Gulf War Syndrome Lawyers plan own tests

The two firms appointed by the Legal Aid Board to act as lead solicitors say experts they consulted reproted that so called Gulf-war syndrome could have been caused by a combination of vaccines, anti nerve gas tablets and exposure to organophosphate pesticides, which Nicholas Soames, the armed forces minister, admitted last friday had been used in the region. Aided by scientists, the two firms, Dawbarns of Kings Lynn, Norfolk, and Gill Asker of Plymouth, are in advanced stages of designing a representative study of 20 veterans, including at least one who has a child with birth defects, and twenty comparable "controls", who did not go to the gulf. The subjects will have blood and nerve conduction tests.

The lawyers say some veterans have been removed from their doctors lists because of lack of information about the cause of the illness and many have been told their conditions are psychological rather than physical.

Gulf-war syndrome symptoms include musculoskeletal and nervous-system disorders, intestinal problems, chronic fatigue, damage to the immune system, rashes, repeated infections, liver and kidney damage, memory loss and personality change.

The lawyers have also called on the Ministry of Defence to say whether soldiers were given adjuvants, which can help produce an immune response but which can have side effects. The troops were also given biological warfare vaccine, the constituent parts of which have not been revealed, and took pyridostigmine bromide tablets, to prtect against nerve agents.

Richard Barr, a Dawbarns partner, said tests by Mohammed Abou-Donia, professor of toxicology at Duke University, North Carolina, showed pyridostigmine has a synergistic effect when combined with organophosphates. In the case of organophosphates, toxicity may be magnified ten fold.

Another US immunologist warned of magnified toxicity caused by pyridostigmine bromide or pesticides on an individual whose immune sytem has been stimulated by multiple vaccination.

Armed with growing evidence of links between substances given veterans and their subsequent illness, an immunologist, neurophysicist, toxicoligist, cardiologist and endocrinologist will be appointed to carry out the study.

The lawyers contrast their planned study with Medical Research Council work, details of which are to be given out next month. The lawyers suspect it will be epidemiological and take another 18 months before individual cases are selected for detailed examination.

They also fear that when compensation cases reach court, ministers will try to claim public-interest immunity for crucial papers.

Mr Barr said: "We are hampered by lack of information. It is not simply ...litigation. It is a question of providing help to cure hundreds of sick people. It does seem stupid for public money to have been spent on investigation when, with more co-operation, one could get much further down the line in finding out about this illness. It is all government money, anyway."