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Heartbreak of Gulf war babies

by Liz Lightfoot and Russell Miller

SENIOR doctors have demanded a full independent study of the heartbreaking deformities among British babies born to veterans of the Gulf war to determine whether modern warfare caused the abnormalities.

Babies have been born with vital organs missing, skulls too small for their brains or suffering limb deformities and serious heart defects. Some died at birth. Others are unlikely to reach school age or will need 24-hour care for the rest of their lives.

The common link in these cases of unexplained congenital disorders is that all their fathers either served in the Gulf or were given a precautionary cocktail of injections in case they were called upon to go.

The parents fear that servicemen who became sick when they returned home and claim to be suffering from Gulf war syndrome were con taminated by vaccines, anti-nerve agents or pesticides and passed their illnesses on to their offspring at conception, leading to the foetal abnormalities.

So far, 52 couples have reported serious birth defects and are pursuing legal claims for negligence against the Ministry of Defence. Many others are delaying having children, fearing they have been contaminated.

The families are urging the Ministry of Defence to set up a full epidemiological study to compare the rate of congenital disorders among babies born to Gulf veterans with that among those born to servicemen who did not serve in the war."Our husbands knew they could be killed or maimed, but we never expected it to happen to our children," said one mother.

The demand will be backed in the House of Commons this week by Michael Colvin MP, who chairs the Commons defence select committee. "I am not saying that Gulf war syndrome exists or does not exist," he said. "But there is sufficient concern to justify resources being put into further clinical tests and a full epidemiological study, which must include reports of birth defects."

Dr Jonathan Brostoff, a lead ing clinical immunologist, said the study was the only way to allay fears among thousands of service families.

"We should be seeking to discover whether the number of defects is statistically significant and, if so, what could have caused them," said Brostoff, of the Middlesex hospital in London. "There are likely to be wars in the future so it seems sensible to check whether servicemen and their children were put at risk by the vaccines, anti-nerve agents and chemicals being used."

The British experience is mirrored in the United States where 300 cases of birth defects have been reported among children born to servicemen returning from the war.

Parents' suspicions focus on the injections against diseases such as plague, typhoid and cholera given together or in quick succession, the chemicals in tablets taken by the troops to protect against nerve gas attacks, and pesticides widely used to control sand flies and scorpions in the desert "tent cities". They have also heard unconfirmed reports that chemical and biological weapons were either used by the Iraqis or were accidently released.

On the Isle of Wight, Ben Whitehead, who is now aged two, was born with shoulder, arm and hand deformities. His father, Paul, now 36, served in the Gulf for six months and was exposed to injections, anti- nerve agent tablets and also pesticides.

The Ministry of Defence has so far refused to commission an epidemiological study into whether Gulf war syndrome exists and has confined itself to health checks on individuals.

In the absence of such a survey, it is difficult to compare the rate of birth defects in the children of veterans with the rest of the population. Data from the Office of Population Census and Surveys (OPCS) shows that, in the general population, about 1% of new babies suffer birth defects.

Of the group of 720 adults pursuing legal claims over Gulf war syndrome, 52 report children with birth defects. The full incidence of birth defects, however, could only be discovered by a study of all children born to all 51,000 British personnel in the war.

Julian Peto, professor of epidemiology at London University, said it would be fairly straightforward to find out whether the number of birth defects in babies born to Gulf veterans was significantly higher than the number that could be expected. "It would not be phenomenally expensive and as a country we must carry out a controlled study, because concern about Gulf war syndrome is not self-evidently false and is causing a lot of pain," he said.

David Baxter, a consultant in infectious disease control at Manchester University's medical school, said: "There are now sufficient reports of birth defects to warrant serious investigation. We owe it to the families."
The UK GulfWeb:

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