Michael Fumento: The Gulf War Syndrome ‘Mystery’
[Michael Fumento (U.S. Army Airborne, 1978–82) is director of the National Journalism Project, where he specializes in health and science issues. He was also embedded three times in Iraq and once in Afghanistan. His website is www.fumento.com]
Gulf War Syndrome (GWS) is back in the news, thanks to a new study released by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), and so is the persistent effort to label it a “mystery.” See, for example, the story by a HealthDay reporter headlined “Gulf War Syndrome Is Real, but Causes Unclear: Report.” Says the article, “its causes, treatment, and potential cure remain unknown.”
A definite mystery, right? Well, no.
There are two “causes” of GWS — the second of which is actually quite interesting, but not mysterious. The first explanation is a normal background rate of disease. That is, among the over 700,000 Americans who served in the Gulf War, there is no more sickness, and the death rate is no higher, than you’d expect in a group of that size and of those demographics after 19 years....
Still, there are different illnesses found among the Gulf vets, which brings us to the second cause. Like the 2006 review, the IOM report also found “no unique syndrome, illness, or symptom complex.” But it did find, on the basis of self-reports (rather than objective examinations), that Gulf vets had an unusually high incidence of “psychiatric disorders [such] as posttraumatic stress disorder, gastrointestinal disorders, joint pain, and respiratory disorders.”
These are all classic symptoms of “mass psychogenic illness,” points out University of Toronto medical historian Edward Shorter, the author of From Paralysis to Fatigue: A History of Psychosomatic Illness in the Modern Era.
But “psychogenic” or “psychosomatic” doesn’t mean “it’s all in your head,” as so many people believe. It simply means it originated in the mind. “There can be real subjective problems,” Shorter says. “It just means that they’re not organic — that they don’t have outside causes like depleted uranium or chemical exposure.” But the GWS “organic lobby,” as he puts it — meaning primarily veterans’ advocacy groups — “insists one or more of those have to be the cause.”...
Perhaps you can argue that if we demand mysteries, the media are merely doing us a service in providing them. But there can be a dark side. Is this how we should repay 700,000 people who sacrificed of themselves for us? Says Shorter, “I don’t think you’re doing these men any favor by encouraging them to think they have a terrible organic disease they don’t have.”
Read entire article at National Review
Gulf War Syndrome (GWS) is back in the news, thanks to a new study released by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), and so is the persistent effort to label it a “mystery.” See, for example, the story by a HealthDay reporter headlined “Gulf War Syndrome Is Real, but Causes Unclear: Report.” Says the article, “its causes, treatment, and potential cure remain unknown.”
A definite mystery, right? Well, no.
There are two “causes” of GWS — the second of which is actually quite interesting, but not mysterious. The first explanation is a normal background rate of disease. That is, among the over 700,000 Americans who served in the Gulf War, there is no more sickness, and the death rate is no higher, than you’d expect in a group of that size and of those demographics after 19 years....
Still, there are different illnesses found among the Gulf vets, which brings us to the second cause. Like the 2006 review, the IOM report also found “no unique syndrome, illness, or symptom complex.” But it did find, on the basis of self-reports (rather than objective examinations), that Gulf vets had an unusually high incidence of “psychiatric disorders [such] as posttraumatic stress disorder, gastrointestinal disorders, joint pain, and respiratory disorders.”
These are all classic symptoms of “mass psychogenic illness,” points out University of Toronto medical historian Edward Shorter, the author of From Paralysis to Fatigue: A History of Psychosomatic Illness in the Modern Era.
But “psychogenic” or “psychosomatic” doesn’t mean “it’s all in your head,” as so many people believe. It simply means it originated in the mind. “There can be real subjective problems,” Shorter says. “It just means that they’re not organic — that they don’t have outside causes like depleted uranium or chemical exposure.” But the GWS “organic lobby,” as he puts it — meaning primarily veterans’ advocacy groups — “insists one or more of those have to be the cause.”...
Perhaps you can argue that if we demand mysteries, the media are merely doing us a service in providing them. But there can be a dark side. Is this how we should repay 700,000 people who sacrificed of themselves for us? Says Shorter, “I don’t think you’re doing these men any favor by encouraging them to think they have a terrible organic disease they don’t have.”