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Posted : 05/12/2002 12:00 AM
Ross Perot convinced Dr. Robert Haley to start studying Gulf War illness in the early 1990s. The Dallas tycoon and former presidential candidate had approached the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, where Haley is head of epidemiology, wanting to fund research into the cause of Gulf War illness. An ardent veterans' advocate, Perot steadfastly has disputed scientists' contention that stress is responsible for Gulf War illness. In January 1997, Haley published three papers in the Journal of the American Medical Association describing the results of the Perot-funded research. Haley had done questionnaire surveys in which he asked the 249 members of a naval reserve construction battalion about their health and what toxic chemicals they had come into contact with during the Gulf War. He identified six syndromes. The most significant: one that impaired attention, memory and reasoning; another that caused problems with thinking, balance and orientation; and a third that inflicted joint and muscle pain and fatigue. Other Gulf War researchers found Haley's research intriguing, but not convincing. The study involved a comparatively small number of people and relied on the soldiers' own reports of their exposures to pesticides, insect repellent and nerve gas, a far cry from quantifying the actual amounts of chemicals to which they may have been exposed. In fact, most experts say there's very little evidence American troops were exposed to significant amounts of nerve gas during the Gulf War. Haley's studies also failed to compare ill veterans to a suitable control group that hadn't served in the gulf area. "To verify the findings of these studies, further investigation is required and larger numbers of representative veterans need to be evaluated with objective tests," Dr. Kenneth Hyams of the Naval Research Institute in Bethesda, Md., and a colleague wrote in a letter responding to Haley's articles. Haley then wrote a research proposal for a larger, better designed study and submitted it to the Defense Department. His bid twice was rejected by an independent panel that rated the merits of research proposals for the department. Haley appealed, and eventually, Bernard Rostker, the Pentagon official responsible for funding Gulf War research, agreed to give Haley $3 million to repeat his experiments in a larger population with proper control groups. Rostker says Haley never did that. Haley says he did by showing that 350 mostly Army veterans being treated at the Dallas Veterans Affairs Medical Center fell into one of his three major syndrome groups. In any event, Haley spent much of the money doing additional research on the 23 sickest members of his original study group, using cutting-edge technology to document subtle nerve damage to their brain stems and doing tests that suggested their genes might make them more susceptible to nerve gas and pesticides. Government officials complained repeatedly that Haley wasn't living up to the terms of his grant. "Dr. Haley has failed to deliver on his cooperative agreement with the government," Rostker complained at an October 2000 Senate hearing. Many epidemiologists say Haley's research, while scientifically valid, only applies to the small number of people in his study group — not the larger population of ill Gulf War veterans. Haley dismisses the criticism as politically motivated. "We think we're getting to the exact neurophysiologic mechanism of it now ... although much more slowly than we would like to," Haley said. The pace of Haley's research should pick up soon. One of the senators at the October 2000 hearing, Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, has provided $10.5 million for Haley in defense spending bills. Haley says that when he gets the money, he intends to set up a Gulf War illness research institute that will be independent of government oversight. "The veterans can be assured that we're going to go and do the studies that our scientists and our reviewers here think are best," Haley said. Dr. Edward Hyman, a physician in New Orleans, is another critic of the stress theory who received money through direct congressional action rather than the more traditional grant proposal process. Not long after the first reports of Gulf War illness, Hyman reported the disease was caused by infectious bacteria and could be cured with high doses of intravenous antibiotics. Several of Hyman's patients testified on Capitol Hill about their miraculous recoveries. Because there wasn't enough scientific evidence to support these anecdotal reports, Hyman couldn't get federal funding through normal channels to perform a clinical test of his treatment. Then-Rep. Robert Livingston, R-La., responded by attaching a $3.4 million grant for the doctor to the 1996 defense budget. By his own account, Hyman spent most of the money on airline tickets to New Orleans for patients participating in his study. The trial was a success, he says; but every scientific journal he has approached has declined to publish it. Hyman says he expects his research will come out soon. "Meanwhile," Hyman says, "the VA would rather spend millions or billions calling people psychologically ill rather than get to the cause." 05/12/2002 |
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