Gulf War illnesses : understanding of health effects from depleted uranium evolving but safety training needed : report to congressional requesters / United States General Accounting Office.

  • United States. General Accounting Office
Date:
[2000]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Gulf War illnesses : understanding of health effects from depleted uranium evolving but safety training needed : report to congressional requesters / United States General Accounting Office. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Comments From the Department of Defense OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE 1000 DEFENSE PENTAGON WASHINGTON, DC 20301-1000 GULF WAR ILLNESSES Mr. Norman J. Rabkin Director, National Security Preparedness Issues National Security and International Affairs Division General Accounting Office Washington, D.C. 20548 s$ Me 3d Dear Mr. Rabkin: This is the Department of Defense (DoD) response to the General Accounting Office (GAO) draft report, “GULF WAR ILLNESSES: Understanding of Health Effects from Depleted Uranium Evolving But Safety Training Needed,” dated February 16, 2000 (GAO Code 703277/OSD Case 1947). We are pleased that the GAO has based its medical findings on two recently published reviews of medical literature relating to depleted uranium by the RAND Corporation and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. The GAO has accurately reported the findings from these authoritative and exhaustive studies. Notwithstanding the ongoing work assessing dosages for those most exposed to depleted uranium, the GAO has correctly relied on the findings from the Baltimore VA DU follow-up program to be indicative of the medical effects expected in those most exposed to depleted uranium in the Gulf War. The Department initiated and continues to support this program and considers it the “gold standard” test of DU’s effects on health. In presenting the findings of the Baltimore VA’s DU follow-up program, the GAO relied heavily on a peer reviewed scientific journal article by the program’s lead doctor. Unfortunately, its quest for brevity, the GAO did not always present the key caveats that accompanied the report’s findings. Nor did they indicate that the aberrant findings had only been observed in the follow-up participants with embedded (retained) depleted uranium fragments, as opposed to those with much smaller intakes from inhalation or ingestion. For example, the GAO reports in the “RESULTS IN BRIEF” section that “Some show lowered performance on computerized tests assessing problem-solving efficiency and some had higher levels of prolactin hormone associated with reproductive health.” They caveated this with the sentence following this passage: “The clinical significance of these findings is currently unknown.” In fact, the report published by the Baltimore doctors indicates that there was “no apparent clinical significance” to the prolactin levels, and that the principle caveat to the neurocognitive findings was that “the number of individuals with elevated uranium values was small and it appeared that a few veterans with complex histories may have contributed appreciably to the observed variance.” While we can appreciate the need for brevity, we feel strongly that important caveats should never be divorced from medical findings. Without these caveats, some veterans may misinterpret these subtle perturbations to be clinically significant. oe FEDERAL RECYCLING PROGRAM Le PRINTED ON RECYCLED PAPER
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