One huge issue that is rarely touched on is insurance money. There is currently a huge battle in psychiatry over revisions to DSM-V and the World Health Organization’s ICD-11 which are the basis for insurance billing.

Psychiatric liasons (psychosomatic medicine) and behavioralists (behavioral medicine) are trying to expand the boundaries of psychosomatic disorders. This is because many organic diseases are currently billed as diseases not beliefs.

Many, such as researchers with the King’s Centre for Military Health Research, King’s College in London, have devoted their entire careers to proving that organic diseases are actually psychogenic. Many have financial ties to disability and health insurance companies (Unumprovident and PRISMA for example) who stand to lose millions if patients with ME/CFS (a brain disease G93.3 in the ICD-10), fibromyalgia and gulf war syndrome for example have a “real” disease.

Why? Disability companies only pay two years of disability payments vs. a lifetime of payments if they can claim the patient has a “stress” or mental disorder.

Also, treating patients with drugs means these psychiatrists don’t get paid for their recommended “therapy.” Based on these psychiatrist’s “belief” that these patients have a psychogenic disorder, they have no actual proof such as a blood test, they recommend cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) that challenges patient’s “belief” that they have a real disease.

Claims that the evidence shows that CBT is the best therapy are based on studies that included many patients in addition to patients with the actual disease as diagnosed by clinicians. They also don’t mention that people may have been better able to cope, but their clinical symptoms did not change.

Scientific misconduct by these researchers is rarely investigated and because much of it is in medical journals, the public never hears about it. For example they define “fatigue” as a feeling of a lack of energy, weariness and aversion to effort and measure it with psychiatric scales. Unfortunately, their definition does not jibe with patient’s descriptions and medical tests showing that it is profound exhaustion brought on by physical effort often leaving patients unable to exert additional effort for over 48 hours. That is neither normal and has nothing to do with being “tired” or “depressed”. That is extremely pathogenic.

They never mention the biomedical proof that consistently proves them wrong. Or they try to smear the researchers and their studies by claiming the researchers are tied to the pharmaceutical companies in hopes that the actual research results will be ignored.

Anyone can search for medical journal articles through
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/
However, many of the journals charge money to read anything other than the abstract. About the only ones that are free are ones that support the psychosomatic “opinion”.

Dr. Martin Pall, a biological researcher at the University of Washington, explains much of this “battle” in his book, Explaining ‘Unexplained Illnesses’: Disease Paradigm for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, Fibromyalgia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Gulf War Syndrome. His medical research indicates he may have a piece of the puzzle.

These diseases (illness, as used by psychiatrists trying to re-label GWS to fit their opinion, is the sociological word for how patients perceive their illness not the actual disease itself) are strongly rooted in biological evidence. Just because someone hasn’t heard of the research doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

It might be said that the only people who don’t believe that these patients have a disease, are people who don’t have them and don’t have contact with someone who does. People aren’t stupid. Most people don’t need to go to the doctor to know whether they have a horrible case of the flu. These patients don’t need a doctor to know something is terribly wrong. And even if some of them have psychological problems, it doesn’t mean they can’t have a broken leg or even a severe disease also.

More time will tell. But for the 1st time in a long time I feel we have a small chance concerning the VA. The VA has shown us all in the past that the truth has no meaning to them. We are the liars and just looking for a free ride.
and dont forget it’s all in your head. Here take some more psych meds. We all know the story. So lets hope and pray for a change that is long over do concerning sick Gulf War Veterans. I would like to see the VA shut down and all Veterans given medical cards. Have the soldier rated during out-processing from there prospective branches and put all those VA employees who treat us like we owe them out of work. Make the ones who can go out and get a real job. We are talking about the medical industry jobs should not be a problem for the ones who do thier jobs and are good at what they do and for the ones who had no choice but to seek employment from the Government so they are protected against all the mistakes and lack of knowledge hit the road. I am not sorry I feel this why I have given the VA more chances than I would have ever received during my 10 years of active duty service. It is called dereliction of duty. And game over.

Mike R.

I served for Ten years on active duty and a few in the National Guard. I am very proud of my service and wish I could still serve. In short I am Airborne Qualified, 63TD3P20 Soldier. I was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for my performance during the War. I have also been awarded the Army Commendation medal and 5 Army achievement medals and many others. I was an E5-P in E-7 slots (Sergeant First Class Positions) the last years of my active duty service. I was highly Trained Motivated and Good at what I did. I have all the paper work to back up what I say. And I have not even scratched the surface of my service to this Country. That I love so much. I am nobody special. But I have proved myself to be trust worthy and my opinion at one time counted. The Military was my life.

Others and I are sick and have been for a very long time and need help. I am sorry that I am not made of steel. I am human after all. Never thought I would say that one.

I lost my first wife to divorce and my first child to a problem with the pregnancy and my 1st wife took it much harder than me. Marriage over. My problems are the same as all the rest of us who are sick . So I will skip that part. Was re-married and had 1st child who was hospitalized twice for unknown reason. Buy that time I was pretty sick to. I have one other child who was born in 1998 who seems fine. I lost our home and all of our belongings in 1999 and became homeless with three kids and a great wife. (WOW) I still can’t believe it. I was on around 13 prescriptions at the time. And my fight with the VA had started years before and they knew I was sick. I was also in a very bad training accident in 1989 and that alone was causing me major problems. So I was double trouble to the VA. It was and has been a very long road and I did win my fight with the VA and am rated 100% and I still need medical attention and I can’t seem to get anyone at the VA to listen and understand my life is terrible and I have real medical problems and it not in my head. Well it is, the pain, headaches, eyes and so on.

We are sick, we served this Nation when the time came. It’s time for this Nation to step up to the plate and help us. We need it. Too many have already died to include my best friend. What is it going to take. For the VA help us.

Mike R.

ordesertvet@aol.com

Re: http://www.immed.org/GulfWarIllness/publications/ILLwind.pdf is an excellent article on the basis for Gulf War Illness, the coverup, and the abysmal way victims of the illness are treated by the medical establishment:

Mind Games

Problems escalated as vets fell into the clutches of the psychiatric
industry. As is a routine failing in psychiatric diagnosis, proper and
full physical examinations were either not done or their results ignored.
Tests were performed that added confusion, their results failing to
describe any specific illness because the veterans had such a panoply of
symptoms.

According to William Baumzweiger, M.D., Gulf veterans he examined while
working at the VA from 1993 to 1997 exhibited conflicting and mutually
exclusive symptoms.

“Nobody asked how come they were showing so many contrary manifestations
all at once,”he said. VA psychiatrists and other doctors, he said, “threw
every diagnosis in the book at them, rather than get to the bottom of the
problem,” adding that he believes that practice continues.

As a trained neurologist, he said, “I knew this didn’t fit, and I said so
from 1994 on. I was told when at the VA center in West Los Angeles that it
was VA policy that there was no such thing as Gulf War Syndrome. It came
from the central VA in Washington. I was told [that] by Dr. Dean Norman,
who was the head of the hospital. I told him I didn’t know that disease
had anything to do with administrative policies. He got mad at
me. … These are political positions. It isn’t real medicine.”

Baumzweiger was ousted from his job, acknowledging that some of his VA
superiors were incensed at his actions on behalf of veterans, which
included testifying in September 1996 before a House subcommittee chaired
by Rep. Shays.

“They were so mad at me,” Baumzweiger said. “But I don’t care. I mean,
what I was saying was true. … There were lives at stake. And these
people really were sick. They were horribly sick. They still are.”Norman
failed to return calls made to his office.

According to Baumzweiger and others, the lives of many veterans fell apart
as they suffered brain damage and other physical effects and became
increasingly nonfunctional, undergoing divorce, losing jobs, turning to
street drugs and alcohol, having accidents, being arrested, ending up in
legal troubles and even prison or psychiatric institutions.

Leisure described one veteran who was bleeding internally, his spleen so
enlarged it had to be removed. “I found him in a psychiatric ward,” she
said. “No wonder he was upset. He had so many medical problems that
weren’t being dealt with. They ignored his blood count and his internal
bleeding. It was pathetic.”

Arvid Brown was one of the many interviewed by Freedom who was told “it’s
all in your head” when he turned to the VA for help. Cooperating at every
step with VA doctors, he accepted and took the psychotropic drugs
prescribed for him, including Depakote, Prozac and Elavil. After Brown
became so disoriented that he tried to step out of an upper-story window
and a moving car, Janyce took the pills away. He was put on Pamelor, which
made him hallucinate.

“When we complained that the drugs were making him hallucinate,” said
Janyce, “they upped the dose.” On another visit, a VA psychologist
persisted in demanding that Brown be treated for anxiety before anything
could be done for him.

Copies of medical records in Brown’s possession confirm an effort by VA
doctors from the outset to label his symptoms “anxiety attacks”or
“post-traumatic stress syndrome” — in other words, psychological in
nature — and to pressure him into taking psychiatric drugs.

Brown alleged that the VA lost some of his records and falsified
others. And he was told that neither he, his wife nor his two children –
born after his Gulf service with serious birth defects — would receive any
treatment until he and his wife submitted to psychiatric examinations.

Arvid received chemotherapy treatments at a civilian hospital and continues
to take antibiotics. Both he and Janyce believe their family’s multiple
health problems stem from Arvid’s exposure to chemical and biological
weapons and other toxins.