Chemical Cocktail

[JeffL]

Gulf War Chemical Cocktail May Jeopardize Reproduction
January 16, 2003
(Cox News Service) -- More on war:

A combination of chemicals given to protect Gulf War soldiers against deadly diseases and nerve gas might have inadvertently damaged their testes and sperm production, according to animal experiments at Duke University Medical Center.

The new study could explain why some veterans have experienced infertility, sexual dysfunction and other symptoms, according to Mohamed Abou Donia, a Duke pharmacologist.

Soldiers were given three chemicals to protect them against insect-borne diseases and nerve-gas poisoning: the insect repellent DEET, the insecticide permethrin and the anti-nerve gas agent pyridostigmine bromide.

In a study designed to mimic those conditions, Abou Donia and his colleagues gave rats equivalent doses to what the soldiers received. When given together, the chemicals caused extensive cell degeneration and cell death with various structures of the testes, he found. The damage was more severe among rats that were also exposed to moderately stressful situations.

Results of the study, financed by the Department of Defense, were published in the Jan. 10 issue of The Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health.

MEMORY HELP

Research shows that making simple lifestyle choices can help you prevent and reverse memory problems, according to Natural Health Magazine's January/February issue.

Articles focus on making chocolate and caffeine choices to help you remember information, learning how sleep boosts your memory, and exercising to enhance your sleep quality and improve your memory.

Copyright 2003 Cox News Service. All rights reserved.

[Bernadette]

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Twelve years after the Persian Gulf War began, some American veterans of that conflict are finding new ammunition in their fight to find out who supplied Iraq chemicals that might have made them sick.

More than 5,000 veterans are plaintiffs in a lawsuit that accuses companies of helping Iraqi President Saddam Hussein build his chemical warfare arsenal. The plaintiffs are among the tens of thousands who came down with "Gulf War Illness," a debilitating series of ailments that can include chronic fatigue, skin rashes, muscle joint pain, memory loss, and brain damage.

Now, plaintiffs' attorneys have acquired, for the first time, what they believe is strong evidence of which companies supplied Iraq the chemicals that might have been used to produce mustard gas, sarin nerve gas and VX.

The supplier list, shown to CNN, is included in Iraq's 1998 weapons declaration to the United Nations, parts of which were resubmitted to weapons inspectors last month. Sources tell CNN the list is an authentic document, but attorneys for the companies question its accuracy and say the lawsuit is without merit.

The Iraqi list names 56 suppliers of chemicals and equipment to process them. A majority are based in Europe.

"If they are hit in the pocketbook, if they know the dictator they provide this stuff to is eventually gonna turn them over to the public and they are gonna be held accountable for what they've done, they're less likely to sell these things to Saddam or somebody like [him] in the future," plaintiffs' attorney Gary Pitts said.

The lawsuit, originally filed by Pitts in a civil court in Brazoria County, Texas, in 1994, alleges that companies knew "products and/or manufacturing facilities supplied ... were to be used to produce chemical and biological weapons."

The suit seeks at least $1 billion in damages for medical expenses, lost wages, and pain and suffering.

Seven companies in the Iraqi weapons declaration have been named defendants. Pitts said the plaintiffs will sue more of the listed companies next.

Germany is home to the most major suppliers listed in Iraq's 1998 U.N. declaration. The Netherlands and Switzerland each are home to three companies on the list. France, Austria and the United States each are home to two. The declaration says Singapore was the largest exporter of chemical weapons precursors. Other countries home to alleged chemical exporters to Iraq include India, Egypt, Spain and Luxembourg, with one each.

The veterans' lawsuit has moved slowly for eight years. Neither the U.S. government nor the United Nations weapons inspection agency, formerly the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) and now the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, would share supplier information requested by Pitts.

"UNSCOM had a practice of not revealing names of companies of suppliers of equipment to Iraq because they often had the possibility of getting information from these companies, and the best way to get these companies to talk to them was not to publish their names to start with," Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector, told CNN.

Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter, contacted by Pitts, acquired the list for the veterans during a meeting last year with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz.

"I brought out a series of compact discs which contained the totality of the Iraqi declaration," Ritter told CNN. The "full, final and complete" weapons declaration has never been made public. Ritter gave the CDs to Pitts.

"I am assisting United States veterans, heroes," Ritter said. "People who put on our uniform, defended our country in time of war, who have been abandoned by their government."

About 209,000 Gulf War veterans have filed claims with the Veterans Administration, and 161,000 of them are receiving disability payments.

Neither American company listed -- Alcolac International, based in Baltimore, Maryland; and Al-Haddad Trading, based in Nashville, Tennessee -- are still in business.

No one from Al-Haddad could be reached.

Alcolac paid a fine in 1989 under U.S. law for one charge of exporting thiodiglycol, a chemical that could be used to make mustard gas, but that shipment was destined for another country.

"I am unaware of any direct sale from Alcolac to Iraq," says attorney Ron Welsh, who represents Rhodia, which owns the defunct Alcolac's assets.

Welsh said the veteran's lawsuit "has no meat."

One of the largest alleged suppliers to Iraq's chemical program, according to Iraq's list, was the German company Karl Kolb. A spokesman for the company said it has done business with Iraq for 35 years, but he denied any connection to its weapons programs.

The German firm Preussag, since acquired by the travel conglomerate TUI, supplied chemical precursors for sarin nerve gas, according to Iraq's declaration. The firm told CNN that claim is untrue.

Several German manufacturers listed -- Schott Glas, Klockner Ina, Ludwig Hammer, Heberger Bau -- denied connections to Iraq's weapons plants and said the lawsuit's accusations are false.

"Schott Glas is a manufacturer of glass and glass components, not of weapons," attorney Palmer Hutcheson said.

"The plaintiffs don't have a case. They have failed to show evidence that Klockner was involved in any way in helping Iraq produce chemical or biological weapons," attorney Brian Hurst said.

The Dutch company Melchemie denied that it supplied "strategic raw materials" to Iraq. It has acknowledged improperly shipping chemicals to an Iraqi agricultural producer once, in 1984. Melchemie paid a fine and says it bought back the containers. The firm said its Iraqi exports are now limited to tomato and cucumber seeds.

A Dutch-based subsidiary of Phillips Petroleum exported chemicals to Iraq but nothing illegal, according to Sam Stubbs, an attorney for Phillips. Stubbs said, "Any substance Phillips would have sold to Iraq would have been a useful and beneficial product, if used properly."

The Indian company Exomet Plastics, now part of EPC Industrie, said the only chemicals it shipped to Iraq were for pesticides. The firm told CNN that when it was advised of the chemicals' possible misuse, it stopped further shipments.

"There were no restrictions for exporting these chemicals at the time the exports were made," said EPC attorney S.R. Mate.

Despite their names being listed by Iraq, the French firm De Dietrich and the Portuguese-owned Tafisa denied ever doing business with Iraq.

Half of the firms listed by Iraq and now targeted by the lawsuit as "major suppliers" are either defunct or were unreachable.

"We have thousands of American veterans who continue to suffer," Ritter said. I don't give a damn about these companies. If they're innocent, they won't pay a price. If they have done something they need to be ashamed of, then let your shame be public."

CNN's Claudia Otto in Berlin, Germany; Chris Burns in Frankfurt, Germany; Andrei Braun and Karine Djili-Bienfait in Paris, France; Al Goodman in Madrid, Spain; Ram Ramgopal in New Delhi, India; Maria Ressa in Singapore; and Abighail Brigham, Shira Kavon and Elizabeth Hathway in New York contributed to this report.

[Bernadette]

Possible clue to Gulf War illnesses
From Brian Cabell and Ted Rubenstein
CNN Washington Bureau
Friday, January 17, 2003 Posted: 8:52 PM EST (0152 GMT)

DALLAS, Texas (CNN) ? As U.N. inspectors search Iraq for weapons of mass destruction ? including chemical weapons ? a U.S. researcher may be on the way to unraveling the mystery of Gulf War illnesses, and he says the ailment may be linked to low levels of chemical agents.

Gulf War illnesses include a collection of symptoms such as chronic fatigue, skin rashes, muscle and joint pain, memory loss and confusion.

The Department of Defense says about 20,000 veterans suffer from those illnesses. Veterans' advocates say the number is tens of thousands higher.

The Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses declared in 1996 that "Stress is likely to be an important contributing factor to the broad range of illnesses currently being reported by gulf war veterans." Other possible, physiological causes were discounted.

Dr. Robert Haley of the Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas, says the stress theory is wrong, dead wrong.

Haley suspects the veterans are suffering from a brain disorder, a theory that the Pentagon has resisted for several years. Some critics, in fact, called his work voodoo science.

Haley was able to come to this conclusion because of one man: Ross Perot, a longtime veterans' advocate.

"He said he had been seeing something that he had never seen before," Haley recounts, "special forces troops who were tough as nails before the war and now looked pitiful in their inability to function."

Perot funded Haley's studies to the tune of $2.5 million to see whether the causes of Gulf War syndrome were physical instead of mental.

Now, 12 years after the war, Haley's findings are turning the stress theory upside down.

Conventional MRI scans showed nothing unusual, but through a technique known as magnetic resonance spectroscopy, he found damage deep in the brains of the sick veterans.

"The symptoms that we see are characteristic of well known diseases of the brain, for example in the basal ganglia, Huntington's disease and Parkinson's disease," Haley says.

Defense officials concede Haley may have discovered something important, but still insist stress may have played a role in Gulf War Illness.

Haley believes the deep brain damage probably was caused by low-level exposure to the nerve agent sarin. The level of the nerve agent was so low, he says, that the veteran's problems may not have shown up for months.

He admits he hasn't scientifically proved the sarin connection, but the Department of Defense and the Veteran's Administration agree Haley's work deserves further study. In fact, the government now funds his research.

Dr. Michael Kilpatrick of the Department of Defense insists that stress is still a possible factor in some of the veterans' illnesses, but concedes Haley may be on to something important.

However, he says, there is no test that says: "Yes, this exposure causes this brain damage."

The Pentagon acknowledges that more than 100,000 troops were exposed to low levels of sarin when the Iraqi chemical depot at Khamisiyah was destroyed shortly after the war.

It took the government six years to make that concession because officials apparently asked the wrong troops about the contents of Khamisiyah.

"The unit that came in first and captured the site was there for 30 minutes and left for a second site. The second unit that came in was the unit that did the demolition of the weapons that were stored there," Kilpatrick said.

"When the Department of Defense asked, 'Did you see any chemical weapons?' unfortunately they asked the first unit in. They didn't ask the second unit. And so when they were told 'no,' the belief at DOD was there were no chemical weapons there."

Gulf War veteran Steve Robinson worked with Kilpatrick at the Defense Department. He now heads a veterans' advocacy group.

"There were 100 facilities like Khamisiyah that were ammunition storage facilities that were blown up during the Gulf War. A couple of them were the largest conventional demolition operations ever in the history of modern warfare, the amount of explosive that they used," Robinson said. "Whatever was in those facilities certainly went into the atmosphere."

The Pentagon says troops in three areas were exposed to sarin, but the Defense Department is still grappling with the question of how much of the chemical was released.

And what about the U.S. troops training now for another possible showdown with Iraq? Will they face Gulf War illnesses?

"The Army says we're not prepared. Congress says we're not prepared. The reports that are out there say we're not prepared," Robinson said.

[SEATJERKER]

...saw the script...

..209,000 men have been exposed to the "possible nerve agents"...

...stress 'plays' a big part in PTSD, as i've "never been exposed" to nerve agants, but by stress accounts, I'm as stiff as a board every day due to stress from a combined daily input of today, and yesteryear...

...I'm sure that almost every soldier in the Gulf war WAS exposed to airborne pollutants, and the injestion is a slow permanent death.....