Gulf War veterans are nearly twice as likely to develop Lou Gehrig's disease(a fatal neurological disorder) than military personnel who were not sent to the region, the US government recently admitted. The US departments of defence and veterans affairs (VA) compared medical data on almost 700,000 personnel who were in the Gulf during the 1990-1991 war with data on 1.8 million military personnel who were deployed elsewhere. They identified 40 cases of the disease in the Gulf veterans, and 67 in the control group (www.newscientist.com [2], December 24, 2001).