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

[Steven Dapra]

June 6

         The so-called "Gulf War Syndrome" has affected veterans of US wars 
from every war since (and including) the Civil War, with the possible 
exception of the Spanish-American War.  For a review paper on this, see 
"War Syndromes and Their Evaluation:  From the U.S. Civil War to the 
Persian Gulf War," Annals of Internal Medicine; 1 September 1996; 
125:398-405.  The authors are Kenneth Hyams, Stephen Wignall, and Robert 
Roswell.

Steven Dapra


At 09:36 PM 6/6/08 -0400, BLHamrick at aol.com wrote:
>
>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."