Vets and ALS

Horrible Lou Gehrig's Disease strikes military veterans disproportionately; the federal government should try harder to find out why


YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN who sign up to serve in the military take on certain known risks. They may be killed in combat. They may suffer maiming or disfiguring wounds. They may be held captive by cruel foes. All this is understood. But should they also, in opting to bear arms for America, double their chances of dying perhaps the worst of all possible deaths? Surely not. Yet a grim linkage is undeniable between military service and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis--ALS.

Popularly known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, ALS is a neurological nightmare that saps the life from victims' muscles, even to the point of their being unable to take a breath on their own, raise an eyelid, or swallow a drink. The disease is a scoffing fiend, mocking the best efforts of successive generations' best medical minds to understand it. In 1869, when doctors first named the disease, ALS sufferers after diagnosis could expect to live two to five years. By the time Gehrig, its most famous victim, made his farewell speech to Yankee fandom in 1939, the life expectancy was two to five years. And that's where it remains--though one recently approved drug can extend ALS sufferers' lives by a few more months.

Although ALS is mercifully rare, striking about one in 50,000 people, its incidence among active-duty service people and veterans is higher. Two studies have found that veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf War suffer from ALS at a rate at least twice that of the general public. Alarmingly, as those veterans age, the incidence of the disease among them seems to be rising. In 1998, the last year examined by University of Texas researchers, more than three times as many 1991 Gulf War vets had developed ALS as would be expected from the experience of the overall population.

But veterans of the war to free Kuwait and corral Saddam Hussein aren't the only ex-warriors stalked by ALS. A 2005 Harvard study of men who had served in the military during a span that began before World War I and ended after Vietnam concluded, "Military personnel have an increased risk of ALS. This increase appeared to be largely independent of the branch of service and time period served." Put another way: If you wore the uniform anytime last century, your odds of dying of ALS are 60 percent greater than if you had remained a civilian.

Although some scientists believe that exposure to Saddam's mystery biotoxins explains the high incidence of ALS among 1991 Gulf War veterans, no one has proven it. Moreover, sailors who fought the Japanese at Midway and Air Force pilots who tangled with MiGs over Korea operated far from the space-time quadrant occupied by Gen. Schwarzkopf's desert troops.

So the tragic mystery of ALS spins new riddles. Fortunately, riddles can be answered and mysteries solved if there is a will to do so. Via increased funding for ALS research, the government should demonstrate that will. The young patriots it dispatches to defend the nation don't deserve multiplied vulnerability to the lethal tortures of an enemy they never signed up to fight.

http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2...5012007/280186