Testimony of Howard B. Urnovitz, Ph.D. (2/2/00)
House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform - Subcommittee on
National Security, Veterans' Affairs and International Relations
Howard B. Urnovitz, Ph.D. -- 02/02/2000
I am grateful to the Committee for allowing me the opportunity to review the GAO
report on Gulf War Illnesses: Management Actions Needed to Answer Basic Research
Questions and for inviting me to present my views and recommendations on research
directions for Persian Gulf War Related Illnesses or GWS, Gulf War Syndrome. My name is
Dr. Howard B. Urnovitz. I received my doctorate degree in Microbiology and Immunology from
the University of Michigan in 1979. My entire CV is submitted with my written testimony. I
currently hold the position of Scientific Director of the Chronic Illness Research
Foundation as well as my current position as Chief Science Officer and Director of a
publicly traded biomedical company.
With respect to my views on government research programs concerning GWS, I concur with the
GAO report that many of the research objectives identified by the Research Working Group
of the Persian Gulf Veterans' Coordinating Board have not been reached. Some of the
government-funded epidemiological studies, particularly those of the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention and the University of Texas Southwestern, have been very
meaningful. Most of the government-funded research conducted thus far, however, has
focused on trying to quantify exposures with little or no data, identifying single
exposure agents as the sole causative factor, or summarizing the research of others. The
identification of the range of toxic exposures would assist greatly in determining the
array of causative factors associated with GWS. Today, we already have a great deal
information on the potential exposures during the Gulf War. Unfortunately, since a
significant amount of the data was not collected, we will never know with any degree of
certainty what the extent and combination of the exposures were in the case of each
individual patient. Further, identification of these exposures alone will not reveal the
disease mechanisms involved the progression of these illnesses.
Identifying the disease mechanism has been the focus of our research. I recommend that
Congress strongly encourage the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans' Affairs
and the Department of Health and Human Services to fully acknowledge non-government
funded, published, peer-reviewed independent research to further expand the total
information base on GWS. I am concerned that we in the independent research community do
not have a structure for free dialog with government agencies and researchers. To exclude
these contributions to science is not productive.
The GAO report recognizes medical science's conventional approach to chronic illnesses.
The paradigm continues to be a search for a single causative agent. The weakness in this
conceptual approach is that most chronic diseases are multifactorial. This single
causative agent approach was formulated long before science recognized that the human body
can sustain damage at the cellular and molecular level from a variety of physical,
chemical, or biological insults, and long before we determine the vast arrays of hazardous
materials to which these veterans were exposed. Assigning any one entity as the causative
agent will impede any progress in designing medical control of a chronic disorder.
I thank the Subcommittee for recognizing the contributions my colleagues and I have made
to the GWS medical literature. It is my hope that our unique approach to understanding
Gulf War Illnesses may serve as a platform for research into other chronic ailments. My
colleagues and I approach GWS like most other chronic illnesses by asking the following
question: what is common among people who suffer from chronic illnesses? For brevity, I
will summarize our research findings, published in 6 peer-reviewed papers in 1999 on four
different diseases. One
of these papers is attached to my written testimony.
It would appear that the human body has a mechanism for confronting toxic exposures. We
all know that we are given our physical characteristics from genetic material or genes;
one set of genes received from each parent. What we learned by simultaneously studying
GWS, cancer, AIDS and multiple sclerosis is that the genes have the ability to
"reshuffle" and create new genes. We reason that these new genes are used to
adapt to the toxic environment in which we live. It seems that there are confounding
events that turns this reshuffling mechanism from a normal protective process to a disease
state. One of the next phases in our research plan is to determine what events trigger
these reshuffled genes to convert from helpful to harmful.
Through a research blood test we recently developed, we have been able to identify
material in the sera of patients suffering from chronic illnesses that likely play a
critical role both as a marker of the illnesses and a mechanism for the reshuffling. This
discovery of the reshuffling process resulted from the identification and analyses of a
type of nucleic acid, RNA, found in the serum or plasma of GWS veterans. It took us
several years to break the code on just one RNA molecule that we were able to isolate. It
has been our goal to collect RNA from as many veterans with GWS and clone, decode and
catalog the reshuffled genes with respect to patient symptomology. This approach should
allow us to group ailments according to the pattern of each gene sequence. The modern
marvel of mapping the normal human genome is close to completion. We plan to initiate our
own program mapping the detours that the human genome takes with respect to toxic exposure
and chronic disease. The ensuing catalog of reshuffled genes should assist in establishing
diagnostic protocols and tailoring treatments for each patient.
The single greatest obstacle to achieving this goal with respect to the veterans has been
the lack of sufficient private sector funding for research into an issue that most people
believe is the responsibility of the government.
I include supporting testimony from my colleague, Prof. Luc
Montagnier. Prof. Montagnier's laboratories, with 4 decades' experience with
evaluating the biological and medical significance of RNA, led the research effort into
the discovery of the AIDS associated viruses: HIV-1, HIV-2 and HIV-1 group O. We jointly
concur that to understand the origin of the disease associated RNAs in GWS, a major effort
be launched on understanding a family of genes referred to as retroelements. Retroelements
make up over 6% of the genes in the human body and appear to be central to the origin of
disease associated RNA.
I would like to state for the record that it is my professional opinion that the clues to
solving significant medical problems in the world today -- cancers, AIDS, heart and liver
diseases, autoimmune and neurologic disorders, vaccine safety, chemical injuries, and
military associated ailments -- lie in the blood of these veterans who suffer from GWS and
possibly in the blood of their families. Once we break and catalog the code of the
reshuffled RNA, we may finally have a clear direction in how to treat chronic illnesses.
The Gulf War veterans will become heroes again for a second time.
I ask that the full text of my statement along with a prepared statement from my colleague
Professor Montagnier be submitted for inclusion in the record of the hearing.
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