Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 African-American, to the Persian Gulf for the gulf war ("Desert Storm"). More than 400,000 of these soldiers are ordered to take an experimental nerve agent medication called pyridostigmine, which is later believed to be the cause of gulf war Syndrome -- symptoms ranging from skin disorders, neurological disorders, incontinence, uncontrollable drooling and vision problems -- affecting gulf war veterans (Goliszek; Merritte, et al.). |
| The Department of Defense admits that gulf war soldiers were exposed to chemical agents; however, 33 percent of all military personnel afflicted with gulf war Syndrome never left the United States during the war, discrediting the popular mainstream belief that these symptoms are a result of exposure to Iraqi chemical weapons (Merritte, et al.).
President Clinton issues a formal apology to the subjects of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and their families (Sharav).
(1997)
In an experiment sponsored by the U.S. |
| More than 400,000 of these soldiers are ordered to take an experimental nerve agent medication called pyridostigmine, which is later believed to be the cause of gulf war Syndrome -- symptoms ranging from skin disorders, neurological disorders, incontinence, uncontrollable drooling and vision problems -- affecting gulf war veterans (Goliszek; Merritte, et al.).
The CDC and Kaiser Pharmaceuticals of Southern California inject 1,500 six-month-old black and Hispanic babies in Los Angeles with an "experimental" measles vaccine that had never been licensed for use in the United States. |
| The Department of Defense admits that gulf war soldiers were exposed to chemical agents; however, 33 percent of all military personnel afflicted with gulf war Syndrome never left the United States during the war, discrediting the popular mainstream belief that these symptoms are a result of exposure to Iraqi chemical weapons (Merritte, et al.).
President Clinton issues a formal apology to the subjects of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and their families (Sharav).
(1997)
In an experiment sponsored by the U.S. |
Ann Blake Tracy, Ph.D.
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| GULF WAR VETERANS: Captain Joyce Riley, who has headed the battle in exposing gulf war Syndrome, has noted that approximately 80- 90% of the gulf war vets are now on or have been offered one of the SSRI antidepressants. As a result many have had their lives turned upside down with others committing suicide or murder/suicide. When you see one of these tragedies keep in mind that if the perpetrator was a gulf war vet the chances he was on one of these medications is very high. This raises questions about Timothy McVeigh who bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City. |
Shannon Brownlee
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 Parents want their children to get head CT scans for a bump on the head and abdominal CTs for belly pain, perhaps because we all tend to believe what the Air Force pilots thought during the first Gulf War: that photographs can't lie, that getting an image represents the surest path toward being safe rather than sorry.
Doctors say that when a patient demands a test, they often comply—even when they know the test is not warranted. |
Anne Harrington
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 Did the so-called gulf war Syndrome result from the fact that highly stressed American soldiers, already facing combat during the first Iraq war in 1991, were then given multiple powerful vaccines—as many of 24 different kinds—that their stressed-out immune systems were unable to properly defend against? In an aging population, were there particular stressors— such as mourning the death of a spouse, or caring for a spouse with Alzheimer's—that undermined already vulnerable immune systems?77 What about cancer? |
| What was the effect of stress on the immune systems of other vulnerable groups: elderly people, gulf war veterans, cancer patients? In this period, it seemed as if there was no place in the body where stress did not stalk, and stories of stress became about as dark as they had ever been.
From "Broken by Modern Life," we move to two alternative kinds of redemption narrative templates that both begin, in different ways, by emphasizing the effects of modern life on our health, but then offer two very different kinds of solutions to making things better. |
Shannon Brownlee
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| When the first gulf war began, the U.S. Air Force employed two squadrons of F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jets to find and destroy Scud missile launch sites in the Iraqi desert. After a Scud was airborne, it would leave a light trail in the night sky, allowing the fighter pilots to narrow down the site of the launch to a few square miles. The Iraqis were using modified flatbed trucks as their launching sites, moving them around so they could launch from a different spot each night. |
Benjamin H. Natelson, M.D.
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 A number of my patients are veterans of the first Persian gulf war, and many of them experience severe, medically unexplained fatigue. Many of these vets believe they got sick due to some exposure they experienced while on military duty, or perhaps to a vaccination they had to have for their military service. Although there is little evidence to support their beliefs, I don't tell them they are wrong, because we may never really know what triggered their illness. |
| One mini-epidemic of CFS, although not preceded by infection, did occur in veterans of the 1990-1991 Persian gulf war. Rates of this illness were approximately three times higher in these veterans than in veterans who never left the United States, and the incidence of illness was also higher in female than in male vets. The mini-epidemic onset of CFS in these veterans suggests that something about serving in the Gulf triggered the illness. The nature of that trigger remains a research question even today. |
| If I took the other tack and simply told the gulf war veteran that his or her assumptions were wrong, that first visit would probably be the last. If the doctor is insensitive to the discrepancy between his or her take and that of the patient, the doctor will find the patient uncooperative and perhaps angry, and the patient will feel as if the doctor does not care or understand why he or she is there. Obviously with such a negative experience, the patient will never return. That's not what a good doctor wants to have happen. |
Russell L. Blaylock, M.D.
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 Lest you be skeptical, we do in fact have a shining example of just such an event occurring in adults as a result of the government's brilliant inoculation program perpetrated on soldiers serving in the gulf war. These soldiers were required to take seventeen different vaccines over a short period of time, a massive assault on the immune system. As with the children and babies, many became ill and suffered debilitating disorders, many of which were neurological.
The Department of Defense recently admitted that there was a 200 percent increase in the incidence of ALS in gulf war veterans. |
Ann Blake Tracy, Ph.D.
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| GULF WAR VETERANS: Captain Joyce Riley, who has headed the battle in exposing gulf war Syndrome, has noted that approximately 80- 90% of the gulf war vets are now on or have been offered one of the SSRI antidepressants. As a result many have had their lives turned upside down with others committing suicide or murder/suicide. When you see one of these tragedies keep in mind that if the perpetrator was a gulf war vet the chances he was on one of these medications is very high. This raises questions about Timothy McVeigh who bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City. |
Dr. Paula Baillie-Hamilton
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 Unexplained symptoms reported by veterans of the first gulf war with Iraq in 1991 have caused heated international debate. The symptoms reported include fatigue, skin rash, muscle and joint pain, headaches, loss of memory, shortness of breath, gastrointestinal and respiratory symptoms, and extreme sensitivity to commonly occurring chemicals. Interestingly, the key to the puzzle of gulf war Syndrome (GWS) may be due to the particular combination of the numerous deadly chemicals that these soldiers were exposed to as a result of their posting. |
| This chemical cocktail could have acted as the initial trigger for developing MCS and could explain why veterans of the first gulf war now have a significantly higher prevalence of symptoms suggestive of MCS than the equivalent non-Gulf War military personnel.
Treatments for MCS
Avoidance of all forms of chemicals, not only in foods and drinks but also in the environment, is one of the cornerstones to treatment. |
James Howard Kunstler
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 The Iranians were disappointed by the lack of follow-through in the 1991 gulf war. When American ground troops withdrew in 1991, they had fomented a Shi'ite uprising in the Iraqi oil field region around Basra, which was brutally put down by Saddam. The Iranians hoped that the United States might provoke some internal coup d'etat against Saddam in the ten years that followed, but it was not to be.
After the 2003 American invasion of Iraq, Iran sought again to manipulate Shi'ite forces within Iraq to take leading roles in the new government. The United States was caught in a predicament. |
Dr. Paula Baillie-Hamilton
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| This disease tends to affect women as well as people known to have increased contact with chemicals, such as industrial workers, populations exposed to certain combinations of chemicals (like the gulf war veterans), communities with air or water contamination, and others with unique exposure to particular chemicals. |
| For example, chemically exposed veterans of the first gulf war have much higher rates of CFS than nonexposed veterans. In addition, a recent study of sheep farmers revealed that the greater their exposure to organophosphates from the sheep dip, the greater their risk of developing all the symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome.
Toxic metals, too, are known nerve, hormone, immune system, and mitochondrial poisons, among their many other toxic attributes. |
| So not only have chemicals now been linked with a large number of existing diseases, such as attention deficit disorder and cancer, but Miller and other prominent scientists believe this new disease process might be the key to explain the emergence of a totally new type of chemically related disorders, such as gulf war syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, and chemical sensitivities.
The Chemicals Behind Our Health Problems
The chemicals that appear to be causing many current health problems can basically be divided into two main groups:
2000
Figure 1.The Annual U.S. |
James Howard Kunstler
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| Iraq Attack and the Great Sleepwalk
The Persian gulf war in 1991 represented only a minor deviation from what would end up being an extraordinarily stable decade. Saddam Hussein's Iraq had provoked a showdown with the United States by taking over Kuwait the preceding summer, supposedly because Kuwait had used snazzy new technology to drill horizontally across its border into Iraqi-owned oilfields. Once in possession of Kuwait, Iraq embargoed its oil. Prices more than doubled for several months, but the other OPEC states eventually compensated for lost market supply. |
| The first President George Bush was therefore able to ignore the energy issue, except as it manifested in international affairs: the first gulf war following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, which was caused, in part, by Kuwaiti cheating—drilling horizontally beyond its borders into fields under Iraqi territory. In the meantime, Bush did nothing to revive the synthetic fuels program. |
Russell L. Blaylock, M.D.
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| The Department of Defense recently admitted that there was a 200 percent increase in the incidence of ALS in gulf war veterans. Knowing the connection between thimerosal neurotoxicity and microglial overactivation, one is not surprised to see such a result stemming from such an insane policy. There is also a possibility that the vaccines were contaminated with mycoplasmic organisms and possibly other viruses: we know that viruses and mycoplasma damage the nervous system by an excitotoxic mechanism. |
James Howard Kunstler
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| It's worth recalling that the 1991 gulf war started because, after invading his neighbor Kuwait, Saddam made noises about ultimately extending his reach into Saudi Arabia. Ten years later, the attacks of September 11,2001, also placed the United States on alert against any previously unthinkable form of aggression issuing from that part of the world. Nothing could be ruled out. That Saddam was not involved in the 9/11 attacks was no guarantee that he would refrain from sponsoring terrorist acts in the future. In fact, the 9/11 attacks might have inspired him to try an extravaganza of his own. |
Alex Steffen
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 Our petroleum-dependent farming eats up oil faster than you can say "Gulf War," using ten calories of fossil fuel for every one calorie we produce. According to journalist Richard Manning, author of Against the.Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization, the production of just one two-pound bag of breakfast cereal burns the energy of half a gallon of gasoline.
Even worse, as industrial farming pollutes our environment, it also pollutes our bodies. |
Doris J. Rapp, M.D.
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 Among the ill gulf war veterans who were known to be heavily exposed to chemicals such as Agent Orange (dioxin), about 86% complained of chemical sensitivities.2" In contrast, only 30% of non-chemically exposed veterans thought they had this problem. Similar to adults with numerous chemical sensitivities, gulf war veterans frequently complained about memory loss, anxiety, nausea, fatigue, balance problems, chronic muscle and joint pains, sexual dysfunction and burning painful skin spots. |
Gary Null, Ph.D.
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 Several members of the scientific community have reinforced this argument against vaccinations by establishing a correlation between gulf war syndrome, which is predominantly characterized by chronic fatigue, and the vaccination program carried out by the military during the Persian gulf war. Although the federal government denies this, doctors have implicated the administration of multiple inoculations as a partial cause of gulf war syndrome, asserting that it was responsible for immune system debilitation in numerous servicemen and women. |
Doris J. Rapp, M.D.
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| Sexual Problems in Male Veterans
Many gulf war veterans were exposed to a plethora of harmful chemicals.126'154 The gulf war Syndrome is complex because they were exposed to germs as well as chemicals in their clothing, in the air, inoculations of vaccines and hydrocarbons from space heaters in their sleeping areas. Many soldiers had symptoms of sensitivities to multiple chemicals and definite evidence of impaired neurological, musculoskeletal, respiratory, reproductive and immune function.154 Common complaints included nausea, chronic fatigue, joint pains and body aches. |
Gary Null, Ph.D.
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| Several members of the scientific community have reinforced this argument against vaccinations by establishing a correlation between gulf war syndrome, which is predominantly characterized by chronic fatigue, and the vaccination program carried out by the military during the Persian gulf war. Although the federal government denies this, doctors have implicated the administration of multiple inoculations as a partial cause of gulf war syndrome, asserting that it was responsible for immune system debilitation in numerous servicemen and women. |
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