SINCE THE 1990-1991 PERSIAN GULF WAR, THE IDEA that the health of military personnel returning from major deployments should be monitored proactively has been established. Major studies are under way on both sides of the Atlantic on the health of personnel deployed to Iraq. The research that has emerged so far on US veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom indicates that there have indeed been many ...

BACKGROUND To assess any health consequences of the anthrax vaccination programme in UK Armed Forces deployed to Iraq. METHODS Data were collected from two samples simultaneously. The first was 5302 randomly selected UK service personnel. The second was 607 service personnel involved in a longitudinal study, where pre-vaccination health had previously been collected. Both samples were offered...

Many political scientists and policymakers argue that unmediated events—the successes and failures on the battlefield—determine whether the mass public will support military excursions. The public supports war, the story goes, if the benefits of action outweigh the costs of conflict. Other scholars contend that the balance of elite discourse influences public support for war. I draw upon survey...

BACKGROUND The present study aimed to determine the rate and cause of the mortality of the Iranian ex-prisoners of war in Iraqi detention camps during a ten- year period (1980 - 1990) according to the documented reports. METHODS The information extracted from the documented death certifications that have been provided by the Iraqi authorities and the Red Cross delegation. RESULTS At least a...

Chemical warfare agents are the most brutal weapons among the weapons of mass destruction. Sulfur mustard (SM) is a potent toxic alkylating agent known as “the King of the Battle Gases”. SM has been the most widely used chemical weapon during the wars. It was widely used in World War I. Thereafter, it was extensively employed by the Iraqi troops against the Iranian military personnel and even c...

Thermal injury historically constitutes approximately 5% to 20% of conventional warfare casualties. This article reviews medical planning for burn care during war in Iraq and experience with burns during the war at the US Army Burn Center; aboard the USNS Comfort hospital ship; and at Combat Support Hospitals in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Two burn surgeons were deployed to the military hospital i...

CONTEXT The effects of war-zone deployment on neuropsychological health remain poorly understood. Neuropsychological performance deficits serve as sensitive measures of neural dysfunction and are often associated with psychosocial and occupational problems. Previous studies have not conducted objective neuropsychological assessments both before and after a major war-zone deployment. OBJECTIVE...

OBJECTIVE Biased processing of emotion stimuli is thought to confer vulnerability to psychopathology, but few longitudinal studies of this link have been conducted. The authors examined the relationship between predeployment gaze bias for emotion stimuli and later symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression in soldiers deployed to Iraq. METHOD An eye-tracking paradigm was ...