The Irritable Heart: The Medical Mystery of the Gulf War [Hardcover]

Jeff Wheelwright (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 039301956X | ISBN-13: 978-0393019568 | Publication Date: January 2001 | Edition: 1

If oil, smoke, and nerve gas didn't cause Gulf War Syndrome, what did?

Following the 1991 Persian Gulf War, thousands of U.S. military veterans developed illnesses that medical science was unable to understand. Ten years later many veterans remain sick, and doctors still cannot agree on the cause.

In The Irritable Heart Jeff Wheelwright profiles five ailing veterans, unraveling the health mystery through their intimate and fascinating case histories. He describes the veterans' experiences, beginning with their deployment to the Gulf and tracking them through their return, their mysterious suffering, and their struggles to find the reasons for their illnesses.

Drawing on his experiences as a reporter in the Gulf in 1991, he reviews the toxic substances in the environment, such as oil smoke and nerve gas, that many believe to be the cause of the conditions. Wheelwright demonstrates why such scenarios are unlikely. Rather, he shows that the gulf war illnesses belong in the company of chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and multiple chemical sensitivity—symptom complexes that are increasing in America and evading a biomedical explanation. Although these contemporary illnesses are unrelated to war, Wheelwright points out that the gulf war ills have their own precedents in military history as far back as a Civil War malady known as "irritable heart."

Doubters have dismissed the veterans' conditions as a psychological fabrication—"It's all in their heads." Wheelwright maintains that gulf war syndrome is a real illness, involving both the body and the mind. It consists of physical symptoms greatly magnified and aggravated by psychological distress. But because modern medicine deals with the body and mind separately, the health investigation of the veterans' illnesses was bound to fail, leading to a bitter political polarization over the cause. Wheelwright puts us in the thick of the controversy—one that both obscured the medical inquiry and slighted the suffering of the veterans.

The only way to understand these elusive sicknesses is to consider the mind and body as one suffering system. With profound insight, The Irritable Heart takes the subject of chronic illness far beyond the medical aftermath of a desert war.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Though the merits of the 1991 gulf war will no doubt be debated as long as there are politicians and historians, it might turn out to have made a significant contribution to the development of medicine. 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 in The Irritable Heart. Familiar with the Persian Gulf region through his environmental coverage before 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

From Publishers Weekly

Gulf War syndrome is a vague diagnosis for such symptoms as diarrhea, headaches, muscle pain, fatigue, shortness of breath and irregular heart rhythm (the eponymous "irritable heart"). Causes of the syndrome have been variously cited as exposure to chemical weapons, nerve gas and fuel oil fumes, but, as Wheelwright explains, the same symptoms could also be the result of chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple chemical sensitivity or fybromyalgia. Wheelwright, former science editor of Life magazine and author of Degrees of Disaster, gathers epidemiological evidence and personal histories to argue that modern medicine lacks the wisdom and skills to understand Gulf War syndrome because medical experts look at physical symptoms separately from emotional symptoms. For example, when Carol Best returned from the war, she began to experience, among other symptoms, frequent asthma attacks that were similar to those brought on before the war by her exposure to chemicals in the printing shop where she had worked. Best wonders if her stint in the Gulf is responsible for her poor health, but, argues the author, she never considers that going through a divorce could be a possible contributing factor, and, in the end, the doctors are unable to pinpoint the source of her illness. Wheelwright assumes a self-conscious and patronizing posture ("I have an agenda for Carol, and I must push ahead with it"), but his argument that modern medicine must adopt a more holistic approach as it confronts new medical mysteries is a clarion call to medical professionals and laypersons concerned about the state of health in contemporary society.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (January 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 039301956X
• ISBN-13: 978-0393019568
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,812,902 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jeff Wheelwright is a freelance journalist and the former science editor of Life magazine. He is the author of Degrees of Disaster, The Irritable Heart, and The Wandering Gene and the Indian Princess. He lives on the Central Coast of California. More information is at jeffwheelwright.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Bad Methods, Self-serving Book, February 22, 2004

By 

Tim Blackmore (London, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Irritable Heart: The Medical Mystery of the Gulf War (Hardcover)

The book has some serious methodological flaws. Wheelwright has apparently chosen his subjects with care -- each winds up being dislikable, or is proven to be a liar. Wheelwright is disingenuous about his purposes, and condescends to the veterans in a coy way.

When it comes to the evidence, he has already decided, based on his work with oil spills and his reading of the Agent Orange literature, that Gulf War Illness(es) may be real, but since they can't be tied to any particular single event, they can't be paid for by the VA.

This book proposes to be in-depth reporting, but reveals a writer with an agenda, a science writer from Life magazine who ironically is unconcerned about environmental claims, and a method that is as badly flawed as the studies he attacks.

For an alternate viewpoint, read Seymour Hersh's _Against All Enemies: Gulf War Syndrome: The War Between America's Ailing Veterans and Their Government_.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars One-sided tale, May 26, 2009

By 

profile deleted - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Irritable Heart: The Medical Mystery of the Gulf War (Hardcover)

The mind/body is one paradigm, however, it is not the only plausible paradigm - what it boils down to is bio-politics and "according to whom." A thorough reading of the scientific biomedical literature reveals plenty of objective biomedical evidence for all the organic diseases referenced in this book.

For example, ME/CFS is an organic brain disease (ICD-10 G93.3) where patients suffer from pathological exhaustion - not garden variety tiredness - among many other neurological symptoms and signs. And fibromyalgia is classified under musculoskeletal diseases not memes. Three different subgroups of veterans with GWS have been objectively identified although there is no current diagnostic category.

These diseases are no more or less mysterious than Parkinson's disease, ALS, Huntington's disease, Multiple Sclerosis, SLE, migraines, diabetes or Alzheimer's Disease. Given the dearth of adequate funding in these areas, there is surprisingly a great deal of evidence supporting biomarkers, non-psychogenic genetic considerations, and objective neurological signs which are significant even when there is no "known" pattern as well. There are also biomedical patterns consistent with both toxic and microbial exposure.

As for psychiatric disorders there is no known cause, no objective biomarkers, and the hypothetical symptoms are often confused with medical symptoms - in short a complete mystery.

Like many less than transparent health advocacy journalists, Mr. Wheelwright fails to rigorously examine the unproven hypotheses of psychiatrists (and disability insurance conglomerates) hoping to expand their influence and profit by expanding the boundaries of psychosomatic medicine in the DSM-V and the ICD-11.

The inadequate and inappropriate methodological methods of this small, but well funded group of Neo-Freudian adherents have come under heavy fire from their peers both in psychiatry and epidemiology as well as the biomedical fields. A good reporter using objective methods would have caught that. It is unfortunate that patients are caught in the cross-fire of murky reporting.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Take this to heart, April 6, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Irritable Heart: The Medical Mystery of the Gulf War (Hardcover)

The Irritable Heart is a stunning achievement, its calm, persuasive tone reveals the widespread suffering attributed to Gulf War Syndrome. It is excellently researched, clearly written. Wheelwright is a science writer who speaks from the heart.