Orange Coast Magazine, 9/97, ©1997

The Hot War?

To biochemists Garth and Nancy Nicolson, the cause of Gulf War Illness is no mystery.  What stumped them was the reaction to their research.

By De Marco Barrett
Orange Coast Magazine, September 1997

Three months after Garth and Nancy Nicolson’s daughter, Sharron, returned from the 1991 Persian Gulf War, where she served in the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, she took ill. Odd for someone who breezed through flu season and who found it difficult to empathize when others got sick.
	“She was so stoic,” says Nancy, a microbiologist who along with her husband is among the nation’s top medical researchers. “Had I not had a similar illness in 1987, I may not have reacted.”
	In 1987, Nancy Nicolson was working as a researcher at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “I almost died,” she says.  “My thyroid became inflamed, and one by one my organ systems started giving me trouble.  I went down to 70 pounds and was paralyzed on one side of my body.” 
	She and her husband experimented with antibiotics, eventually finding ones that worked. “I was extremely fortunate to live.” 
	When their daughter developed comparable symptoms after returning from the Gulf, Nancy suspected she was suffering from the same illness.  They tried a similar antibiotic treatment and got similar results. 
	“We caught our daughter’s illness early enough so it didn’t progress into severe meningitis,” she says. “A lot of people aren’t so lucky.”
	A lot of them, they’ve noticed, are Gulf War veterans. When the Nicolsons looked deeper into the origin of their daughter’s illness, they found a startling common denominator with others who served in the Gulf: Mycoplasma fermentans (incognitis strain), a micro-organism resembling bacteria that can cause illness in healthy people.  While at Baylor, Nancy had done research on mycoplasma.  The strains of mycoplasma found in Gulf War illness patients, however, contained unusual DNA sequences that may be caused by genetic alteration – the type of genetic alterations that go into building biological weapons.
	“Listen to my daughter and her colleagues,” says Garth Nicolson, a biochemist who has published more that 450 articles in respected medical journals, “we realized their stories were being buried in mainstream press.”
	Their daughter’s case became the impetus for the nonprofit Institute for Molecular Medicne in Irvine, which the Nicolsons founded to investigate Gulf War Illnesses and other chronic diseases independent of government-sanctioned research.  There they began a campaign to flush out what they say is one of our government’s most troubling secrets.

	The Nicolson’s attempt to disseminate public-health information without official sanction is not unprecedented.  American history includes dozens of examples of incomplete disclosure by the federal government.  Decades passed before the government admitted to soldiers exposed to radiation from atomic test blasts that were used as human guinea pigs.  Vietnam-era soldiers wondered for years if the defoliant Agent Orange has caused their devastating physical symptoms.  Decades ago, black men exposed to syphilis by the government were left untreated and studied for years, and only recently received apologies and restitution for their fractured lives.
	The Central Intelligence Agency’s recent disclosure that tens of thousands of American Troops were exposed to chemical weapons while fighting in the Persian Gulf is a step in the right direction, Nancy Nicolson says, but she believes the government another ugly secret about the Gulf War.  She believes that biological weapons developed in the U.S. fell into the hands of Saddam Hussein and were used against the 575,000 American soldiers who fought in the Gulf. 
“[Biological weapons] are the most deadly of all because they become airborne, when they’re released and you can’t contain them,” she says.  “Chemical weapons, as horrific as they are, are a nerve gas and not alive.  The biologicals pose the greatest threat to the global population.”
Right now, Nancy Nicolson says, 118 universities in the United States have conducted covert chemical and biological research. “Garth and I believe that our troops were protected from some toxins and nerve agents, but not from slow-acting biologicals.  Saddam Hussein misunderstood the nature of these weapons.  He said that this was the mother of all wars, that there was a surprise.  Was this the surprise?  What better way to drain a country that to send its armed forces home sick?”

By 1994, the Nicolsons were convinced they were onto something important. They contend that while only about 150 American soldiers were killed in action in the Gulf, 7,000 more died through 1994 due to Gulf War Illness, and more than 100,000 are sick with the disease now. 
Symptoms of Gulf War Illness include disabling fatigue, intermittent fever, joint and muscle pain, short-term memory loss, headaches, skin rashes and a host of other symptoms that defy a clinical case definition.  If allowed to progress, the disease can be falsely diagnosed as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (sometimes called Lou Gehrig’s Disease) or multiple sclerosis.
“VA hospitals don’t have a diagnosis category [for these symptoms],” says Garth Nicolson, 53, who once was a full professor in the department of developmental and cell biology at the University of California, Irvine.  “Just because there aren’t categories doesn’t mean people aren’t sick.”
The Nicolsons believe that the micro-organism responsible for the disease may be a biological agent that found its way into soldiers’ cells through contaminated vaccines, SCUD sky-burst warheads, or bombing of chemical and biological weapons factories in Iraq. 
They also believe that the moderately contagious Gulf War Illness has spread slowly to the families and pets of Gulf War veterans.  Staff members at their institute have become sick with the illness, and so have Garth Nicolson and the couples’ pets. Garth Nicolson says he lost four teeth and had part of his lower jaw removed because of the illness.  Dental problems, they say, are among the victims’ most frequent complains.
Between one and two million people in this country also suffer from Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction syndromes and Fibromyalgia, which resemble Gulf War Illness.  The sudden escalation of those maladies make the Nicolsons wonder if they might somehow be related.  They now believe that 30 to 35 percent of these sufferers have illnesses similar to Gulf War Illness. 
When the Department of Veterans Affairs solicited input from the civilian, scientific and medical communities regarding the mysterious illness affecting Persian Gulf soldiers in 1994, the Nicolsons stepped forward.  They explained to government scientists their belief that the particular mycoplasma that infected their daughter was genetically altered, making it extremely difficult to detect and treat. They immediately felt they had stumbled into a trap.
“The administration of M. D. Anderson at the time tried to stop us from doing a pilot study because it was ‘extremely politically incorrect’ ” says Nancy, referring to the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas in Houston. “Never had anyone ordered us to not do something for political reasons.”
From that point forward, the Nicolsons say their careers began to suffer, especially Garth’s. From 1980-1985, Garth Nicolson was department chair of the Anderson Cancer Center’s tumor-biology department.  In 1996, the university stripped him of his chairmanship.  Jane Brust, spokesperson for the center, declined to comment, saying that the decision was made at the discretion of the university’s Department of Tumor Biology. 
“I’d brought in tens of millions in grants,” says Garth Nicolson, who has testified twice to Congress on the Gulf War.  “I no longer have any connection with the cancer center. Quite frankly, they were working on biological warfare.  We could prove that if we had to.”
Brust denies that allegation.
In 1995, Garth Nicolson applied unsuccessfully for a $600,000 grant for Gulf War Illness research.  He has four active grants and has received continuous funding from the National Institute of Health, the American Cancer Society, the U.S. Army and the National Foundation for Cancer Research for other research projects.  He believes he was turned down in 1995 because the government wanted to stall his work.  “In 1995 they were only funding grants looking at the psychological side of Gulf War Illness,” he says.
The Nicolsons say others who support the theory of Gulf War illness have suffered professionally, including psychiatrist and neurologist Dr. William Baumzweiger, formerly with the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in West Los Angeles and a former faculty member at the UCLA School of Medicine.
“I was told by a superior that I was ‘intensively’ scrutinized, more than any other house officer in the history of the Veterans Administration,” says Baumzweiger, who continues to treat Gulf War patients privately in his Tarzana practice.  “After I testified last year at Gulf War hearings, my personnel folder grew six inches thick.  My boss said he spent a quarter of his time dealing with my problems.  The VA gets rid of anybody it can.  We were told, ‘Don’t panic the population or the soldiers by talking about this.’  But talking is antidote.  Misleading them is what panics them.  Patients would rather hear the truth.”
Dr. Katherine Murray Leisure, who coordinated a regional VA Gulf War Illness Referral Center in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, was given two months notice in May.  Leisure, who was awarded a Pennsylvania American Legion Humanitarian Award in July says, “I’ve been told since 1995 that I don’t need to investigate Persian Gulf Veterans’ problems anymore.  I tell the truth to my Gulf War patients, and that’s why I’m being fired.  It’s politically risky to speak out.  I’ve given up on my federal career because I will tell the truth medically.  It’s an inquisition, a tearing up of scientists one by one to prevent them from telling the truth.”

In an Orange County Register story that ran on January 23, the Nicolsons aired their allegations in a dramatic report that boldly suggested an ongoing coverup of their theory.  By summer, government scientists were taking a harder look at the Nicolsons and their theory.
	“So far we have not confirmed the Nicolsons’ findings,” says Dr. Shyh-Ching Lo, chief of the Division of Molecular Pathology at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, D.C., and the man who discovered the mycoplasma micro-organism. “They’re talking about 50 to 60 percent of veterans having the illness.  We haven’t seen the evidence.  [But] the Nicolsons claim to have [developed] called “gene tracking.”
	“Gene tracking allows one to look at the genes in the way they’re packaged.  [It’s] an emerging technology that we feel will be important to other diseases that penetrate the white blood cells.”
	The U.S. Defense Department has approved a $40,000 budget to send Lo and other government scientists to study the Nicolsons’ techniques and findings.  They expect to visit the Irvine institute as soon as schedules are coordinated.  Scientists at Walter Reed Army Medical Center near Washington, D.C., recently agreed to take a closer look at the Nicolsons’ findings.  “They have a technique that reveals something that other techniques don’t,” says Defense Department spokesman Ben Smith.  “Garth Nicolson has held reputable positions in the past.  He’s making a claim and we will test it.”
	Dr. Lo says, “It’s hard to believe that the gene tracking works.  But when we go to their Irvine institute, we’ll see the detail of how they do that.  They say their method is more sensitive that ours.  Scientifically, we have questions.”
	Nancy Nicolson says Lo “is not in a position to say what he thinks.  Plus, I think he’s having trouble finding the micro-organisms.  Probably the samples they gave him were negative to begin with.  Before you find antibodies, you have to be really sick.”
	The Nicolsons’ treatment protocol calls for a combination of antibiotics, including doxycycline, ciprofloxacin or azithromycin, taken over a long period of time.  They say they have helped hundreds of people, possibly thousands, but they won’t call it a cure.

	The Nicolsons believe there are reasons why the government might not be ready to embrace their work.  “If the government acknowledges that an infection is involved, and that wives can get the illness,” says Garth Nicolson, “then the government will have to pay compensation to families.”
	Another reason may be the treaties the U.S. has signed.  One of these, he says, is an international agreement banning the deployment and dissemination of biological weapons.  “If we did transfer these weapons to the Iraqis, this could be considered a breach of this treaty.  If they were used, this would support the premise that we broke the treaty.”
	Garth Nicolson says that early in the conflict, our government threatened Saddam Hussein with nuclear/biological retaliation if he used chemical weapons.  “Since there weren’t large numbers of casualties, our senior commanders in the field decided biological weapons weren’t used.  Yet, all intelligence data are consistent with the fact that chemical and biological [weapons] were used.  The Iraqis themselves said they used [them].  Under Soviet War doctrine adopted by the Iraqis, you take fast- and slow-acting agents, mix conventional weapons with unconventional ones, and confuse the enemy. You make it difficult to diagnose and treat them.”
	The idea that any nation would stockpile biological weapons appalls Garth Nicolson.  Yet he says that all countries with large armies have them.  “Iraq was armed by France, Britain, the U.S., Korea,” he says.  “People need to know that their country is involved in massive biological-weapons program.  They need to make their ideas known to their congressman and stop appropriating money to them. You have to cut the money off.” 
	The Nicolsons say their daughter, who has fully recovered, will go to medical school at Northwestern in the fall.
	“Our daughter and so many others were on death’s door,” says Nancy. “We like to focus on that.”  As for the big picture, she adds, “I call it a global mistake.  The best way to handle it would be for all countries to agree not to conduct this kind of warfare ever.  I believe it will make or break the human race.”  

The Believers

	Although the U.S. government and much of the medical community have not embraced Garth and Nancy Nicolson’s theory about the possible cause and recommended treatment of Gulf War Illness, the Orange County biochemists have strong supporters among Gulf War veterans.
	Sgt. Kevin Wright of Lima, Ohio, served as Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf’s bodyguard in the Gulf War.  He’s now the president of Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm, a grass-roots organization of activists dealing with Gulf War Illness.
	Wright became ill in the Gulf; he threw up blood, his appendix burst and sporadic headaches began.  By the time he returned home, his symptoms fit the description of Gulf War Illness: blurred vision, night sweats, fatigue, gastrointestinal upset, joint and muscle problems, spinal degenerative disease.  After nearly 10 years in the Marines, he was medically retired in April 1996.  His wife and daughter also have become ill with the same symptoms.
	He went to the VA but “that was a joke,” he says.  “The VA doesn’t take Gulf War Illness seriously.  They don’t have anyone set to deal with the type of illness we have.  They send you to doctors who don’t know what is going on.”
	Through a former Air Force flight nurse involved in treating Gulf War vets, Wright found out about the Nicolsons.  All three family members tested positive for the mycoplasma.  Garth Nicolson sent Wright’s doctor the recommended antibiotic treatment, and Wright says it’s working.
	While many people fear retribution and won’t talk to the media using their real names, Wright wanted his name used.  “I loved the Marine Corps,” he says.  “I planned to retire from the Corps.  They took my health, my livelihood, but they can’t take my heart and my spirit.  I was in the war, but my wife and daughter weren’t.  Why do they have to pay consequences for a war they weren’t in?”
	Of alleged government indifference to the Nicolson’s research, he says, “I just wish they would take [it] seriously.”
	The Nicolsons also helped a Southern California Marine Corps colonel and his family—the colonel asked that their names not be used—who tested positive for mycoplasma.  The officer, a Gulf War veteran, says they’ve given the illness to friends unknowningly.  The family knew something was wring when its flu-like symptoms wouldn’t go away and grew worse.  Their children got sick, and then their pets got sick and died.
	“When the kids get it, you’re scared to death,” says the wife.  “But what happened to our family isn’t important.  What’s important is that no one is listening to Garth.  No one is funding Garth.  He’s got the only definitive thing around.  He’s not some flake.  Look at his credentials.  He’s risking his whole career in helping us and the others.  The doctors that treated us at Scripps Clinic listened to him.  There are people out there that are sick and don’t know there’s a treatment.  Coverups are not going to make this go away.”

—B.D.B.