Soldiers’ Health Needs Monitoring
A few days ago I sat in a hotel room in Kansas City, Mo., listening to a veteran of the Persian Gulf War describe in poignant terms the physical problems he says he contracted as a result of his service in the war. I was listening to him in my role as a member of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses.
Many Americans who served in the Gulf War five years ago say they are convinced that their cancers, immunological disorders, chronic fatigue, night sweats or children’s birth defects are the result of the time they spent in Kuwait and Iraq.
There is no shortage of potential causes for the varied symptoms and illnesses sometimes lumped under the catchall term “Gulf War syndrome.” Sandstorms, flies, biological weapons, oil fires, stress, polluted water, unspent rocket fuel, rare micro-organisms, antibiological warfare vaccines and chemical vapors from bombed Iraqi storage areas are just a few of the things that might have left some soldiers sick.
It is difficult to know precisely what happened that led to the war veterans’ health complaints. Exactly who was exposed to what and under what circumstances is tough to reconstruct. It is clear, however, that we need to think differently about the dangers and costs of modern warfare.
In the near future, American military personnel might well find themselves in exotic climates exposed to unfamiliar environments. The battles they would fight would involve incredible technologies.
Modern military technology permits terrible damage to be done to the enemy while making it possible, under the right circumstances, to experience only a minimal number of battlefield casualties among one’s own troops. But fighting high-tech wars in strange places comes with a poorly understood potential cost. The fuel, paints, cleaning solutions and chemicals used to operate and maintain all the modern warfare gizmos and gadgets might carry risks. The environments in which war is waged can harbor dangerous substances whose insidious effects might not be readily apparent. Fanatical opponents might resort to all manner of bioecological warfare with physical and psychological results that are not well understood.
One lesson that should be learned from our experience in the Gulf War is that we need to take the long-term health threat of high-tech combat seriously. In order to know whether our active and reserve soldiers have been exposed to biological or chemical agents, beset by strange microbes or parasites or sickened by environmental pollutants, a clear picture of their health must exist before they go into the field.
The Gulf War also shows that accurate records and sound epidemiological monitoring are essential if the price of war is to be calculated accurately. When troops are sent to keep the peace or to fight in places such as Somalia, Haiti or Bosnia and Herzegovina, it is just as important to arm them with pencils and record books as with guns. The only way to determine who was harmed in modern warfare is to have a clear record of who was exposed to what before, during and after the actual battles are fought.
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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Art Caplan King Features Syndicate