Letter: Try a Gulf War chemical cocktail yourself

I should like to issue a challenge to Elaine Showalter who has a "theory" concerning, among other things, the cause of Gulf War Syndrome ("It's all in the mind, bud", 27 April). Will she agree to wear a flea- collar containing an organophosphate insecticide named diazinon for two weeks, as US troops did; allow her bedding to be sprayed every other day with a similar insecticide; and take NAPs tablets (containing pyridostigmine bromide which has now been admitted to enhance the effect of OPs), as thousands of UK and US troops did, for the same period? These chemicals were declared "safe" for such use by the manufacturers, so there could be no question of exposing Ms Showalter to life-threatening levels of these substances.

It is interesting that Ms Showalter spends three months each year at the Wellcome Institute in London. We have evidence connecting the research being carried out by Simon Wessely and Anthony David with the Wellcome; both these men have a) suggested that the cause of GWS is psychosomatic, post-traumatic stress syndrome, and b) received large chunks of funding from the Pentagon.

The UK Benefits Agency is currently paying out Industrial Injury Benefit to increasing numbers of farmworkers who have a history of occupational low-level exposure to OPs, as it is accepted by the DSS (in leaflet N12) that such exposure can cause long-term ill-health to such categories as farmworkers, growers and pest control officers.

Elizabeth Sigmund

OP Information Network

Callington,

Cornwall