I think there's a difference between vertigo and fear of heights- isn't vertigo where you feel an urge to jump off tall buildings etc? Not that anyone would ever do it... the majority of sufferers are perfectly sane (in a surreal sense of the word).
I suffer a bit from this. Looking down Vic falls bridge, I wondered what it would be like to jump off... so I tried (albeit attached to a piece of elastic
)
The wierdest thing though is when I developed a fear of flying... happened after I'd done my ME training, and flew SE solo for the first time in about 20 flying hours. I did not feel safe... in fact, I felt really uncomfortable. The type of uncomfortable one feels when one is crawling through a tight, muddy passage in one of the Yorkshire Dales's smallest, grottiest caves.
Oh, and I think the Belgrano's lifts are COOL.