WASHINGTON — Americans who served in the Gulf War were nearly twice as likely to develop Lou Gehrig's disease as other military personnel, the government reported Monday. It was the first time officials acknowledged a scientific link between service in the Gulf and a specific disease.
The Department of Veterans Affairs said it would immediately offer disability and survivor benefits to veterans with the disease who served in the Persian Gulf during the conflict a decade ago.
"The hazards of the modern-day battlefield are more than bullet wounds and saber cuts," said Anthony J. Principi, secretary of Veterans Affairs.
The research, which included nearly 2.5 million military personnel, is one of the largest epidemiological studies ever conducted and offers the most conclusive evidence to date linking Gulf War veterans to any disease. Still, researchers don't know why these veterans were more likely to get sick.
Veterans have long maintained that a variety of illnesses are associated with service in the Gulf, but scientific evidence has been scant and the Pentagon has resisted making the connection. Last year, the National Academy of Sciences was unable to link any of these complaints to a specific cause associated with military service.
"There was massive denial and obfuscation for years," said Tom Donnelly of South Windsor, Conn., whose son Michael, an Air Force pilot in the Gulf War, is paralyzed with Lou Gehrig's disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.
The top health official at the Defense Department, Dr. Bill Winkenwerder Jr., said Monday that the conclusions are "not the study results we'd like to report." He admitted that Pentagon officials have downplayed complaints about Gulf War illnesses in the past.
"There's been a maturation of thinking about health risks associated with deployed military service," said Winkenwerder, the assistant secretary of Defense for health affairs.
In October, a federally funded study suggested that children of Gulf War veterans are two to three times more likely than those of other vets to have birth defects, but defense officials questioned the research methodology and were skeptical of the results.
The results released Monday have not yet been reviewed by other scientists or published in an academic journal, and officials cautioned that they are preliminary. Officials said they were releasing the data now to prevent further delay in compensating victims of the progressive, fatal disease.
