Gulf War Syndrome

[Mercedes Benzene]

After the Gulf War in the early 1990s, many soldiers returned home with many strange symptoms. This was described as "Gulf War Syndrome". I just wanted people to discuss what they think caused these symptoms (because many theories exist, but nothing can be proven).

What do you think?

Do you know someone who suffered from these symptoms?

Discuss! :)

 

Here are some symptoms for Gulf War Syndrome as specified by the American Legion:

Chronic Fatigue

Signs and symptoms involving skin (including skin rashes and unusual hair loss)

Headache

Muscle pain

Neurologic signs or symptoms (nervous system disorders which could manifest themselves in numbness in one's arm, for instance)

Neuropsychological signs or symptoms (including memory loss)

Signs or symptoms involving upper or lower respiratory system

Sleep disturbances

Gastrointestinal signs or symptoms (including recurrent diarrhea and constipation)

Cardiovascular signs or symptoms

Menstrual disorders

[CraigD]

It’s important first to note that many disorders that have been diagnosed as GWS likely are ordinary disorders related to stress, dehydration, oily smoke inhalation, and the many other stressors to which Gulf War veterans were subjected. A smaller number of diagnoses of GWS are likely to be of preexisting conditions, many of which are as poorly understood as GWS. Some people diagnoses with GWS were exposed to mustard and nerve gas following their release in single incident of Alliance bombing of an Iraqi amunition depot. Removing these cases, I believe the remaining cases should be considered “true” GWS.

 

Based on anecdotes gathered from popular and specialist literature, conversations with several clinicians who have not treated GWS, and one who has, I believe it to be a nerological and immune system disorder caused by either defective batches of or interactions between the several anti-chemical weapon medications that Alliance soldiers took both as precautions and in anticipation of a chemical weapon attack.

 

Testing and quality assurance for these drugs were much less controlled than for drugs approved for civilian used. There’ve been effectively no occurrences of “true” GWS in people who did not take them.

 

Unfortunately for medical science, we may never know with certainty what caused GWS. The data necessary to refine and test speculation like the above – drug manufacturing and dristibution documentation, lot samples, etc. - remains unavailable, despite US FOIA requests and requests from veterans suing their governments. Some speculate that these records are not just being withheld, but have been destroyed, either by Alliance governments or civilian pharmaceutical companies concerned about possible legal liability.

[HydrogenBond]

The Govenment did a study and concluded no direct causes. One can take that with a grain of salt but if one assume this is true, this syndrome tells us something very important. The brain, via the mind, can create a wide range of medical conditions.

 

War is hell. The stress, anxiety and guilt memories fester in the brain. This alters the neuro-potentials of the brain, altering the nervous output to the body that goes to the cells. The result is mind having a negative impact on the matter of the body. Even dark clouds have silver linings. This suggests the opposite should be true and that certain positive elevated states of mind can reverse the nervous output back to its original state, cancelling the symptoms.

[TheFaithfulStone]

Gulf war syndrome is caused by veterans negative attitudes?

 

Wow.

 

TFS

[HydrogenBond]

If I had been in the first Gulf War I would have felt relief, mixed with a deep sense of moral guilt. The reason being, that war was was like shooting fish in a barrel. It is hard to feel like good when there was no competition. Surviving a tough battle with a worthy enemy gives a solider a sense of pride. But wiping out a very weak opponent, like a footaball player beating a small girl to a pulp, could make one feel like bully if they have an sense of moral conscience. It was not the soldier's fault, since they were just following orders. The chain of command led them to believe that their opponent, the Elite Republican Guard, was the big bad wolf and not Little Bo Peep.

[CraigD]

If I had been in the first Gulf War I would have felt relief, mixed with a deep sense of moral guilt. The reason being, that war was was like shooting fish in a barrel.

Although, with a casualty ratio of between 100:1 and 300:1, the war was very lopsided, it was still dangerous, though not nearly as dangerous as anticipated by its planners.

 

US planners anticipated 30,000-40,000 casualties. Some non-governmental consultants predicted as few as 6,000 Actual casualties were 1,345, of which about 2/3 were due to “friendly fire” and non-combat accidents, making planners estimates among the most overstated in military history.

 

Had Iraqi military leaders used sound tactics, as UN coalition planners assumed they would, the estimates would likely have been more accurate. However, the Iraqi armed forces – with near total loss of air-superiority, consisting effectively of armor and mechanized infantry – were deployed in an ineffective and tactically bizarre way that lead to a far more lopsided coalition victory than was anticipated.

 

Such misuse of personnel and hardware was, I think, an awful betrayal of those personnel, and much to blame for the post 1991 decrease in morale and quality in the Iraqi military, and the subsequently even less effective resistance of it offered in 2003.

It is hard to feel like good when there was no competition. Surviving a tough battle with a worthy enemy gives a solider a sense of pride. But wiping out a very weak opponent, like a footaball player beating a small girl to a pulp, could make one feel like bully if they have an sense of moral conscience.

I would be surprised if HBond is basing this statement on personal combat experience, or conversation with people who have personal combat experience. My conversations with (I’m not a veteran) a few WWII, many Vietnam, a single Gulf War, and several Iraq War vets, leads me to conclude that few soldiers desire a “tough battle with a worthy opponent,” but rather hope to either not engage the enemy at all, or, if they do engage, for the battle to be as lopsided in their favor as possible. Modern war is not like a football game, and modern warriors do not have a chivalric sense of honor. There’s little historical evidence that warriors in any but the highest socioeconomic classes have at any time in history had such a sense of “moral conscience”.

 

Nearly every major military campaign in the history of any nation involved horrific occurrences that caused psychologically illness in a small fraction of its veterans. This psychological illness often manifested itself as psycho-somatic illness (“shell shock” in pre-1960 terms, among the symptoms of “post-traumatic stress disorder” in more recent). However, to suggest that the majority of the approximately 183,000 (of 550,000, 33%) US Gulf War veterans declared permanently disabled are suffering from psychological, rather than physiological, illness, is, IMHO unsupported by either medical or historical evidence.

 

PS: I don’t wish to be construed as glorifying warfare or warriors – I personally believe that any person who willingly participate in expeditionary warfare has made a severe error in moral judgment, regardless of victor, or the evenness or lopsidedness of the victory.

[TheFaithfulStone]

Well said, Craig.

 

TFS