Authors Reply to GulfLink Report

March 2, 1996

Dr John Mazzuchi
Deputy Assistant Director
Department of Defense
Washington, DC 20301-1200

Dear Dr Mazzuchi

After careful consideration of your letter of Feb. 8, 1996, I have been moved to inform you that the persons who wrote the reviews of my work were sorely lacking in their review of the literature and, perhaps, do not see, much less treat patients with autoimmune disease. I have compiled only a small number of abstracts of articles published by very reputable institutions in this country and in Europe that only serve to support the theory of human adjuvant disease as a disease entity and its association with silicone. Please note the extensive neurological involvement in the Baylor paper. This concurs with the results we saw in our 500 patients. The only physicians who claim it does not exist are those who have an obvious conflict of interest. Many of their flawed studies have been broadcast in the popular press. They are flawed conceptually, statistically, and therefore, in their conclusions. Anyone familiar with the field knows this. To do chart reviews on patients and draw conclusions on data recorded as negative when the tests were never performed is ludicrous. My information is hardly anecdotal. I would be remiss in attempting to do their surgical practices. I consider the reverse even more preposterous

Since the comment about no reputable scientist or physician would make such an assertion was made, I thought it prudent to let you see the others in the field and their institutions which say the same things as I do. I feel very honoured to be in their company. I am not sure who reviewed my report but they may have some conflict of interest with finding a problem in adjuvants as well. I know there are many in development and the DoD is involved with testing them. I considered the source as I reviewed their remarks. I do not play "political correctness" games.

Enclosed are but a few of the many hundreds of articles that I have collected over the past three years. I would be glad to provide you with other references including Federal Court documents which also support these assertations. Moreover, I have collected more information on many Gulf war vets and have been involved with their successful treatment in controlling connective tissue disease and neurological disease by treating the underlying immunological regulatory dysfunction. This has been in collaboration with physicians in other cities and commercial laboratories, so there is no question of my personal bias or tampering with laboratory data. Some of these patients have had the tests done at Walter Reed, Bethesda, and various VA hospitals around the country. I have also consulted with experts at the NIH who concur with my findings. These patients do have various manifestations of autoimmune disease and respond to appropriate treatment thereof. Whether you and those who wrote those ill-informed views give this any credibility or not is really irrelevant to me. I still contend that this process is occurring and vaccines are still the most likely suspects. I have spoken to and reviewed medical records of many other Gulf War vets. Other treating physicians of larger groups of Gulf War vets have done appropriate testing and have found many more than we expected to have autoimmune disease as well. I have also spoken to several military personnel who were vaccinated but never deployed to the Persian Gulf. They have autoimmune disease. Some have children with Goldenhar syndrome which has appeared both in the US and in the UK. to those military personnel who received certain vaccines. I am not saying silicone is the culprit. There are many other adjuvants and vaccines in various stages of research and development currently or in the past within the DoD which could be suspect. I have it interesting that a recent request by the DoD to test such products on military personnel without informed consent was made to the FDA. I have to question the reasoning behind such a move. What happened to the Nuremberg Code?

I do not expect that this information will be put on the GulfLink bulletin board as was the denouncement of my original theory. I do not care. The word will get around soon enough as it already has. Since I do not know who you are and how you fit into the investigation committee of the Defense Science Board, I feel compelled to make this information available to various other investigative agencies both in and out of the DoD and other interested parties both in and out of the United States. I just wanted to clarify and substantiate that my assertations were not incorrect when I wrote them and they are even more on point now. Thankyou for your attention.