UTSW genetic study confirms sarin nerve gas as cause of Gulf War illness

[rebewranger]

UTSW genetic study confirms sarin nerve gas as cause of Gulf War illness
Published on:May 11, 2022

Troops who had genes that help metabolize sarin were less likely to develop symptoms

 DALLAS – May 11, 2022 – For three decades, scientists have debated the underlying cause of Gulf War illness (GWI), a collection of unexplained and chronic symptoms affecting veterans of the Persian Gulf War. Now researchers led by Robert Haley, M.D., Professor of Internal Medicine and Director of the Division of Epidemiology at UT Southwestern, have solved the mystery, showing through a detailed genetic study that the nerve gas sarin was largely responsible for the syndrome. The findings were published in Environmental Health Perspectives, a peer-reviewed journal supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, with an accompanying editorial on the paper by leading environmental epidemiologists.
 
Dr. Haley’s research group not only discovered that veterans with exposure to sarin were more likely to develop GWI, but also found that the risk was modulated by a gene that normally allows some people’s bodies to better break down the nerve gas. Gulf War veterans with a weak variant of the gene who were exposed to sarin were more likely to develop symptoms of GWI than other exposed veterans who had the strong form of the gene.

“Quite simply, our findings prove that Gulf War illness was caused by sarin, which was released when we bombed Iraqi chemical weapons storage and production facilities,” said Dr. Haley, a medical epidemiologist who has been investigating GWI for 28 years. “There are still more than 100,000 Gulf War veterans who are not getting help for this illness and our hope is that these findings will accelerate the search for better treatment.”

https://www.utsouthwestern.edu/newsroom/articles/year-2022/sarin-nerve-gas-gulf-war-illness.html

[GtHawk]

But I kept being told there weren't any WMD's, it was all lies.

[Free Vulcan]

Knew a copter pilot who served in GW1. He said numerous times when dropped into an lz the chemical sensors would be going of. Last I spoke to him he had a lot of nerve issues and was slowly becoming paralyzed.

[GtHawk]

Knew a copter pilot who served in GW1. He said numerous times when dropped into an lz the chemical sensors would be going of. Last I spoke to him he had a lot of nerve issues and was slowly becoming paralyzed.

What's sad is how many of our soldiers suffered and maybe weren't given an effective treatment because the denial of WMD's had to be maintained. I seem to recall a huge exodus of transport planes and trucks from Iraq prior to the invasion and subsequent lack of evidence of WMD's.

[Smokin Joe]

What's sad is how many of our soldiers suffered and maybe weren't given an effective treatment because the denial of WMD's had to be maintained. I seem to recall a huge exodus of transport planes and trucks from Iraq prior to the invasion and subsequent lack of evidence of WMD's.

Soviet trucks going up into the Bekaa Valley...

This is the 'new' Agent Orange....also denied for a long time.

[The_Reader_David]

This is about Gulf War I, under Bush the Elder.  At that time everyone knew Iraq had nerve gas production and delivery capabilities.  The whole inspection protocol that was part of the armistice agreement put in place after the Iraqis had been driven from Kuwait was to see to it that they cease to have such capabilities, and it was the cat-and-mouse games they played with the inspectors that convinced every intelligence service on the planet that they still had a WMD program. 

And, they almost certainly did:  between the truck traffic into Syria in advance of our invasion, the fact that every tank-truck in the length and breadth of Iraq, regardless of its ostensible purpose, had been washed out with gasoline when our troops arrived, and an odd incident in which some of our troops came down with nerve-gas exposure symptoms on an Iraqi miliitary compound when they investigated what was later claimed to be a large cache of pesticides (There is no rational reason to have a large cache of pesticide on a military compound in the middle of a desert? -- though perhaps it was a dual use substance, the Canadian intelligence service regards the pesticide tetraethyl pyrophosphate as a possible terror weapon), I am convinced that Saddam Hussein's Iraq still had an active WMD program.  W was willing to take the political hit of "not finding WMDs" by keeping all finds classified (hence the one that leaked to the press being hastily declared to be "pesticides"), because trumpeting them would have encouraged folks like those who later became the Daesh to look for them, too. 

[Smokin Joe]

This is about Gulf War I, under Bush the Elder.  At that time everyone knew Iraq had nerve gas production and delivery capabilities.  The whole inspection protocol that was part of the armistice agreement put in place after the Iraqis had been driven from Kuwait was to see to it that they cease to have such capabilities, and it was the cat-and-mouse games they played with the inspectors that convinced every intelligence service on the planet that they still had a WMD program. 

And, they almost certainly did:  between the truck traffic into Syria in advance of our invasion, the fact that every tank-truck in the length and breadth of Iraq, regardless of its ostensible purpose, had been washed out with gasoline when our troops arrived, and an odd incident in which some of our troops came down with nerve-gas exposure symptoms on an Iraqi miliitary compound when they investigated what was later claimed to be a large cache of pesticides (There is no rational reason to have a large cache of pesticide on a military compound in the middle of a desert? -- though perhaps it was a dual use substance, the Canadian intelligence service regards the pesticide tetraethyl pyrophosphate as a possible terror weapon), I am convinced that Saddam Hussein's Iraq still had an active WMD program.  W was willing to take the political hit of "not finding WMDs" by keeping all finds classified (hence the one that leaked to the press being hastily declared to be "pesticides"), because trumpeting them would have encouraged folks like those who later became the Daesh to look for them, too.

IIRC (not sure if it was GWI or GWII) there were gas shells found with residues in them.

[GtHawk]

This is about Gulf War I, under Bush the Elder.  At that time everyone knew Iraq had nerve gas production and delivery capabilities.  The whole inspection protocol that was part of the armistice agreement put in place after the Iraqis had been driven from Kuwait was to see to it that they cease to have such capabilities, and it was the cat-and-mouse games they played with the inspectors that convinced every intelligence service on the planet that they still had a WMD program. 

And, they almost certainly did:  between the truck traffic into Syria in advance of our invasion, the fact that every tank-truck in the length and breadth of Iraq, regardless of its ostensible purpose, had been washed out with gasoline when our troops arrived, and an odd incident in which some of our troops came down with nerve-gas exposure symptoms on an Iraqi miliitary compound when they investigated what was later claimed to be a large cache of pesticides (There is no rational reason to have a large cache of pesticide on a military compound in the middle of a desert? -- though perhaps it was a dual use substance, the Canadian intelligence service regards the pesticide tetraethyl pyrophosphate as a possible terror weapon), I am convinced that Saddam Hussein's Iraq still had an active WMD program.  W was willing to take the political hit of "not finding WMDs" by keeping all finds classified (hence the one that leaked to the press being hastily declared to be "pesticides"), because trumpeting them would have encouraged folks like those who later became the Daesh to look for them, too.

Yes you are correct 1990.