PRESIDENT OF GULF WAR VETERANS GROUPS CRITICIZE VA RESEARCH ON GULF WAR ILLNESS AND VA DIRECTIVE LETTER ON CLAIMS/BENEFITS PROCESSING

March 3, 2010

Dear Mr Gingrich,

I am writing this letter to address two areas veterans are calling me about since the RAC meeting.

The first is the VA spending $11 million on a piece of equipment that will go to a researcher trying to duplicate Dr Haley’s study and failing. The reason he could not duplicate this study is because he did not use the same criteria for his control and study groups as did Dr. Haley. Therefore, he examined vets who were not truly sick.

When the VA took the money away from Dr. Haley’s research, the Gulf War veterans were told it would be used specifically for research. Now we see that 73% of the $15 million is going for a piece of equipment only. This is strikingly familiar to the 2005 purchase of a similar MRI. The previous Secretary of the VA became upset over using research money like this.

Please do not get us wrong we know that the VA does need this equipment, but the money should not be marked as having gone for Gulf War Illness studies. This purchase will give a false sense of the true amount of money spent on real Gulf War Illness research.

When the VA buys this equipment, we feel that it needs to be in one of the War Related Illness and Injury Study Clinics (WRIISC). We feel that the east coast would be the best. There are three WRIISC and each doing 1/3 of the veterans. The VA has two WRIISC on the east coast that are not far from each other. These two clinics could share it as they do research on Gulf War Illness and traumatic brain injury (TBI). As for where it is planned to go now, there is no WRIISC in that VA.

Also, we would like to see some of the money used to make pamphlets to inform veterans in the VA about the Gulf War exams. There has never been any and I get many calls and emails on this subject.

The next thing is the training letter 10-01 that the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) sent out. As I read the letter I could not find any place about the low level nerve gas many of us was exposed to. This is doing a disservice to the Operation Desert Storm veterans. With well over 120,000 being exposed to nerve gas, the doctors, examiners and claims rating specialist should be told that too. The letter also has it wrong about pyridostigmine bromide pills. They are not nerve gas antidote; they are a pretreatment against nerve agent.
James A. Bunker

President, National Gulf War Resource Center (NGWRC)