s findings will assist new VA committee with preventing post-war illnesses

? Headaches. Fatigue. Joint pain. Muscle pain. Skin rashes. Nausea. Constant diarrhea. Neurological problems.

For years, thousands of Gulf War veterans who have experienced these symptoms have battled the government about what caused their illnesses. Now, as the government acknowledges a link to service in the gulf in 1990 and 1991, Washington decision-makers are trying to apply lessons from Gulf War illness to the new war on terrorism.

A state-funded study of more than 2,000 Kansas Gulf War veterans will be getting their attention. The Topeka, Kan.-based researcher who led the project, Lea Steele, has just been named to a new committee advising the Department of Veterans Affairs on future Gulf War illness studies.

“I think there are concerns that the federal research effort has not produced very many answers,” said Steele, an epidemiologist at the Kansas Health Institute. “The point is, the Gulf War veterans have been saying they are sick since they got back; it’s been a problem for 11 years. It’s much more urgent now that we’re sending people to war again.”

Hard to spot

As many as 90,000 veterans who served in the Gulf War have reported maladies including memory loss, balance problems, anxiety, fatigue, nausea, diarrhea and respiratory ailments.

But most of those symptoms are difficult to diagnose and can’t usually be spotted, Steele said: “Just looking at them, you wouldn’t know.”

Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi named Steele and other members of the committee last month, selecting some of the harshest critics of government research to date. “Gulf War veterans have waited too long for answers to many of their questions,” Principi said.

He acted on the heels of a VA report that veterans of the war on Iraq are nearly twice as likely to develop Lou Gehrig’s disease as other military personnel.

Released in December, the report represents the first time the federal government has recognized a scientific connection between service in the gulf and a specific disease.

‘Don’t want answers’

Many veterans remain more skeptical than encouraged by the findings. In results published one year earlier in The American Journal of Epidemiology, the Kansas study concluded that the link is clear.

“For one-tenth of what the VA and Department of Defense have spent, we found out a lot more in a short amount of time,” said Jim Bunker, 42, an Army veteran who helped convince the Kansas legislature to pay for the state research.

The federal government has done millions of dollars worth of studies, but an advisory panel to former President Clinton concluded that none of the research had validated any specific cause.

“They don’t want the answers. If they would take an honest look at what really happened and solve this puzzle, that would better protect veterans on down the road,” said Bunker, who lives in Topeka.

Bunker served in Iraq during Desert Storm, which Kansas researchers said made him more likely to experience symptoms of Gulf War illness. He left Iraq when he started getting seizures, and still suffers from headaches, upset stomach, nausea and vomiting, severe coughing, massive joint pain, body aches and fatigue.

In an interview, Bunker often mentions thick smoke from burning oil wells.

“How can you sit there and breathe in all that heavy soot, and it’s not going to affect your health?” he asked.