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The Irritable Heart: The Medical Mystery of the Gulf War
 
 
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The Irritable Heart: The Medical Mystery of the Gulf War [Hardcover]

Jeff Wheelwright (Author)

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Jeff Wheelwright
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Amazon.co.uk Review

The 1991 Gulf War might turn out to have made a significant contribution to the development of medicine as The Irritable Heart shows. Thousands of veterans suffer from a nebulous constellation of ailments commonly referred to as Gulf War Syndrome (GWS), and they are pushing the fledgling field of psychoneuroimmunology to the forefront of research interest. Science journalist Jeff Wheelwright explores this unfamiliar territory through interviews with ailing veterans and their physicians as well as larger-scale reporting from Congressional and military reports. Familiar with the Persian Gulf region through his environmental coverage prior to and during the war, he is savvy enough to check claims of toxicity while retaining a healthy yet sympathetic skepticism. The veterans' stories are tragic, frustrating, and disturbing; their drive to at least name, if not cure, their problem stymied by a wall of institutional ignorance. Seemingly related to other medical mysteries like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, and fibromyalgia, GWS has helped launch research into the connections between the mind, the brain, and the immune system. Whether advances will come in time to help sufferers is an open question, but at least it is finally being asked. --Rob Lightner

Product Description

Following the Gulf War, thousands of veterans developed illnesses that medicine was unable to explain. Ten years later many of them remain ill. In "The Irritable Heart" Jeff Wheelwright profiles five ailing US veterans, unravelling the health mystery through their case histories. He reviews the toxic substances in the environment that many believe to be the cause of the conditions and demonstrates why such scenarios are unlikely. Rather, he shows that Gulf War illnesses belong in the company of chronic fatigue syndrome and multiple chemical sensitivity-symptom complexes that evade a biomedical explanation. Doubters have dismissed the veterans' conditions as a psychological fabrication but Wheelwright maintains that Gulf War syndrome is a real illness, consisting of physical symptoms magnified and aggravated by psychological distress. The only way to understand these elusive sicknesses is to consider the mind and body as one suffering system.
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The West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center, as big as its name, consists of scores of buildings and 430 acres alongside the 405 freeway near Santa Monica. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Amazon.com: 3.8 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Bad Methods, Self-serving Book, 23 Feb 2004
By Tim Blackmore - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Irritable Heart: The Medical Mystery of the Gulf War (Hardcover)
The book has some serious methodological flaws. Wheelwright has apparently chosen his subjects with care -- each winds up being dislikable, or is proven to be a liar. Wheelwright is disingenuous about his purposes, and condescends to the veterans in a coy way.

When it comes to the evidence, he has already decided, based on his work with oil spills and his reading of the Agent Orange literature, that Gulf War Illness(es) may be real, but since they can't be tied to any particular single event, they can't be paid for by the VA.

This book proposes to be in-depth reporting, but reveals a writer with an agenda, a science writer from Life magazine who ironically is unconcerned about environmental claims, and a method that is as badly flawed as the studies he attacks.

For an alternate viewpoint, read Seymour Hersh's _Against All Enemies: Gulf War Syndrome: The War Between America's Ailing Veterans and Their Government_.


2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars One-sided tale, 26 May 2009
By K. Duprey "journalist" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Irritable Heart: The Medical Mystery of the Gulf War (Hardcover)
The mind/body is one paradigm, however, it is not the only plausible paradigm - what it boils down to is bio-politics and "according to whom." A thorough reading of the scientific biomedical literature reveals plenty of objective biomedical evidence for all the organic diseases referenced in this book.

For example, ME/CFS is an organic brain disease (ICD-10 G93.3) where patients suffer from pathological exhaustion - not garden variety tiredness - among many other neurological symptoms and signs. And fibromyalgia is classified under musculoskeletal diseases not memes. Three different subgroups of veterans with GWS have been objectively identified although there is no current diagnostic category.

These diseases are no more or less mysterious than Parkinson's disease, ALS, Huntington's disease, Multiple Sclerosis, SLE, migraines, diabetes or Alzheimer's Disease. Given the dearth of adequate funding in these areas, there is surprisingly a great deal of evidence supporting biomarkers, non-psychogenic genetic considerations, and objective neurological signs which are significant even when there is no "known" pattern as well. There are also biomedical patterns consistent with both toxic and microbial exposure.

As for psychiatric disorders there is no known cause, no objective biomarkers, and the hypothetical symptoms are often confused with medical symptoms - in short a complete mystery.

Like many less than transparent health advocacy journalists, Mr. Wheelwright fails to rigorously examine the unproven hypotheses of psychiatrists (and disability insurance conglomerates) hoping to expand their influence and profit by expanding the boundaries of psychosomatic medicine in the DSM-V and the ICD-11.

The inadequate and inappropriate methodological methods of this small, but well funded group of Neo-Freudian adherents have come under heavy fire from their peers both in psychiatry and epidemiology as well as the biomedical fields. A good reporter using objective methods would have caught that. It is unfortunate that patients are caught in the cross-fire of murky reporting.



2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A humanist classic, 24 Aug 2001
By Henry Reath - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Irritable Heart: The Medical Mystery of the Gulf War (Hardcover)
A brilliant investigation into and meditation on the intersection of epidemiology, journalism, politics, and human suffering known as the Gulf War Syndrome. The book is sui generis, and as with many works of surpassing originality it may be overlooked today, but I predict people will be reading this humanist classic in a hundred years.
› Go to Amazon.com to see all 6 reviews  3.8 out of 5 stars 
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