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Tuesday, January 13, 2004A leaked British Army medical report has provided the first official backing that vaccines given to British soldiers before the 1991 Gulf War caused illnesses associated with Gulf War Syndrome, the Times reported on Monday. It said Lieutenant-Colonel Graham Howe, clinical director of psychiatry with the British Forces Health Service in Germany, made the link after the War Pensions Agency asked him to look at the case of former Lance-Corporal Alex Izett, who now suffers from osteoporosis and acute depression, the paper said. The Times quoted Howe as saying in his unpublished report, dated September 2001 and handed to the paper by Izett, that 'secret' injections given to the soldier 'most probably led to the development of autoimmune-induced osteoporosis.' Howe came to that conclusion because in the end Izett was never posted to Iraq, the Times said. That may have satisfied a British pension board, but it wouldn't have made it past a worker's comp hearing here. "Autoimmune-induced osteoporosis" isn't a condition I'm familiar with. I don't believe it exists. People with autoimmune diseases are often treated with steroids, and it's these steroids that cause glucocorticoid induced osteoporosis. Autoimmune diseases crop up in people for no discernable reason. We don't understand their etiology very well, in many cases, and so they are often wrongly labelled as being caused by something outside the body, when in fact, they are caused by the body turning on itself. It was autoimmune disease that spurred the silicone breast implant mess and all the bad science it encompassed. It's impossible to assert that an injection, or series of injections (the report, as quoted by CNN, doesn't say they were vaccines) is responsible for one man's autoimmune disease. To make that assertion, you need many people with the same symptoms who had the same series of injections. There's nothing mentioned about that here, nor in the many studies done to evaluate Gulf War Syndrome. The other disturbing thing about this report is that it's based on a psychiatrist's opinion. No offense to psychiatrists, but their area of expertise does not encompass autoimmune disorders. The pronouncement would have carried more weight if it had been based on the opinion of a rheumatologist or an immunologist. Looks like the British Army just wanted to give the guy a pension without a lot of hassle. And now the media are misinterpreting it as "evidence" that vaccines cause Gulf War Syndrome. But based on this case, there isn't even enough evidence to prove that vaccines cause autoimmune disorders. posted by Sydney on 1/13/2004 07:51:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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