Pentagon says ailment may be linked to chemical Spokane man has long suspected

Doctor welcomes Gulf War findings

by Ken Olsen, Staff writer, Spokane Observer, 

November 3, 1999

Four years ago, Spokane Dr. Howard Platter suspected anti-nerve-gas pills and a cocktail of toxic chemicals might have afflicted dozens of his patients with Gulf War syndrome.

Last week, the Pentagon signaled it is beginning to agree with one important part of his diagnosis. It released a study saying Pyridostigmine bromide (PB), issued to an estimated 250,000 soldiers to increase their resistance to nerve gas during Desert Storm, can't be ruled out as a culprit in the mysterious malady.

"These findings are significant," said Platter, who was responsible for treating veterans with Gulf War syndrome until his retirement from the Spokane Veterans Affairs Medical Center a year ago. "If it's true, it's going to open up the whole area of multi-chemical toxicity, and it would explain Gulf War syndrome.

"I don't think it's going to be a dead end."

Ron Porzio, associate director of the Spokane VA Medical Center, confirms Platter was aware of the possible combination of PB and toxic chemicals by the mid-'90s.

"I think he had a lot of colleagues in the VA who agreed with him," Porzio said, "but there wasn't a lot of literature out there."

Dozens of Gulf War veterans going through Platter's examining room beginning in 1995 complained of symptoms such as irritable bowel, migraines and fibromyalgia.

Their illnesses resembled problems experienced by other patients he had seen over the years "who had either sheared sheep, grown up in a hop orchard or one way or another been exposed to pesticides," Platter said.

Nerve gas is "a really potent pesticide," he said. "There's reason to believe there was nerve gas floating around" the Persian Gulf.

Veterans whom Platter examined also told him how the military had used heavy doses of chemical spray to eradicate sand fleas. Soldiers used liberal amounts of insect repellent containing a chemical called DEET.

Those chemicals had the potential to interact with each other to make the soldiers sick, Platter said. PB could have made them more susceptible to some of those chemicals because of the way it affects the nervous system and interacts with other chemicals.

For example, one medic told Platter he had refused to take PB and wouldn't give it to the soldiers in his unit.

Although they were in the combat zone and likely were exposed to many of thechemicals, none has contracted Gulf War syndrome.

"Anecdotally, that's very suspicious that PB might well have been part of the problem," Platter said. "Somebody needs to look at `what if I was standing out there in the desert and I was exposed to the sprays in camp, DEET on the skin, a little bit of nerve agent coming through the air and I had taken PB?' "

The use of PB as an antidote against nerve gas was experimental.

But Platter doesn't fault the military. It was trying to defend against soman -- the fastest-acting nerve gas.

"Saddam was big on chemicals," Platter said. "I believe the guy might have done it. I'll defend those officers' judgment on trying to do something."

The military wasn't using a new drug.

PB has been used for more than three decades to treat a muscle-paralyzing disease called myasthenia gravis and to counteract certain muscle relaxants used in anesthesia.

Platter also cautions against nailing one cause for Gulf War illnesses.

Because of all of the unknowns about Iraq's chemical warfare arsenal and which servicemen received what dose of PB, "there may be more than one syndrome and there may be more than one cause," Platter said.

Other experts give much less weight to PB. The VA's Portland Environmental Hazards Research Center reported a much less significant connection between the drug and Gulf War syndrome about the same time the Pentagon study was released.

"We were unable to find a dominant role for PB," Peter Spencer, one of the toxicology researchers, told the President's Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veteran's Illnesses.

The research also found similar proportions of soldiers contracting Gulf Warsyndrome whether they were stationed in the Gulf before, during or after the war, Spencer said. PB appears to only have been used during the actual war.

Even so, people who took PB and experienced high combat stress appear to have higher risk of developing Gulf War syndrome.

A much larger group of soldiers needs to be examined in order to determine how solid those findings are, Spencer said.

POSTED TO NGWRC WEB Wed Nov 03 18:00:00 1999

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