-Caveat Lector- The Erie TImes' Morning News of Thursday, October 2l, l999 has the following story. "Pentagon's Admission 'Vindicates' Erie Native" Tom Tiedt warned in l994 antidote for nerve gas could be causing illness. by David Bruce, Staff Writer. "The government knew PB was going to cause some damage, and yet they still planned to use it." Tom Tiedt For five years, Erie native Tom Tiedt, Ph.D, claimed he knew the "smoking gun" to Gulf War Syndrome. The government, he said, refused to listen. This week, Tiedt feels vindicated. At a news conference Tuesday, Defense Department officials said that a nerve gas antidote given to U.S. troops during the Persian Gulf War may be a cause of the mysterious, lingering syndrome that plagues some Gulf War veterans. They presented a 385-page review of existing scientific studies of the antidote, pyriostigmine bromide or PB, and said more research needs to be done. "I was all alone saying this back in l994 and l995, and now it comes out that what I said was l00 percent all true," said Tiedt, contacted by phone at his home near Bradenton, Fla. "This is the first non-Congressional report that finally presents all the information." Tiedt, who was raised in Erie and graduated from Gannon University in l972, studied PB and a similar drug while performing post-doctorate work at the University of Maryland in the late l970s. He said one particular study he helped conduct proved that those drugs disrupt the neuromuscular function in mammals. Soe of the symptoms in the study, he said, are similar to those described by veterans who suffer from Gulf War syndrome: aching muscles, fatigue, irritability, thick saliva, weight loss, weight gain, hair loss, nausea, diarrhea, memory loss, swelling, sore gums, labored breathing and headaches. Tiedt said the Defense Department kept close watach on the University of Maryland studies and set up similar laaboratories at its research and development sites across the country. The government knew PB was going to cause some damage, and yet they still planned to use it." Tiedt said. Tiedt left the academic world for the business world in the late l970s and returned to Erie in the early l990s. One day, he was watching C-SPAN and saw a group of Defense Department officials tell members of Congress at a hearing about the Gulf War that they knew nothing about PB toxicity. "I put two and two together and realized they had known about PB's effects and still gave it to their soldiers," Tiedt said. "i walked the whole way around Presque Isle and did some soul searching. Then I started a media campaign, trying to get the word out that the defense department knew about PB's toxicity before the Gulf War." He contacted the Times Publish Company, CNN and Sen. Jay Rockefeller, R-W. Va., long one of the leading critics of the Pentagon's ongoing investigation of PB. The Senate Veteran's Affairs Committee asked for his written testimony in the fall of l996. Shortly afterward, he was interviewed on "60 Minutes" and testified before a Presidential Advisory Committee investigating Gulf War syndrome in November l996. On April 24, l997, Tiedt testified before the full U.S. House of Representatives. "But the cause sort of died under all the noise of the Lewinsky scandal," said Tiedt, who now works as a freelance medical toxicologist and web page designer. Despite the announcement by Pentagon officials, Tiedt said he expects the PB controversy will fade away, even though he feels those who knew about PB's toxicity should facae a world court similar to the Nuremberg Trials after World War II. "It probably won't happen," Tiedt said. "It's a matter of money, and who has the money for that?" Pyridostigmine bromide, or PB, was administered to an estimated 250,000 soldiers who fought in the Gulf War. Rand Corp., a Pentagon-financed research group, examined about l,000 published studies on PB and concluded that a possible connection "cannot be dismissed." PB has been used for decades to treat the neurologic disease myasthenia gravis. In the Gulf War it was given to troops as protection against potential attack by the nerve agent soman, even thought there was no evidence to suggest that Iraq had soman. Rockefeller said the Pentagon never should have given troops PB in the first place. "There was no evidence that soman was even in Iraq's arsenal," Rockefeller said. "In my view, the conclusion was inescapable that military men and women were being needlessly subjected to a possibly unsafe and ineffective treatment." Bernard Rostker, head of the Pentagon's search for possible causes of Gulf War syndrome, told a news conference that in the future the Pentagon would take more care to substantiate suspicions of a soman threat before ordering troops to take PB. The drug is ingested in pill form every eight hours. "PB was given when there was a threat of Iraq using nerve agents, when there was concern that soan might have been in the inventory," said Rostker. He suggested that in the future harder evidence of a threat would be necessary before commanders would be authorized to administer the drug. Beatrice Alexandra Golomb, main author of the Rand study, wrote, "No evidence uncovered suggests they (the Iraqis) had soman or had weaponized it." She said the possibility that the Soviet Union, which does have soman, might sell some to Iraq caused U.S. authorities to order that PB be distributed. note; The Associated Press also contributed to this story. 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