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quote:Originally posted by yokerTo: Another_someoneA. I think that GWS was a biological weapon developped by Iraquis and used at the very beginning of the war. The target were the coalition forces - there were no Iraquis there at that moment. (But as I said, there were some people in Kuwait and SA who had such problems.)A. The Iraqui army probably used grenades to spread the agent among coalition forces, but this agent was spreading from person to person later. In case of biological weapon it MUST be done this way, because you cannot infect some people and send them to contact the enemy soldiers and transfer the disease to them.
quote:Q. Is it not possible that the families, rather than actually suffering from any contagious disease, are actually suffering from stress related symptoms caused by the stress of caring for their returning husbands, and maybe consequently also have an immune system that is mildly impaired by depression and stress?A. There is nothing to support it: Why family members have the SAME symptoms like veterans? Why all other depressed and stressed people do not develop CFS/GWS? ("Post traumatic stress syndrome" was the label doctors tried to use for the veterans problems first, but all veterans say that the Gulf War I was a very easy war compared with Vietnam war or WWII in the Pacific. And there were no veterans from these two wars who developped GWS.)
quote:Originally posted by yoker" ... most of the people with GWS developed most of the symptoms some time after coming home, and had relatively few symptoms while they were still out in the field ... "A. Yes. The progress of the disease is slow.
quote:"But it still holds true that if, once the US troops were infected, if they continued to be infectious, then they should also have infected Iraqi civilians they later came in contact with, and these Iraqi civilians would then have been a reservoir of infection for future troops and civilians."A. Well, how many veterans were living in one flat or working in one office with Iraqi civilians during a period of SEVERAL MONTHS? Only a FEW - if any. The transfer from person to person is not easy.
quote:A. "... a reservoir of infection ..." - What I say, is that such a reservoir is inside the whole Europe/US society and only part of the infected people have bigger problems like: CFS, diabetes type 2, multiple sclerosis, allergy, eczema, lupus. It of course can be a reservoir of this infection also in the Iraqi population, but you cannot expect epidemic of GWS, like it is not in US - as I explained, the virulence of the disease decreases during every transfer to other person: 70% of veterans' wives, many children, but few veterans' coworkes and sometimes some other people like a man saying something like: "... I had a girl friend who had friends among Gulf War veterans and now I have problems very similar to GWS ...".
quote:"... I am not even sure it was something [like CFS] that was an available diagnosis at the time of the Vietnam war ..."A. Yes, CFS diagnose did not exist during Vietnam war or WWII, but it's quite sure there were not 200 000 veterans with such problems.
quote:You are pushing that veterans/their family members have depression and their symptoms like rash, low grade fevers, aching joints are caused by this depression. Good. But how do you explain, that these symptoms disappeared after antibiotic treatment?