[ RadSafe ] Tanya Boozer - Long Time Hanger On of Anti-DU Yahoo Groups Fi...

[BLHamrick at aol.com]

Color me naive, but from WWII's "Shell Shock" to Vietnam's "Agent Orange  
Syndrome" to "Gulf War Syndrome," I find the common thread to be war.  It  seems 
to me placing young people into situations of extraordinary stress and  fear; 
into situations where (however we euphemize) they are called upon to  murder 
total strangers; into situations where they make life and death moral  
decisions that most of us never face in a lifetime, in a split second; and  then live 
the rest of their lives with the doubt and guilt that those  decisions must 
engender, I don't find any mystery in the debilitating illnesses  they most 
assuredly suffer.
 
This would be why there is "a confusing constellation of symptoms."   
Everyone and every body will respond to this intense horror in a different way,  
including in ways that affect mental stability and the immune system.   I would 
also speculate that a constant, long-term flush of stress hormones  might very 
well substantially increase the average DNA damage per cell that we  routinely 
experience from a variety of natural sources and functions.
 
In any case, the idea that this "syndrome" is related to DU is rather  
pathetically misguided, and does a grave disservice to the men and women who  have 
served and are now suffering.
 
Barbara L. Hamrick
 
 
In a message dated 6/6/2008 1:51:28 AM Pacific Daylight Time,  
rhelbig at california.com writes:

But  "Gulf War Syndrome," a confusing constellation of symptoms including
skin  irritation and memory problems that many veterans connect to exposure
to  chemicals, is not a treatable illness. Doctors can only treat  individual
and wildly divergent symptoms. "You have to put that in  quotations," said
Gaither when I mentioned "Gulf War Syndrome." 


 



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