U.S. Senators Robert C. Byrd, D-West Virginia, and Bernie Senders, I-Vermont, applauded the Senate's passage of a $10,000,000 investment in research to combat Gulf War Illness. Byrd and Sanders led the effort to include the funding in the Fiscal Year 2008 Department of Defense Appropriations legislation, which cleared the Senate on November 9th.
"As recent research has further demonstrated, an alarming number of Gulf War veterans continue to suffer serious ailments as a result of exposure to toxic materials during the Persian Gulf War," said Byrd. "It is our moral responsibility to help those who are suffering as a result of illnesses contracted while serving our nation. We can and must do more to find treatments and cures for these serious ailments."
"Over 175,000 veterans are still suffering from a poorly understood set of illnesses related to their service in the first Gulf War," said Sanders. "After years of denial and resistance from the Defense Department and the VA, we are finally beginning to see some promising research that could help our ill service members. This research funding means that we are keeping faith with those who so honorably served our country and who deserve real treatment and a government that lives up to its promise to care for those that wear our uniform."
The complex of symptoms commonly known as "Gulf War Illnesses (GWI)" - widespread pain, cognitive impairment, and persistent fatigue in conjunction with diverse other symptoms and abnormalities - are associated with service in the Southwest Asia theater of operations in the early 1990s during the Persian Gulf War. Byrd and Sanders' efforts are consistent with the Pentagon's historical commitment to finding treatments and cures for the estimated 175,000 Gulf War veterans affected -- roughly a fourth of those who served.
The provision authorizes $10 million in funding for Gulf War Illnesses research to be conducted by the US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command's Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program (CDMRP) (http://cdmrp.army.mil/aboutus.htm)., which last year initiated a promising pilot program to identify treatments and diagnostic tests for Gulf War illnesses.
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