BRAIN DAMAGE FOUND IN U.S. GULF WAR SYNDROME VICTIMS

Syndrome 3, characterized by central pain, is found in veterans who wore insect repellent with high concentrations of DEET, a common ingredient in many mosquito and tick repellents.

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Subject:   Your "Registered" POISONS Cause Debilitating Brain Damage-
Date:       Wed, 31 May 2000 14:54:25 -0400
From:        Stephen Tvedten <steve@getipm.com>
Organization:     Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)

To:     Lyndon Hawkins <hawkins@empm.cdpr.ca.gov>
          Senior Research Scientist
          State of California, Department of Pesticide Regulation - Integrated Pest Management

Dear Lyndon, I thought you might like to read an article from the Environment News service entitled: BRAIN DAMAGE FOUND IN U.S. GULF WAR SYNDROME VICTIMS - By Cat Lazaroff - http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2000/2000L-05-25-07.html

DALLAS, Texas, May 25, 2000 (ENS) - Brain scans of veterans who became ill after serving in the Gulf War show evidence of significant brain cell loss, a new report reveals. Using a sophisticated scanning technique, researchers have linked exposure to pesticides and nerve gas to debilitating brain damage.

Using magnetic resonance (MR) spectroscopy - highly specialized brain scans that measure chemical levels inside the brain - researchers at the University of Texas (UT) Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas found evidence of brain damage that causes a variety of symptoms in sick veterans, including joint pain, fatigue, dizziness and mental confusion. 

The brain stem, damaged in some Gulf War veterans, helps control most body functions

UT Southwestern researchers report that sick Gulf War veterans, when compared with healthy veterans, had 20 percent less brain cells in the brain stem, a structure that links the brain with the rest of the body, allowing normal motor and organ functions.

The sick veterans also showed a 12 percent loss in the right basal ganglia and five percent loss in the left basal ganglia. The basal ganglia are associated with the control of motor functions.

These brain cell losses are similar to those found in patients with brain diseases like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease) and multiple sclerosis, as well as dementia and other degenerative neurological disorders, although the brain areas affected are different.

"A common question is whether these levels of brain cell loss found in these veterans are clinically important," said Dr. Robert Haley, UT Southwestern chief of epidemiology and lead author of the study. "You need to ask yourself if you would be willing to give up five percent to 25 percent of the brain cells in vital parts of your brain that serve as the relay station for all automatic and subconscious functions of your brain." 

"When you sustain such brain-cell losses, you get a host of subtle malfunctions of all systems of the body," Haley said.

The tests were conducted on 22 members of a Naval Reserve construction battalion, the Seabees, in the southeastern United States. The tests were also done on 18 healthy veterans from the same battalion. The findings were replicated among a small sample of six Gulf War Army veterans living in Dallas who have been diagnosed with Gulf War Syndrome 2, the worst form of Gulf War related illnesses.

"Finding the same level of brain cell abnormality in the veterans from a different branch of service and a different part of the country increases the likelihood that the findings are widespread among the nation's veterans," Haley said.

When contacted by ENS, the Department of Defense had not had an opportunity to review the study, and had no comment.

Previous magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies on these veterans found no visible structural changes to the brain. But by using MR spectroscopy, researchers could look at brain chemical levels, which show biochemical and physiological changes to the brain.

MR spectroscopy explores brain chemistry by using radio waves to measure intracellular concentrations of protons and estimate the concentrations of common brain chemicals.

"This brain disorder is quite similar to a variety of other diseases in which patients may be severely disabled, the conventional MRI scan is normal, and the MR spectroscopy scan uniquely detects brain damage," said Dr. James Fleckenstein, professor of radiology and a coauthor of the study.

In 1997, Haley and his colleagues defined three Gulf War syndromes in the "Journal of the American Medical Association." Syndrome 1, commonly found in veterans who wore pesticide-containing flea collars, is characterized by impaired cognition.

Syndrome 2, called confusion-ataxia, the most severe and debilitating of the syndromes, is found among veterans who said they were exposed to low-level nerve gas and experienced side effects from anti-nerve gas, or pyridostigmine (PB), tablets.

Syndrome 3, characterized by central pain, is found in veterans who wore insect repellent with high concentrations of DEET, a common ingredient in many mosquito and tick repellents. Veterans with Syndrome 3 also experienced side effects from PB tablets.

The MR spectroscopy study found that veterans with Syndrome 2 had lower levels than healthy veterans of a brain chemical that shows up in healthy cells.  N-acetylaspartate (NAA) indicates the number of functioning brain cells in the area being scanned. Finding less NAA in the deep brain structures of the sick veterans implies that many brain cells have either been destroyed or become too damaged to function.

Veterans with Syndrome 2 had 18 percent lower levels of NAA in the right basal ganglia and 26 percent less NAA in the brain stem, compared with healthy veterans of the same age, sex and educational level.

Veterans with Syndrome 1 or Syndrome 3 showed lesser levels of NAA loss. The varying magnitude of loss of brain function explains why some veterans are sicker than others are, while some suffer only mild symptoms.

As a consequence of having the greatest loss of brain cells, veterans with Syndrome 2 have the highest rate of occupational disability, report the worst vertigo attacks and performed the worst on objective medical tests of brain function. Veterans with Syndromes 1 and 3 are generally still able to work, have less dizziness, performed better on the medical tests and were found to have less severe loss of brain cells on the brain scans.

On brain-function tests, sick veterans with the greatest loss of brain cells performed similarly to victims of the Tokyo subway sarin nerve gas attack.

Some veterans believe they were exposed to nerve gas while in the Gulf War

In previous studies, Haley and his colleagues have shown that Gulf War veterans who complain of being sick have genetically lower levels of a blood enzyme, PON-Q, that fights off nerve gas. This deficiency made them more susceptible to illness from low levels of nerve-gas exposure.  In the new study, those veterans born with the lowest PON-Q levels were found to have the greatest loss of functional brain cells measured by MR spectroscopy.

Gulf War veterans have been suing the U.S. government for nearly 10 years over Gulf War Syndrome.

Activist journalist Mo Lohaus has reported on the Gulf War Syndrome since the early 1990s, especially during his three year tenure as managing editor of global quarterly "MONDO 2000." He says, "Active service people were given a mandatory experimental biochem vaccine which included live recombinant anthrax, and many were also exposed to radiation from depleted uranium shells. U.S. tanks fire these armor piercing rounds."

"Many Gulf War Syndrome sufferers have died, been paralyzed, had children with birth defects, and emitted semen which burns their wives," Lohaus says.

Dr. Fleckenstein presented initial findings from the study last November at the Radiological Society of North America's annual meeting. The findings have now undergone a peer review and will be published in the June issue of the journal "Radiology."

Well Lyndon, I know of too many people who have been needlessly exposed to your "registered" pesticide POISONS that now have terrible health effects.  It is so sad especially when there are so many safe and far more effective alternatives to those dangerous ("registered") neuro-toxins and/or carcinogens.  When will it be "legal" (in your opinion) to use any of these safe alternatives to actually control pest problems in California?

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