Cash for Gulf illness tests

Gulf War veterans have been awarded a pounds 400,000 package by the Legal Aid Board to subject themselves to direct medical testing as it emerged that the Government's own tests for illness are only being carried out on rats and monkeys.

Dawbarns of King's Lynn, which represents 450 Gulf clients, said the board's decision to fund the first study involving direct medical testing was expected to provide them with the evidence to serve dozens of writs for compensation early in the new year.

The Ministry of Defence has also finally admitted that blood samples were taken from troops in the field of battle and flown back to the military research laboratories at Porton Down for analysis.

After initial denials that the blood sampling programme, revealed by The Independent in February, had taken place at all, the ministry has said the samples have been found in a freezer at Porton Down.

Now the veterans' lawyers will be seeking to carry out analysis of the samples, taken over a three-week period shortly after deployment to the Gulf, to provide supporting evidence to that which is gathered in the new medical study.

Later this month, victims of the syndrome will give samples of blood and have biopsies taken. These will be analysed by a team of scientists from around the world at laboratories in London, Glasgow, Nottingham and North Carolina.

Among the leading scientists who will be working on the study is Goran Jamal, the Glasgow-based neurophysiologist, who is renowned for his work on organophosphate poisoning. An initial pool of 100 veterans, will be whittled down to a group of 40 who are thought to best represent the symptoms suffered by the estimated 1,500 sick troops.

Richard Barr, who is co-ordinating the legal action, said: "We have been waiting for this for ages. We hope the tests will enable us to establish the causative link and I very much doubt the MoD will be arguing after that."

Promises made after the election by John Reid, the armed forces minister, to seek out the cause of the Gulf War sickness have led to a scheme of testing which was dismissed as of "no help at all to the veterans".

In the government experiments, scientists have been told to administer the same vaccines given to the Gulf troops to a batch of laboratory rats, whose health will be monitored until 2001. Interim findings are due at the end of next year. A similar set of experiments will be carried out on monkeys.

But Mr Barr said: "The immune responses of monkeys and rats are different from those of humans.

"Monkeys and rats are not under heat stress or fatigue. They have not been into battle or made to wear [chemical and biological warfare] suits. How do you tell when a rat is depressed?"

The veterans are angry that government inquiries into the cause of Gulf illnesses have until now concentrated on epidemiological surveys based on questionnaires and statistical analysis.

Most victims believe the cause to be the vaccines and tablets they were given to protect them from chemical and biological warfare, possibly inter- reacting with the organophosphate sprays and other pesticides which were widely used.

n The bereaved families of dead Gulf veterans are furious that their sons have been asked to fill out MoD questionnaires as part of the official study into why they became sick.

One former soldier, who died last year, was sent a second form with a covering letter demanding to know why he had not filled in the first one. It is believed that the families of up to 50 other dead veterans may have received similar letters.

John Callaghan senior, whose son John died last year, said: "You can imagine what it did for us, asking him to fill a load of boxes in when he was not even there. This is being done without feeling and without research."

His son, who served with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, took his life last year at the age of 27. He was displaying the typical symptoms being felt by the 1,500 sick British gulf veterans.