Missoula broadcast features researchers alleging Gulf War biological exposures, communicability and antibiotic treatment

On a Missoula cable-access call-in program, host Joyce Riley said that documents and veteran reports show the 1991 Persian Gulf War involved biological and chemical agents and that the resulting illness has spread beyond veterans to their spouses and children. "We have a disease that is now not just Gulf War veterans, but it is in the general community," Riley said.

The program featured Dr. Garth Nicholson, identified during the broadcast as a cell biology researcher associated with work at MD Anderson and the Institute for Molecular Medicine in Irvine, California. Nicholson told listeners his laboratory has detected infectious microorganisms in blood samples from veterans with Gulf War illness, including an organism the program named "mycoplasma fermentans incognitus." "We've been able to find... mycoplasma fermentans incognitus in about, oh, anywhere from a third to a half of the patients that we've examined," Nicholson said.

Why it matters: the speakers framed the issue as both a veterans' health crisis and a potential public-health concern because they asserted some agents are communicable. Riley and Nicholson cited declassified or leaked Department of Defense documents, CENTCOM logs, and a 1994 Senate report they said details U.S. chemical and biological-related exports to Iraq. Riley said some…