Pentagon admits postponing brain screenings
Guardian (UK)Ed Pilkington in New York
March 18, 2008
The Pentagon has admitted that it delayed introducing a routine screening of troops returning from Iraq for mild brain injuries because it feared that the extent of the problem could mushroom to the scale of the Gulf War syndrome after the first Iraq war.
The head of the Pentagon's medical assessments division has told USA Today that he wanted to avoid another controversy as potentially huge as Gulf War syndrome.
He said the military feared announcing a screening programme would encourage troops to think they had a condition and make correct diagnosis more difficult.
"Some individuals will seek diagnosis from provider to provider to provider," Col Kenneth Cox said.
The first evidence of what is known as mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) was discovered among soldiers in Iraq just months after the invasion in March 2003.
By January 2006 federal scientists specialising in the condition were calling for immediate screening.
Yet the Pentagon is only now gearing up to implementing the screening process, which involves soldiers being asked a series of questions designed to indicate whether they are suffering symptoms.
Those symptoms include headaches, dizziness, memory loss, nausea and convulsions.
Over the five years of the Iraq war, the extent of the problem of TBI has become better understood, and it is now classed as a "signature injury" of the war. The injuries are caused largely by roadside bombs that can send concussion waves through the brain even at a distance.
An army survey of more than 2,000 soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan suggested that about 11% showed signs of mild TBI, though some estimates have put it closer to 20%.
Since 2003, 1.6 million troops have served in Iraq alone, many of whom return to the US without any awareness of their condition and hence no treatment.
In Britain, the Ministry of Defence has admitted that about 500 personnel had suffered mild TBI. Like the Pentagon, the MoD is now considering planting sensors into soldiers' helmets to monitor the shock waves passing through them.
The delay in the Pentagon's screening programme has been fiercely criticised by politicians of both main parties and by