Gulf War Syndrome: Mysterious Diseases Still Affecting the Veterans of the Iraq War

On May 11, the BBC announced that American scientists had discovered in a recent study the mystery behind the so-called Gulf War Syndrome that affected thousands of American and British soldiers who served in Iraq and participated in the 1991 Gulf War.

According to the study, the cause of the mysterious symptoms that appeared on the soldiers for decades is the use of the nerve gas Sarin.

The study suggests that the Sarin gas was often released into the air when the Iraqi chemical weapons caches were bombed.

After that, many organizations demanded the necessity of conducting the necessary examinations for the soldiers to verify these allegations, and to enable them to receive prompt and immediate treatment.

 

Eyewitness Testimonial

The Guardian newspaper published an article by the former British army soldier and participant in the Iraq war, Kevin Muldoon. The article was about the mysterious diseases affecting soldiers who participated in the war, titled “For decades the MoD denied my mystery illness. At last, I feel I know the truth.”

Muldoon said: “Veterans like me were waiting to find out the source of Gulf War Syndrome. The new research may finally give us answers.”

He stressed that he was very fit and healthy when he participated in the Gulf War, now after 30 years of suffering from Gulf War Syndrome, he still struggles with breathing and only a month ago he had to get a spinal injection to block the pain from his damaged nerves.

Over the decades since the Gulf War, thousands of veterans have suffered from mysterious illnesses. Now American scientists, who have received funding from the US government, say that the reason why thousands of soldiers like Muldoon got sick "is the nerve gas sarin, which was released into the air when the Iraqi chemical weapons stockpile was bombed."

Muldoon was a tank carrier in the Gulf, riding a motorbike to find safe routes through the desert. The soldiers in the tanks may have been safely inside, but I only had a piece of cloth to put over my mouth to protect it from insects or sand, so he was very exposed to the chemicals in the air.

"When I returned from the war, I received treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. But the doctors noticed that something was wrong: my body, as well as my mind, were affected. My joints became extremely sore, I struggled to breathe, and began to suffer from chronic fatigue. This, of course, exacerbated PTSD,” he stated.

 

Gulf War Syndrome

Muldoon was not the only one who suffers from these symptoms, and the research conducted by the Royal British Legion indicates that 33,000 veterans suffering from Gulf War Syndrome.

Doctors who made Muldoon's diagnosis suspected that the cause of the illness was his exposure to chemical weapons and not due to exposure to depleted uranium deposits.

In the United States, the government has long recognized the existence of Gulf War Syndrome. However, despite all the evidence, the UK Ministry of Defense denied its existence until 2005. In 2010, it was denying the majority of claims for war pensions from war veterans with the condition. Most symptomatic veterans "do not receive a war pension for service in the Gulf to this day."

The causes of the infection of thousands of American and British soldiers who served in Iraq with Gulf Syndrome have remained mysterious for years, and its symptoms have puzzled scientists until many of its details were recently revealed.

Scientists claimed that they were able to solve the mystery that baffled the world.

 

Crucial Results

Robert Haley, a researcher at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and the leader of the research team that prepared the study, explained that the gas to which the American soldiers were exposed was dilute, and therefore was not fatal.

However, he added, "But it was enough to make people sick if they were genetically predisposed to contracting this disease."

He pointed out that the determining factor behind whether a person becomes ill or not is the gene known as PON1, which plays an important role in the breakdown and elimination of toxic chemicals in the body.

Haley's team also revealed, after taking blood and DNA samples, that veterans who have a less effective copy of this gene are highly candidates for developing Gulf syndrome symptoms.

The study was conducted, according to what was confirmed by the BBC, on more than 1,000 people who were chosen at random, from the old American soldiers who participated in the Gulf War.

"This study is the most conclusive" about the causes of these mysterious symptoms, Haley said.

"I think it will stand up to any criticism. I hope our findings will lead us to a treatment that alleviates some of these symptoms," he added.

Previous research believed that the soldiers' exposure to "depleted uranium" during that time had led to their Gulf Syndrome. Yet, studies by researchers from the University of Portsmouth, who later examined the levels of depleted uranium remaining in the bodies of soldiers, proved otherwise.

This came by conducting a highly sensitive test to determine the amount of uranium remaining in the urine of 154 American soldiers suffering from Gulf Syndrome.

No trace of depleted uranium was found in any of the urine samples. The test method used was 10 times more sensitive than its predecessors, thus leading the scientists to accept that the results were indisputable.

In this context, Professor Randall Parrish said: "The ability to refute the alleged link between this disease and this radioactive material allows the medical community to focus more clearly on the possible causes."

 

Biological Weapon

The doctor Khaoula Chaabani explained to Al-Estiklal that Symptoms of Gulf war syndrome, which is likely to be caused by sarin gas, are fatigue, headache, skin rashes, digestive disorders, muscle, and joint pain, stress, depression, insomnia, and difficulty remembering or concentrating.

She added: “Sarin is a toxic man-made chemical that has no taste, smell, or color. However, due to its nerve properties, it was used as a chemical weapon, and its production was banned in 1997.”

This chemical works in a similar way to some insecticides, entering the body through the skin or breathing and attacking the nervous system.

It results in severe muscle tremors, runny eyes and nose, and vomiting, and some of them face breathing problems until suffocation and death.

The research team claims that sarin gas was released when Iraqi chemical weapons caches were bombed.

Satellite imagery, the researchers noted in the study, documented a large debris cloud rising from an Iraqi chemical weapons storage site bombed by the US and coalition aircraft and passing over US ground forces sites where they set off thousands of nerve gas alarms and were confirmed to contain sarin.

The Royal British Legion says that research indicates that as many as 33,000 of the kingdom's veterans out of the 50,000 soldiers who took part in the 1991 Gulf War, could have the syndrome.

Many organizations accuse the British and American governments of ignoring what happened to these soldiers for decades and not taking serious steps to clarify if the soldiers were exposed to toxic gasses and materials during their participation in the war in Iraq.