Professor Simon Wessely: GWS (Gulf War Syndrome) is all in the mind, i.e. it doesn't exist just like ME ...

By: Bruce Bower, Science News
Web edition : Friday, October 17th, 2008

“Informal communication among British veterans of the first Iraq war may have shaped the vets' characterization of Gulf War Syndrome.”

„After the bullets stopped flying, the rumors took off among British veterans of the 1991 Gulf War. Early accounts of physical and emotional reactions to wartime experiences spread from one person to another through networks of veterans.

Within a few years, these former soldiers had decided among themselves that many of them suffered from the controversial illness known as Gulf War Syndrome, a new study by Simon Wessely of King’s College London concludes.“

“After the war, rumors reaffirmed the social bond among returning vets and helped them to shape a bewildering array of physical and psychological symptoms into the common burden of Gulf War Syndrome, the scientists propose.”

So, it is all in the mind, the soldiers came back from the Gulf and were well, went to the pub and decided over a few pints of lager to feign an illness ………….

Margaret Williams wrote the following some time ago:

“In his customary way, Wessely made sweeping assertions in his evidence, for instance: “We knew from the start that we were not dealing with something that causes an increase in mortality”.

On what evidence could Wessely possibly have known this before any studies had been done? Such a claim is in stark contrast to the facts: in the UK alone, over 6000 Gulf War veterans have suffered from illnesses that they believe to be Gulf War-related and 600 Gulf War veterans who were healthy when deployed to the Gulf have now died from Gulf War-related illness.”

So professor, can I ask you something, did you include these soldiers and their loved ones in your research and ask them about the false illness beliefs etc that caused their death?? Or did they die from an allergy to psychiatrists ???

“Current medical consensus holds that Gulf War veterans indeed display unusually high rates of various health problems, but that these conditions don’t constitute a discrete illness or syndrome, Wessely says.”

And what did two sociologist say about this in the same article in Science News:

“Research on this issue remains contentious. In a commentary slated to be published with the new study, Thomas Shriver of Oklahoma State University in Stillwater and Sherry Cable of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville say that Wessely’s team appears to regard veterans’ symptoms as purely psychological and perhaps partly invented out of rumor.

“The authors come perilously close to blaming the victims,” the two sociologists contend.”

Now don’t we know that psychiatric strategy from another illness ????