US congressmen moved by words of Gulf War widow
Date: 19-Jun-02
Country: UK
Author: Kate Kelland
Samantha Thompson, whose husband Nigel - an ex Royal Navy serviceman - died in January, told the hearing on Gulf War Syndrome that Nigel was sure he would succumb to the cocktail of chemicals he was exposed to during the 1991 conflict.
"Our lives have been literally turned upside down," Thompson, her voice breaking with emotion, said of the five months she and her seven-year-old daughter Hannah had endured since her husband died from Motor Neurone Disease at just 44.
"Everything revolved around Nigel and his care. My days were spent caring for him practically 24 hours a day...Now there is no care to be done...It is a very quiet house now," she said.
A panel of three congressmen and former U.S. presidential candidate Ross Perot - in London for the first ever hearing by a U.S. congressional committee in the British parliament - said they were determined that Thompson's death and the suffering of thousands of other veterans would not go unrecognised.
"CHEMICAL CESSPOOL"
"The gulf war was a chemical cesspool," independent Congressman Bernie Sanders said in his opening remarks.
"It boggles my mind why in the U.S.... the many men who have served their country and put their lives on the line have been treated in the shameful way in which they have."
Clearly moved by Samantha Thompson's testimony, Republican Congressman Christopher Shays, chairman of the committee, turned to her daughter Hannah saying:
"Your daddy, young lady, was a hero."
Gulf War Syndrome, or Gulf War Illness, is blamed for a range of medical symptoms ranging from tiredness, convulsions and respiratory and digestive problems to nerve damage, pain, numbness and psychological difficulties.
Around 125,000 of the 700,000 U.S. Desert Storm troops and some 5,000 of the 50,000 British Gulf War personnel complain of some or all of the symptoms.
The causes of the illness have been hotly debated and linked variously to the inoculations the veterans received, pesticides they handled, smoke from burning fires and stress.
Last year, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs said Gulf War service personnel were almost twice as likely as other veterans to develop the fatal neurological ailment Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, known as Motor Neurone Disease in Britain.
This was the first official acknowledgement of a scientific link between Gulf War service and a specific disease.
John Nichol, a former Royal Air Force navigator who was shot down during the conflict and captured by the Iraqis, called for a public inquiry into Gulf War Syndrome to look at how the cocktail of chemicals, including multiple vaccinations, nerve gas and depleted uranium, might have affected those serving.
"If there is nothing to hide, why shy away from an open inquiry to establish why our veterans are sick and dying?"
Perot, a Texas billionaire who has funded research into Gulf War illness, expressed anger at the attitudes of the UK and U.S. political and medical establishments which have tended to put the sickness down to the stresses and strains of warfare.
"This is not stress. This is troops in combat wounded by chemical agents," he said, calling for an immediate change of attitude to those who fought and were now dying for their countries. "We need action this day."
Perot and Shays were scheduled today to give a presentation to British parliamentarians on progress being made in the U.S. to identify the causes of Gulf War illness.