Gulf War Syndrome apparently due to Sarin

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individualmember
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Gulf War Syndrome apparently due to Sarin

Post by individualmember » Sun May 15, 2022 9:34 pm

I wonder if anyone can comment about this https://scitechdaily.com/after-30-years ... L8zGJWlA0w

It potentially puts Saddam’s use of WMDs into a new light, but its entirely out of my field of understanding.

Millennie Al
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Re: Gulf War Syndrome apparently due to Sarin

Post by Millennie Al » Mon May 16, 2022 1:48 am

individualmember wrote:
Sun May 15, 2022 9:34 pm
I wonder if anyone can comment about this https://scitechdaily.com/after-30-years ... L8zGJWlA0w

It potentially puts Saddam’s use of WMDs into a new light, but its entirely out of my field of understanding.
The actual paper is available at: https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/full/10.1289/EHP9009 It looks quite plausible, but it's one of these things that only strongly works one way. If it had found no effect of the Q vs R alleles, that would have been strong evidence against nerve gas, but finding an effect is not strong evidence in favour. Suppose, for example, that the illness is a combination of toxicity from soldiers' use of chemicals on their lawns at home and a psychological effect which makes them seek treatment thinking it was caused by the war. Then we would see the same genetic effect even though it was no actually caused by the war. We would need to compare soldiers against the general population to see if the alleles are associated with the same symptoms. Also, considering the amount of time that has passed, we need to consider if deaths since then might have an effect.

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Re: Gulf War Syndrome apparently due to Sarin

Post by Bewildered » Mon May 16, 2022 4:53 am

Is there any reason why specifically soldiers would be affected by sarin gas released from blowing up the chemical weapons factories? Were they much closer / more exposed than any Iraqi populations? Or should we be worried that in fact many iraqi’s were left affected by this and it just didn’t show up because of the other issues that were affecting iraq or because of a general disregard of their well-being?

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bob sterman
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Re: Gulf War Syndrome apparently due to Sarin

Post by bob sterman » Mon May 16, 2022 5:53 am

individualmember wrote:
Sun May 15, 2022 9:34 pm
It potentially puts Saddam’s use of WMDs into a new light, but its entirely out of my field of understanding.
Not really. This paper is about soldiers exposed during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

The idea that Iraq had a chemical weapons programme throughout the 1980s (including sarin) is not really controversial.

However, the chemical weapons stockpile was supposedly destroyed in 1991 - partly during the war (hence the exposure). And the production facilities supposedly shut down.

So the paper doesn't tell us whether Iraq still had a programme in 2003 (as alleged by US and UK).

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Martin_B
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Re: Gulf War Syndrome apparently due to Sarin

Post by Martin_B » Mon May 16, 2022 5:55 am

Bewildered wrote:
Mon May 16, 2022 4:53 am
Is there any reason why specifically soldiers would be affected by sarin gas released from blowing up the chemical weapons factories? Were they much closer / more exposed than any Iraqi populations? Or should we be worried that in fact many iraqi’s were left affected by this and it just didn’t show up because of the other issues that were affecting iraq or because of a general disregard of their well-being?
Also, have the people exposed to Sarin on the Tokyo subway attack in 1995 been affected by anything similar to Gulf War Syndrome? Because this was a known use of Sarin which killed a dozen and injured 5,000 or so. I'd say that that was a big enough cohort to review the hypothesis against.
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Re: Gulf War Syndrome apparently due to Sarin

Post by jimbob » Mon May 16, 2022 7:03 am

individualmember wrote:
Sun May 15, 2022 9:34 pm
I wonder if anyone can comment about this https://scitechdaily.com/after-30-years ... L8zGJWlA0w

It potentially puts Saddam’s use of WMDs into a new light, but its entirely out of my field of understanding.
Remember that this was the First Gulf War. When he was acknowledged to have Chemical weapons.
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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Woodchopper
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Re: Gulf War Syndrome apparently due to Sarin

Post by Woodchopper » Mon May 16, 2022 8:15 am

Bewildered wrote:
Mon May 16, 2022 4:53 am
Is there any reason why specifically soldiers would be affected by sarin gas released from blowing up the chemical weapons factories? Were they much closer / more exposed than any Iraqi populations? Or should we be worried that in fact many iraqi’s were left affected by this and it just didn’t show up because of the other issues that were affecting iraq or because of a general disregard of their well-being?
As far as I remember, there have been some studies on Iraqi soldiers and civilians which have also shown them being affected by similar symptoms. However, Iraq in the 1990s and after was a difficult place in which to do research, whereas its relatively easy to do research on US or UK veterans.

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Woodchopper
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Re: Gulf War Syndrome apparently due to Sarin

Post by Woodchopper » Mon May 16, 2022 8:26 am

After a quick skim of the article I'm not sure we can conclude it shows that Gulf War Syndrome is due to Sarin exposure.

It appears that the genes in question also protect against exposure to organophosphates, and one alternative explanation was that Gulf War Syndrome was caused by deliberate exposure of the soldiers to organophosphate pesticides (basically to prevent the spread of infectious disease and parasites). Similar symptoms have been seen in farmers who used organophosphate pesticides.

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Re: Gulf War Syndrome apparently due to Sarin

Post by individualmember » Tue May 17, 2022 2:23 pm

I thank you all for your comments. I'm thinking it comes down to a big chunk of IABMCTT ;)

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