Gulf War Illness
At the present time the Veterans Administration just started a 4 year study on Gulf War Illness. Below are the guidelines of this study and who is doing it. As this study kicks off, you will notice that is has not done anything it was supposed to do. Follow the links and we will give our take on how horrible this is for Gulf War Veterans and how the VA has no idea how to help us.
The Gulf War Landscape gives you the overall history and background of the issues.
It looks like Veterans with active claims are not invited to be in this study. They were to advertise for pertiswapents and never did. Guess we will use the healthy Vets only.
Long read but a good one. It shows how the VA and DOD know of the issues Veterans are going through while the VA keeps denying claims. The chart below shows that the illness gets worse with time.
Page 27 of 123
Table 2. Change in Unexplained Multisymptom Illness (MSI) Over Time: Gulf War Veterans Who Reported MSI Lasting 6 Months or Longer After January 1991
Status of Illness in 2005 Proportion of 2,016 Gulf War Veterans
Completely recovered 2 %
Much improved 7 %
Somewhat improved 14 %
About the same 36 %
Somewhat worse 25 %
Much worse 15 %
Source: Kang HK, Preliminary Findings: Reported Unexplained Multisymptom Illness Among Veterans Who Participated in the VA Longitudinal Health Study of Gulf War Era Veterans (Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses, 2008, p. 36).
From the Stars and Strips, 80% for Gulf War claimants are denied for claims while 32% of them have health issues.
How's this? This new study will take 4 years to complete and another few years for the VA and DOD to study and yet, the presumptive claims will expire 2021. How's that for planing?
When the study started, it was to have a segment where the children were going to be studied. Now the VA and DOD don't care about them, go F yourself kids.