I warn we're already in the midst of a new epidemic called golf war disease
I'm Charles and I'm Nadine Woodward at Veterans Administration hospitals around the country
Doctors have been trying for years to figure out what is making so many golf war veterans so sick
Well now some of those doctors believe it is a disease a contagious disease
Some medical experts even fear it may be a product of germ warfare. So how serious is this disease as
Kremtu's Tom Grant reports consider what it's done to the veterans
David Smith was a big man in the Persian Gulf a
250 pound Marine Corps powerlifting champion
I hold the Marine Corps record for my weight class, but somewhere in the Gulf somewhere on the way to Kuwait City
He got sick at first. It just seemed like the flu
But the diarrhea never went away when he returned to Lewiston the sickness followed him now. We had chronic fatigue
difficulty speaking and forgetfulness
We fought this for a while
Until finally I found him collapse. He's been unable to control his bowels
Then his wife started coming down with the same symptoms diarrhea even chest pain. I like to talk about that
She broke up first time
Not until this fall at a gathering of several Gulf veterans here in Spokane did David Smith
Realize just how many other veterans have the same problem Tony Willner a Navy communications specialist
Remember is getting sick aboard the ship during the Gulf War. I got extremely sick on December 15th approximately
With nausea and diarrhea is the worst I've ever had my life five years later
It's so bad that many days he's bedridden and having going through pure hell
I'm having all these health problems and chronic pain and chronic fatigue and stuff screwing me up
That's a trap for France, right? Jeffrey Hutchinson was an army Ranger who spent most of Desert Storm behind enemy lines
He watched as the engineers destroyed the biggest depot of Iraqi armaments that he'd ever seen
25 hanger sized bunkers each big enough to hold a b52 these two buildings that I looked in were filled to the ceiling
with artillery rounds mortar rounds
Rockets when the bunker went up smoke rings floated three miles into the air
We came across the border back into Saudi Arabia a lot of guys had diarrhea
Some guys were throwing up over the next five years
Hudson would develop chronic fatigue memory loss night sweats and early this year
Jeffrey Hudson suddenly dropped 60 pounds in a four-month bound of nausea throwing up blood
Blood and when I have diarrhea the veterans had all been told by doctors that it was probably all in their head
I had a VA doctor come right up to me in my face and say why are you here?
Why are you faking all this get their wives and children were showing up with similar symptoms like memory loss and strange rashes
My arm I got off with a bomb
Once my dad came back from Saudi they stayed indeed
Many found that their most intimate contacts had been changed forever
If you have sex you get a burning sensation
Oh, yeah, they're burning burn a lot like battery acid has semen burns when it touches my skin
It's like an acid is being dropped on me. They began getting disturbing advice from doctors
We do not practice unprotected sex any longer and this came on the recommendation of not just one doctor that several doctors
So we have been advised by doctors never to make love again without condoms
We have been advised never to have children which is very difficult. They came up with
I'm 5% fertile
But all my sperm has been genetically altered in there 5% living was genetically altered and deformed
and
Would not be able to love the child. Why would so many of America's strongest and healthiest young people be struck down?
In a minute, we'll take a look at the serving evidence. It could be germ warfare
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This is a fact about Gulf War disease sent by one medical doctor to another it begins
This is not a joke
Many of our military families have been down with the infectious portion of this disease and it's creptoos Tom Grant reports now
It is certainly no joke
After thousands of American veterans came back from the Persian Gulf with inexplicable health complaints
Speculation began about the potential cause of their illnesses among other things. They've considered fumes from burning oil wells
They've considered nerve gas released when Iraqi bunkers were destroyed
You have the health consequences but the president's committee on Gulf War illness is still pushing stress is the cause
The Center for Disease Control has found that Gulf War veterans are three times more likely to be sick than the general public
But it offers only the most vague diagnosis the symptoms clearly fell into a very
Clear clustering that resembled almost entirely chronic fatigue syndrome
No doubt stress or chemical exposures could be at the root of the illnesses of many veterans but experts find those
Explanations lacking when it comes to explaining why so many people have become sick who never went near the gulf
according to a survey by a US Senate committee
77% of spouses and up to 65% of the children of Gulf War illness patients have developed the same or similar symptoms
I don't have any chemical that would injure any single human being
That he could bring home with him and pass on to his wife
Dr. Edward Hyman is now a physician in New Orleans
But he was trained as a chemist before going to medical school
And when he heard all the talk about a nerve gas is the potential cause of Gulf War illness
He began researching the theories of chemical illness transmission
One theory is that the veterans brought the contamination back with them on their clothes in letters or in souvenirs
We tried cleaning that the dirt and stuff out of it won't work indeed veterans did bring back sand and grit in everything
And it smells funny thinking you smell it. I mean, it's really weird. I don't know
By looking into the sarin nerve gas attack in a Tokyo subway Hyman tried to check that theory
He collaborated with a European scientist. He went over there and sent me data
And I told him it did not fit the pattern of the disease
Does it sound they have not done the right care in Los Angeles? Dr. William bombsweiger has been examining the other prevalent theory
stress as a veterans administration physician with expertise in both psychology and neurology
Dr. Bombsweiger is quite skeptical of the talk about post-traumatic stress syndrome
Are you gonna say they suddenly caught a personality disorder and the malingering or gold-bricking? I don't think so
Jeffrey Hutchinson flew to Los Angeles to be examined by dr.
Bombsweiger just as David Smith and Tony Wilner did before him
They were all diagnosed by bombsweiger not with stress
But with physical symptoms of brain damage they all have if they have real golf or disorder blurry
Vision which when you look at it is double vision. That means they've claimed the owner of problems
Dr. Bombsweiger is one of the few doctors in the veterans administration who will actually give a diagnosis of
Gulf War illness and he's put it in writing
It's terminal most of these people are really sick and and it's not that hard to treat and it's not that hard to diagnose
If you're motivated and if you can take the heat from all the people who tell you that you're serious
You're seeing things and you're hearing things and you're imagining things
Bombsweiger believes the veterans have suffered serious damage to their immune systems as this letter from David Smith doctor shows
They are getting infections like those seen in AIDS patients
Bombsweiger believes low-level chemical exposure may have triggered it. It is probably more like a family of related
disorders
precipitated by
Exposure to low-level pharynx yet Bombsweiger says there appears to be a strange virus involved
For scientists are now finding unique viral fragments in the blood of veterans this
Fragment is not found in the regular population
Because of these viral findings even those who subscribe to the chemical theory of Gulf War illness such as dr
Robert Gary of the Tulane University medical school say and I quote
If a virus is found to be associated with this disease
significant resources need to be dedicated to learn whether these microbes are
Contributing to the illnesses of returning veterans and their families as well as the birth defects in their children after the war
They should have been asking themselves
What if a long time ago when golf or disease the hidden enemy continues will introduce you to a doctor?
Who has been asking questions about golf or syndrome for four years now and just couldn't ignore the symptoms the first job is to
Help the poor souls of the suffering
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When soldiers returned from the gulf war with a long list of symptoms one new orleans doctor took notice
In fact these symptoms aching joints chronic fatigue memory loss night sweat headache skin rashes diarrhea and depression
Sounded like something he'd seen before chronic fatigue syndrome it's probably the same causation
Using a microscopic analysis technique that he developed Dr. Edward Hyman began looking for a certain bacteria in the urine of gulf war veterans
Bacteria that other doctors ignored he found them then he hospitalized his patients at the Tiro clinic
And he treated them intravenously with high doses of antibiotics
And two adolescent children of 22 total in the short run everyone got better
A few have relapsed but most of hyman's patients had dramatic recovery men once bedridden went back to work
A pilot who'd been grounded is allowed to fly again
I didn't put him back on flight status I don't know how to make that determination
Hyman theorizes that soldiers in the gulf picked up a bacteria probably one endemic to the region
But one that was fairly isolated until three quarters of a million americans dropped in
But he also considers the possibility that american soldiers may have been exposed to biological weapons
If I were the mad man of baghdad and wanted to wipe out an army ten times my size I wouldn't do it with guns and such
Biological to do it a hell lot better
He looks on his experience with bacterial contagion he thinks the disease is slowly spreading from soldiers to civilians
The sick person coughs or sneezes and those droplets of water from the sneeze float through the air and somebody else inhales it and they get it
Hyman is not alone in his ideas in pennsylvania dr. Katherine leisure has also been working with sick gulf war veterans
He is an unknown infectious agent which is causing this syndrome or this illness in multiple different parts of the body of the Persian gulf veterans
In Irvine California doctors Garth and Nancy Nicholson think they have found that infectious agent
Garth Nicholson is the former chairman of the department of tumor biology at the university of Texas MD Anderson cancer research center
He has published more than 400 scientific papers including nine on gulf war illness
When my stepdaughter came back from her service in operation desert storm she slowly came down with an illness that we now know as gulf war illness
And we found out that many of her colleagues in the 101st airborne had similar illnesses and nobody was doing anything about it
The Nicholson's had also noticed a striking similarity between the complaints of chronic fatigue syndrome and gulf war illness
And they also had ideas about a suspicious microorganism
The type of illness has been described in the medical literature
The bug they suspected is known as mycoplasma incognitus which is like a very tiny bacteria without a cell wall
What the Nicholson's have done is compare blood samples from healthy civilians with samples from sick gulf war veterans
What they found was none of the healthy civilians had mycoplasma infections
But half of the sick gulf war veterans did
We know it's a chronic infection first because the signs and symptoms are chronic
But also what causes the illness is a microorganism that's a contagion, an airborne contagion
And this would explain why the families slowly come down with the illness
This mycoplasma is quite dangerous
It can kill you and there are medical publications on this
Upon further analysis they found something highly unusual in this gulf war mycoplasma
A gene from the AIDS virus spliced into the mycoplasma's genetic structure
It has very unusual genes associated with it that normally should not be there
Therefore we think that it might be a biological weapon that was released during Operation Desert Storm
Genes from the AIDS virus spliced into a mycoplasma, germ warfare
That kind of talk has made the Nicholson's work extremely controversial
Yet there is ample evidence that Saddam Hussein and the Iraqis were experimenting with biological weapons
The U.S. captured many weapons like these capable of delivering biological warheads
A Senate report from 1994 lists nine pages of pathogens shipped from the U.S. to Iraq
Pathogens suitable for use as biological weapons
That's a good indication that
Veterans have documents indicating that such weapons were captured by U.S. forces
And I also have the NBC logs that shows that they captured chemical and biological agents
The Nicholson's believe that if American troops were exposed to Iraqi chemicals
They probably got a dose of germs too
To say that it's only the chemicals that then immunosuppress is naive
Or the Nicholson say soldiers may have been infected by U.S. actions
Soldiers may have received contaminated vaccines, particularly anthrax vaccines
The military has denied assertions about contaminated vaccines and germ warfare
But veterans are skeptical primarily because they have caught the government in the past being less than fully truthful
For instance, this document from 1995 says Mycoplasma incognitus is not known to cause disease in man
But Dr. Larry Goss of Walters, Oklahoma says the government must not be reading its own literature
He has a copy of a workbook used to train military doctors in 1993
A workbook which discusses Mycoplasma fermentin, also known as Mycoplasma incognitus
The most serious presentation of Mycoplasma fermentans infection is that of a fulminate
That means deadly, rapid systemic disease that begins as a flu-like illness
The principal spokesman for the VA seems to know nothing of this
I don't know about that workbook
The Pentagon refused all our requests for interviews on this subject and refused to answer our written questions
But Dr. Goss' personal experience tells him that the Nicholson's have got some part of it right
At the time of Desert Storm Desert Shield, I was working in an army hospital out at Fort Sill
Shortly thereafter, both he and his wife came down with mysterious illnesses
After other treatments failed, he heard what the Nicholson's were suggesting
I elected to treat my wife empirically with recommended treatment at the time that it appeared it was effective was doxycycline
And within a week she got better
Within a week?
Within a week, yes
And I treated myself with it too, I got better
Since then, Goss has treated a number of veterans, including Danny Wolfe, using a protocol developed by the Nicholson
Patients are put on repeated six-week cycles of doxycycline
Most patients are home free, about 90% of them after six cycles
It's a relatively inexpensive treatment, but the VA recommends against it
I've heard from an equally large number of veterans that they tried the doxycycline therapy that had been recommended in letters sent out by Dr. Nicholson
And they've not been helped
That is particularly troublesome to Goss, because he believes this disease is spreading into the general population
It is contagious, we do know that it is in the perspiration
It's been found in the saliva, certainly in sexual secretions, semen and vaginal secretions
So it can be transmitted sexually
It just stands to reason, since it's in the nuclei of the white cells, that blood transfusions can be a problem
It is very scary
The Nicholson's are fearful that because military personnel so often take part in blood drives, that the nation's blood supply is already tainted
Unfortunately, many of these soldiers have Gulf War illness and we've detected this microorganism in their blood
This means the blood supply of the United States is contaminated with this chronic infectious agent
Blood banks say they do screen out people with chronic diseases
There are specific questions we ask about chronic illness, chronic symptoms that would defer donors from donor disease
But because veterans have been told for years that the disease was in their head, not in their blood, doctors believe sick veterans have been donating anyway
Doctors and veterans say the question of the contagious nature of Gulf War illness needs thorough examination now, before it's too late
I think this Gulf War syndrome is a warning shot, it's a shot across our bow, the bow of our ship of civilization
That we better wake up
What we've done is that we've opened a Pandora's box here and we've played dice with God's genes
And it's loose
Yet what the veterans have seen from their government is a pattern of denial, even of retribution
Consider the cases of Dr. William Bomsweiger and Dr. Kathy Leisure
They made presentations to a national conference on environmental medicine just last October
But they made some controversial statements
Soon Leisure was being fired and Bomsweiger had his entire department shut down
Now the VA denies that
So I would be very surprised if either of those allegations by either Dr. Leisure or Dr. Bomsweiger have any merit at all
However, veterans are skeptical of a VA that funds research into theories that burning semen is an allergy
There's a theory that an allergy to human seminal plasma can develop that can cause this burning sensation
Even swelling or reddening of the sexual tissues and we're looking into that further
And veterans are skeptical of a VA that discredits and refuses to fund scientists like the Nicholson's, like Bomsweiger, like Leisure and Hyman
Who have helped them. That's a stark contrast to what sick veterans say about the VA and the Department of Defense
They're not acknowledging the situation at all. I mean every veteran we talk to they are being turned away from the VA
They're telling them it's all in their head and at the same time they're telling us these things
On the other hand they're telling us we shouldn't have children, we can't have it both ways. I mean it's either there or it's not
Nearly six years after the Gulf War, Tony Wildner can no longer hold a job and his wife is often too tired to attend school
I ended up having a drop out of school last winter quarter and it was towards the end of the quarter I just kept getting sicker and sicker
Jeffrey Hutchinson is virtually penniless, jobless and his wife has memory lapses that affect her job too
I make sandwiches for a living and I can't even remember how to make sandwiches sometimes
David Smith and his wife have declared bankruptcy. It has affected every avenue of our life, every single day of our life
Torpedo man Joe Passarelli looks at the recurring rash on his three-year-old daughter
A rash identical to the one that he has suffered ever since the Gulf War and has only one question
All I want them to do is tell me how to stop it. That's all I want from them is to tell me how to stop it
But don't sit there and tell me it doesn't exist
A number of veterans have filed a lawsuit against 88 companies which stole Saddam Hussein materials for biological and chemical weapons
And another group of veterans recently took out a full page ad in the Washington Times calling for a full investigation of the biological aspects of Gulf War disease