VA ends Gulf War illness research contract

The bottom line is that the V.A. does not want to find out what has happened to these veterans. It gives them "plausible deniability". Dr. Haley is a respected researcher and excellent physician. By pulling the rug out from under him, the V.A. effectively put the brakes on any resolution to this vexing problem.
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Gulf War vets who suffer from chronic undiagnosed sympthoms, had seeked research which was not weighed by polictics of the day. War is a Racket and we hope big Pham get in the way of seeking treatments for our ilness. That can not happen now. Currently VA research is not looking at neurological exposures. We will continue to die younger than Vietnam vets. Most vets death cerificates fail to document Gulf war Exposure at all.

Comrades please contact the only panel in the government we have left.
75% of all Vet who apply for undiagnosed illness Rating are DENIED.
Silence is not an Option !
http://www.va.gov/gulfwaradvisorycommittee
VA - Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans

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VA ends Gulf War illness research contract
By SUZANNE GAMBOA (AP) –
WASHINGTON — The Department of Veterans Affairs has canceled a $75 million, five-year research contract with a Texas medical center studying illnesses suffered by veterans of the first Gulf War.

The VA says research on the illnesses, however, remains a priority.
Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Daniel Akaka, a Democrat from Hawaii, has been pushing to the end the sole-source contract with the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

Money for the contract was added to a 2005 spending bill by Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas when the GOP had the majority in Congress.

Troops returned from the first Persian Gulf War with chronic illnesses ranging from fatigue to Lou Gehrig's disease. Some have questioned whether soldiers' illnesses resulted from battle stress or exposures to toxic substances

How VA can take you PTSD rating away

Your fit to fight. You deploy with your unit.
WAR is hell and you experience ulgy events.
Years later the VA diagnosis you with PTSD.
Now in 2009 the VA community sees this Study below and VHA
goes to your medical records and adds other mental health disorders
like listed below. When your claim comes up for reveiw every 10 years or so
you will be told you had other Mental Health disorders before or at the time
you joined the military, there your PTSD will be withdrawn.
This is how the VBA can mistreat our veterans.

Some Conditions Misdiagnosed as Bipolar Disorder
By Amy Norton
Reuters
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A study published last year suggested that bipolar disorder may be over diagnosed in people seeking mental health care. Now new findings shed light on which disorders many of these patients actually have.
Bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression, involves dramatic swings in mood -- ranging from debilitating depression to euphoric recklessness.

In the original 2008 study, researchers at Brown University School of Medicine found that of 145 adults who said they had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, 82 (57 percent) turned out not to have the condition when given a comprehensive diagnostic interview.
In this latest study, published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, the researchers used similar standardized interviews to find out which disorders those 82 patients might have.
Overall, they found, nearly half had major depression, while borderline personality disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), generalized anxiety and social phobia were each diagnosed in roughly one-quarter to one-third.

When the researchers then compared the patients with 528 other psychiatric patients who had never been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, they found that those in the former group were nearly four times more likely to have borderline personality disorder.
They were also 70 percent more likely to have major depression and twice as likely to have PTSD.
Some of other diagnoses were less common but still seen at elevated rates among the patients previously diagnosed with bipolar disorder. These included antisocial personality disorder and impulse-control disorder.

Over diagnosis of bipolar disorder is concerning, in part, because it is typically treated with mood-stabilizing drugs that can have side effects -- including effects on the kidneys, liver, and metabolic and immune systems, explained lead researcher Dr. Mark Zimmerman, an associate professor at Brown and director of outpatient psychiatry at Rhode Island Hospital.

In addition, he told Reuters Health in an email, over diagnosis means some patients are likely not getting the appropriate care for the problems they do have.
Bipolar disorder shares certain characteristics with some other psychiatric conditions. Borderline personality disorder, for instance, is marked by unstable mood, impulsive behavior and problems maintaining relationships with other people.

But Zimmerman and his colleagues suspect that some doctors are over diagnosing bipolar disorder because -- unlike certain other causes of mood disturbance -- it does have effective drug therapies.

There are no medications approved specifically for treating borderline personality disorder, for instance, but research suggests that some forms of "talk therapy" are effective.
"We believe that clinicians are inclined to diagnose disorders that they feel more comfortable treating," Zimmerman explained.

"The increased availability of medications that have been approved for the treatment of bipolar disorder might be influencing clinicians who are unsure whether or not a patient has bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder to err on the side of diagnosing the disorder that is medication-responsive," he added.

This "bias," Zimmerman said, is reinforced by drug company marketing, which highlights certain studies that have suggested that bipolar disorder goes unrecognized in many people.