The Irritable Heart: The Medical Mystery of the Gulf War (Hardcover)

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 Browse Sample Pages
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