Horrible Birth Defects In Children Of Gulf War Veterans

[indigobusiness]

Photography by Derek Hudson Text by Kenneth Miller Reporting by Jimmie Briggs

Jayce Hanson's birth defects may stem from his father's Gulf War service. But like hundreds of other families, the Hansons face official stonewalling--and a frightening future.

http://www.life.com/Life/essay/gulfwar/gulf01.html


Flying kites with his sister, Amy, he displays a fierce determination. "He's a problem solver," says his father, Paul. Jayce suffers from a syndrome similar to that of the thalidomide babies of the 1950s. But his mother, Connie, took no drugs.


rom outside, the evil that has invaded Darrell and Shana Clark's home is invisible. Set on a modest plot in a San Antonio subdivision, equipped with a doghouse and a swimming pool, the house is a shrine to the pursuit of happiness--a ranch-style emblem of the good life Darrell and 700,000 other U.S. soldiers fought for in the Persian Gulf four years ago.

Inside, the evil shows itself at once. It has taken up residence in the body of the Clarks' three-year-old daughter, Kennedi.

On a Saturday afternoon, Darrell and Shana huddle in their paneled living room. They are in their mid-twenties, robust and suntanned, but their eyes are older. Kennedi toddles about, pretending to snap pictures. You see the evil's imprint when she lowers the toy camera: Her face is grotesquely swollen, sprinkled with red, knotted lumps.

Kennedi was born without a thyroid. If not for daily hormone treatments, she would die. What disfigures her features, however, is another congenital condition: hemangiomas, benign tumors made of tangled blood vessels. Since she was a few weeks old, they have been popping up all over--on her eyelids and lips; in her throat and spinal canal. Laser surgery shrinks them, but they return again and again. They distort her speech, threaten her life. And, inevitably, they draw the stares of strangers. "When people see her," says Shana, "they say, 'Ooh, what happened to your baby?'"

[smirkymonkey]

1. How tragic. What will the next generation of

Iraq war babies be like? Supposedly the contamination is even worse than the Gulf War.

[DaveSZ]

2. Thanks for posting

nt

[tom_paine]

3. Oh God, how awful. And what of today's soldiers, in Iraq for so much

longer thus making longer-term exposure, one of the three legs of radiation

1) Exposure
2) Intensity
3) Distance from source

Of course, the distance from source is almost nil. The hot dust is all around them.

More horror from the Bushevik War Machine.

[Miss Authoritiva]

4. There is so much wrong here it's hard to begin.

First, a government or government agency that has a vested interest (such as not wanting to pay out benefits) should never be in charge of investigating all of these possible cause-and-effect relationships. A truly independent board of inquiry made up of leading international authorities in the key fields should be set up.

Second, the military and related entities have both a moral and scientific obligation to keep data as accurate and comprehensive on the soldiers and their families as they do on precious bomb-deploying hardware.

Third, before being given FDA-unapproved, off-label, and experimental medications and also before being deployed to zones where exposure to biological, chemical, and radiation weapons is a possibility, soldiers and ancillary personnel should be advised to bank sperm/eggs as a precaution.

Fourth, a truly moral government would acknowledge the fact that soldiers don't die of musket ball injuries anymore. Warfare in the late 20th and 21st century involves biological, chemical, and radiation cocktails whose immediate and long-term effects we just don't know. Immediate and long-term care should never be denied to veterans.

[indigobusiness]

5. This is a prime example

of truly failed and illegitimate, out of control govt.

Pretenders rule, catastrophically.