Government doctors and researchers steadfastly denied any such link. The veterans of the Gulf War are still trying to get Gulf War syndrome accepted as a real phenomenon. And when NATO soldiers began to report illnesses and blamed it on depleted uranium shells, the governments trotted out their best scientists to explain why this could not possibly be happening. And the hell of it is they always sound convincing. And the double hell of it is they may be right.
Nobody really knows for sure what caused the Gulf War syndrome.
Nobody really knows for sure if the MMR shots cause autism. Nobody really knows for sure if the illnesses reported by NATO soldiers and Bosnian civilians are due to the use of depleted uranium shells or some other as yet undetermined factor. What we do know for sure is that every time a government is forced to backtrack and admit that there is a problem, this gives more credence to the next group who claims that mistakes were made. The resistance to admitting the truth about Agent Orange gave Gulf War vets credibility and the problems coming out of the Gulf War in turn are making it easier to believe that something unexpected may have happened when the depleted uranium shells were used in actual combat conditions. Deception and double talk are a fact of life when public policy and public health intersect, and it is not just governments that do it.