disorder to Gulf War service. Emma Young, New Scientist, December 1, 2001.
U.S. reports disease link to Gulf War. Sheryl Gay Stolberg, The New York Times, December 11, 2001.
Tags: Gulf War Syndrome