[BobbyB]

Data show spike in ALS for soldiers
May 21, 2008

Given that veterans of the first Persian Gulf war are twice as likely as other soldiers to get amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), they certainly deserve to receive the "service-connected" disability benefits and health care compensation that the Department of Veterans Affairs long denied them ("Veterans with ALS in race against time," May 19).

The VA claims evidence to support broader compensation of all veterans with the disease is lacking, but it has never published its own data on ALS rates among veterans of earlier wars.

A large mortality study of more than 500,000 men published in 2005 by researchers at Harvard University, however, provides just such evidence.

It found the risk of ALS among veterans born between 1915 and 1939 was 1.53 times higher than that of non-veterans, independent of when or where the soldiers served.



Whatever the cause(s) of this excess mortality, it clearly is related to military service, and the soldiers should be compensated.

Such compensation will be too late for my brother and for several other members of his small unit who died of ALS after serving in Korea. But I hope it will not come too late to help those currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Albert Donnay

Baltimore

The writer is an environmental health engineer.


http://www.baltimoresun.com:80/news/...,5828388.story