A team at the University of Portsmouth led by Professor Randall Parrish tested urine samples of 154 US veterans in 2021, reporting that no soldiers with the syndrome were exposed to significant amounts of depleted uranium and that it "is not and never was in the bodies of those who are ill at sufficient quantities to cause disease". Pyridostigmine bromide nerve gas antidote
The US military issued pyridostigmine bromide (PB) pills to protect against exposure to nerve gas agents such as sarin and soman. PB was used as a prophylactic against nerve agents; it is not a vaccine. Taken before exposure to nerve agents, PB was thought to increase the efficiency of nerve agent antidotes. PB had been used since 1955 for patients who have myasthenia gravis with doses up to 1,500 mg a day, far in excess of the 90 mg given to soldiers, and was considered safe by the FDA at either level for indefinite use and its use to pre-treat nerve agent exposure had recently been approved.Given both the large body of epidemiological data on myasthenia gravis patients and follow-up studies done on veterans it was concluded that while it was unlikely that health effects reported today by Gulf War veterans are the result of exposure solely to PB, use of PB was causally associated with illness. However, a later review by the Institute of Medicine concluded that the evidence was not strong enough to establish a causal relationship.
The bill would have made the RAC an independent organization within the VA, require that a majority of the RACs members be appointed by Congress instead of the VA, and authorized the RAC to release its reports without needing prior approval from the VA Secretary. The RAC is responsible for investigating Gulf War illness, a chronic multisymptom disorder affecting returning military veterans of the 1990–91 Gulf War.In the year prior to the consideration of this bill, the VA and the RAC were at odds with one another. The VA replaced all but one of the members of the RAC, removed some of their supervisory tasks, tried to influence the board to decide that stress, rather than biology was the cause of Gulf War illness, and told the RAC that it could not publish reports without permission. The RAC was created after Congress decided that the VAs research into the issue was flawed, and focused on psychological causes, while mostly ignoring biological ones.The RAC was first authorized under the Veterans Programs Enhancement Act of 1998 (Section 104 of Public Law 105–368, enacted November 11, 1998, and now codified as 38 U.S.C. § 527 note). While the law directing its creation mandated that it be established not later than January 1, 1999, the RACs first charter was not issued until January 23, 2002, by VA Secretary Anthony Principi. The RAC convened for its first meetings on April 11–12, 2002.