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Court stands by decision on Gulf war syndrome

Clare Dyer legal correspondent, BMJ

The High Court in London refused last week to overturn a ruling that officially recognised for the first time the existence of Gulf war syndrome.

Mr Justice Newman dismissed an appeal by the Ministry of Defence against a decision last year by a war pensions appeal tribunal that Shaun Rusling, a former sergeant in the Parachute Regiment, had the syndrome as a result of his service in the 1991 Gulf war.

However, the judge emphasised that he was not making any ruling on the existence or otherwise of Gulf war syndrome, and the judgment will have no bearing on the damages claim against the Ministry of Defence by thousands of veterans who claim to have developed the syndrome after service in the Gulf.

Mr Rusling appealed to the tribunal after he was turned down in 1994 for a war pension on the basis of a range of illnesses and symptoms that he attributed to Gulf war syndrome. After he lodged his appeal but before it was heard, the Ministry of Defence accepted his claim for a pension, but on the basis of "symptoms and signs of ill defined conditions" (SSIDC), explicitly rejecting the label Gulf war syndrome.

The ministry argued that, as it had resolved the claim in Mr Rusling's favour, the tribunal should not have gone on to hear the appeal. It maintained that the tribunal had wrongly concerned itself with the label Gulf war syndrome.

But the judge said the tribunal's decision could not be legally impugned. He ruled: "Short of a plain abuse of the appeal process, a right of appeal in connection with a diagnostic label exists because both parties have an interest in the diagnosis being correct."

The Ministry of Defence said in a statement: "We accept that some Gulf veterans have become ill and that many veterans believe this ill health is related to their Gulf experience. There is no medical or scientific consensus about the causes of this ill health, and we remain open minded about the various causes that have been suggested.

"The overwhelming consensus of medical and scientific opinion is that the symptoms reported by some Gulf veterans do not constitute a discrete medical disorder or syndrome."

Mr Rusling eventually won a 90% back-dated disablement war pension, based on the ministry's diagnosis of SSIDC. Veterans say the syndrome causes fatigue, nausea, fever, depression, and other conditions, and they blame partly the large number of injections and tablets they were given before their Gulf service.

The judge upheld veterans' right to appeal against the ministry's rejection of a claim for a pension based on Gulf war syndrome, but said the onus would be on the claimant to prove the syndrome's existence on the balance of probabilities.

"Each claimant should have his own opportunity of weighing what may be a short route to entitlement, assuming SSIDC to be accepted, and a longer route carrying with it uncertainty," he said.
 


 

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Collections under which this article appears: Medical Consequences of Conflict

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